Hey Guys,

 

I was just wondering from people running skylake's or even xeon e3's how is the noise and heat output? I haven't looked at hardware for the past couple of years. Skylake looks to be the new latest and greatest.

 

I need to upgrade my ~7 year old build and figured the skylake would be the best option for several docker instances, 2 vm's, and some plex transcoding. I'm planning on going with the Fractal R5 case.

 

I want ECC so seems like xeon is the way to go though I think the newer i5's and i7's can do ECC but they draw more power.

 

This server is sitting in a closed office closet so I was hoping to get it as quiet as possible so it doesn't distract my wife. My current server can be heard even with the door closed.

 

I also need a motherboard with IPMI, since I'll be running headless.

 

There is another post on here that suggested the supermicro board

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182994.

 

If anyone has any other suggestions for cpu and or mobo I'm all ears.

 

Thanks.

I don't have any recommendations, but the board you linked isn't very future safe with 4 PCI slots. I would at least buy something with only PCIe slots.

Are you going to pass through GPU and need USB controllers passed through to the VM's?

I don't have any recommendations, but the board you linked isn't very future safe with 4 PCI slots. I would at least buy something with only PCIe slots.

Are you going to pass through GPU and need USB controllers passed through to the VM's?

 

Ahh good point. I'm going to pass through a usb controller for one of the VM's (for home automation). I don't have any plans to pass through a GPU.

 

Looks like there isn't a very big choice of boards for skylake yet.

It might be that you need to buy a separate USB card to be able to pass through a controller. Unless you buy a board that someone have already tested, there is no way to know if it's going to work or not without an extra USB card.