12th Gen i7 with ECC and QSV support

[Boyturtle]

I'm looking at upgrading my Unraid server to allow me an amount of future proofing, taking into account future VMs (including a Mac, up to 3 Windows and pfSense), the ability to hardware transcode for Plex and to run a number of dockers.

 

My current setup, that has been running for about 5 years now, is a Xeon 1230v5, 48GB ECC RAM, 3 cache drives, 4 storage drives and a parity all nestled in a Define R6 on a Supermicro X11SSM-F-O Motherboard with a Corsair RM750X 80+ Gold PSU. When I have all my dockers and 1 windows VM running at the moment, the CPU can get pegged at 80-90% and things have a tendency to slow down considerably when this happens.

 

I like having IPMI and running ECC RAM and would like to carry this forward to my next build. Having 2 NICs for aggregation is also preferable. I'd like to improve performance without upping my power consumption if possible. I'm considering getting a W680 motherboard from Supermicro (X13SAE-F), 32GB (for now) DDR5 ECC RAM and an i7 12700, I plan to keep the rest of the equipment as is. I've been holding off doing this for a while as I've not been able to get my hands on DDR5 ECC RAM until now; Kingston have recently announced that they have 16GB and 32GB variants that will work with this motherboard. I've also considered similar mobo offerings from Asrock Rack, Asrock Ind and Gigabyte, and these products use DDR4 RAM, but I have not been able to source any products from resellers in the UK, the Supermicro is available, albeit with a 4 week lead time.

 

I'd appreciate any feedback about my choices and particularly if anyone has used a similar set up.

[clarkg888]

I am thinking of doing the same for my first build. The only piece I have so far is a Fractal Design R5 case (from a previous desktop build).

I though that maybe you could drop in a faster used CPU to get you by for another year (when the MB and DDR5 RAM availability should be better), but the fastest you can drop in, a Xeon E3-1280 v5, is hardly any uplift from the 1230.

 

Clark.