Advice on upgrade options to improve transcoding with Supermicro X10SL7-F

[zemosabe]

The budget to rebuild my server just shrunk so looking to reuse my Supermicro X10SL7-F if possible. 

 

I remeber reading that the IPMI with this board can interere with passing through integrated graphics.  Board is also limited to only 1 PCI-E 3.0 x8 (in x16), 1 PCI-E 2.0 x4 (in x8). I plan to use one of those slots for a Card to give me more SATA ports as I'm crrently full.  Existing processor is Intel® Xeon® CPU E3-1241 v3.

 

Any advice on possible upgrade paths is appreciated.

 

Thanks!

 

Z

[givmedew]

What are you using to transcode right now?

 

Right now... you might want to use a NVidia Shield as a PLEX only server to do your transcoding. 
 

My guess is that as soon as Intel GPUs hit the market then the answer is just the absolute least expensive Intel GPU imaginable.  As there would no reason even the lowest end GPU that they come out wouldn't be able to do many many transcodes without breaking a sweat.

That said...

I happen to dabble in 1150 based UNRAID myself.  I have a 6x10GBe 1150 based X10SLH-N6-ST031 SuperMicro.  

Its not too dissimilar to your motherboard as it has the same (2) PCIe slots you have.  The biggest difference really is just that it has (6) 10GBit ports on it.

I'm probably going to walk away from it and go back to my X9SRL-F w/ E5-1650 v2 because I need more ram and the ECC ram on 1150 motherboards is expensive compared to the ECC ram that you use on a 2011 board.  Plus I have an entire box of the ECC you use on a 2011 board.

So looking at EBAY I can see that your motherboard used is worth as much as an X9SRL-F w/ a processor! The one I see for sale right now includes an e5-2620...  The seller doesn't specify as to if it is a v1 or v2 CPU but honestly not a big difference between the 2.  He has 6 for sale and they are $187 plus shipping...

As for expansion slots are concerned... You have (4) PCIe 8x Gen 3 slots! (2) are in 16x.  You also have (2) PCIe 4x Gen 3.0 both in 8x slot and (1) PCIe 4x Gen 2.0 in 8x slot!

So like YEH!!!!  I'll be running the cheapest Intel GPU you can get once they come out, I'll have a 10GBit card, (2) PCIe 8x Gen 3 4e4i SAS cards, and then (2) PCIe 4x Gen3 NVMe to PCIe adapters.  I'll still have enough room left over for a PCIe 4x Gen2 slot left... which is still quite capable if I want to toss a 8e SAS card in to run a bunch more hard drives.

[zemosabe]

Thanks for your response givemedew, the X9SRL-F looks like a great option.

 

I have already picked up a beat-up Antec 1200, 3 x CSE-M35T and ICY Dock 6 x 2.5 + ultra slim ODD enclosure.  I plan to move over a 3in2 cage from my existing build and have an old LSI SAS9220-8i I can pop in to allow for more drives.  With the generous PCIe slots of the X9SRL-F  I can add an additional LSI SAS9220-8i and graphics card down the road to finish wiring up the cages and improve transcoding.

 

Now I have to get after cleaning up the Antec 1200.  The ebay listing mentioned that the case was not in the best shape, a massive understatement.  Smells like it has been used as an ashtray for the past 10 years.  I plan to scrub it as best I can and then spray paint and replace all the fans. It is also missing the PSU backplate so I'll need to figure out a replacement for that.  I'll post pictures when I'm done.

 

Thanks!