January 7, 20251 yr Background: https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/x11spl-f Page 8-10 of the manual has the PCIe layout. I am currently using slot 4 & 6 which says they are both PCIe 3.0 x8 (in x16). Both of these slots are being used by two LSI 9305-16i cards. CPU: Xeon Silver 4210 RAM: 64GB DDR4 ECC Chassis can hold 30 drives. I currently have 22 drives, 2 of those are parity. Disks are XFS, no ZFS is being used or being considered in the future. Have had this setup for about 3 years and it’s worked well for just me on my local network for Plex direct play (my server serves no other purpose beyond Plex) of 1080p & 4K content. However, I’m about to add family members for remote access, and likely to run into transcoding. I’d like to move to a newer Intel CPU that has iGPU for HW transcoding (as well as lower the power consumption a bit), thinking about i5-14600k. My main question is about the HBA cards. As stated above, they’re using PCIe 3.0 x8 (in x16) on the supermicro. However, with the LGA1700 socket for the i5 CPU, I can’t find any motherboards that have two PCIe slots that operate at or even near that level (I’m thinking about getting the msi pro z790-p or msi b760 gaming). From what I can find on pcpartpicker, it’s usually 1 full x16 slot (for graphics cards), 1 x4 slot, and then either a bunch of x1 slots or a bunch of x16 slots that only operate at x1 speeds. Are there really no consumer motherboards that have at least two PCIe slots that operate at x8 lane speeds in the LGA1700 socket? TL;DR - Am I worrying to much about PCIe lane speeds for my purposes?
January 7, 20251 yr you want to start using intel QSV (quicksync). GREAT! There are a few ways to approach this, but I many things depend on budget. -your cheapest option would be to keep your setup and buy a a310 intel ARC gpu. all the transcoding power you'd need, low power (slot powered). these have become pretty impossible to find NEW in recent weeks, but the next "size-up" is the a380, but needs a power connection. -many people shift their setup, using a second computer to run plex via linux, that pulls the files from your (current) NAS. low power mini-pc or used 10thgen or newer dell/hp off from eBay. -you can go into premium motherboards for the LGA 1700 CPUs. a very popular example is the Supermicro X13SAE or X13SAE-F (-f is for ipmi). currently around $400-475 new on eBay. it has 2x x8 pcie and 1x x4 pcie. https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/x13sae-f https://www.servethehome.com/supermicro-x13sae-f-intel-w680-motherboard-mini-review/ (power consumption on page 3) REGARDING the HBA speed and connection: LSI 9305-16i cards can run just fine on a pcie 3.0 x4 slot. the overall bandwidth is halved, but the ONLY time you would need all drives @ max speed is during the Parity check. example: 10 people watch plex from 10 different files on 10 different drives. AND file reading during plex is very "slow" speed requirements from your disks. Just to help you with approx numbers: The x4 would be fine for up to 13-14 or so at 250MB each. DO NOT consider and x1 slot for your LSI card.... There are other LGA 1700 boards that have more "balanced" pcie lanes in consumer boards. this asus board has an x16 and TWO x4 slots: https://www.microcenter.com/product/653703/asus-z790-e-rog-strix-gaming-wifi-intel-lga-1700-atx-motherboard?ob=1 Edited January 7, 20251 yr by nasforthemass link update
January 7, 20251 yr Author Thanks for the suggestions. For me, kind of on the fence between the reliability of the supermicro enterprise board vs some of the Asus boards below, mainly the ProArt board because of the dual 2.5Gb & 10Gb lan ports built in. In case anyone finds this via Google or other means, was able to find more motherboards that can do x8/x8 PCIe once I dialed in my search terms: https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/c9z790-cg (Difference here is the Z790 chipset vs the W680 suggested above.) https://www.asus.com/us/motherboards-components/motherboards/proart/proart-z790-creator-wifi/techspec/ ATX https://rog.asus.com/us/motherboards/rog-maximus/rog-maximus-z790-hero-model/spec/ ATX https://rog.asus.com/us/motherboards/rog-maximus/rog-maximus-z790-apex-model/spec/ ATX https://rog.asus.com/us/motherboards/rog-maximus/rog-maximus-z790-formula/spec/ ATX https://rog.asus.com/us/motherboards/rog-maximus/rog-maximus-z790-extreme-model/spec/ E-ATX https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z790 Taichi/#Specification E-ATX https://www.asrockind.com/en-gb/IMB-X1714 ATX https://www.gigabyte.com/Enterprise/Server-Motherboard/MW34-SP0-rev-11#Specifications ATX Make sure to measure if you try and use the E-ATX boards, server chassis usually won't be able to hold them. All of the above are around the same price range as of now. Edited January 7, 20251 yr by Arkanor additional motherboards
January 8, 20251 yr If you really are worried about speed, and want to throw money at it, the 9500-16i is PCIe 4.0 and since each generation doubles the bandwidth it would get the same result on an x4 slot as the 9305-16i on an x8 slot, provided it is PCie 4.0 of course, which can be an issue with some x4 slots, especially if they come from the chipset.
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