I've been struggling for some time about what mother board to get.  I've recently picked up a working new in box Xeon E3 1245 v6 processor as the heart of my new server built.  Little sad it only has 4 cores but I got it for $150 so I'm good for now.

 

I've thought about getting a dual socket MB to allow me to at a later date get a 2nd processor..

 

My requirements are quite simple I think.

1) must support Xeon E3 1245 V6 processor

2) 10 SATA connections

3) ATX form factor (or less)

 

Would be a bonus to have it has a 2nd socket

Would be a bonus to have an M.2

I may be wrong but I thought the E5-2*** chips were required for dual CPU setups.....

1 hour ago, CHBMB said:

I may be wrong but I thought the E5-2*** chips were required for dual CPU setups.....

Yep, or the really old X series Xeons - but not the current gen E3's.

 

Is 10 SATA ports really a requirement?  It's easy to add a SATA controller.

20 hours ago, tdallen said:

Yep, or the really old X series Xeons - but not the current gen E3's.

 

Is 10 SATA ports really a requirement?  It's easy to add a SATA controller.

Looks like I'm ordering a 2nd processor

 

Its not a requirement, I have an older SuperMicro SATA controller that does I believe 8 and it doesn't have raid or anything built in but I don't think it all that fast.  

 

21 hours ago, CHBMB said:

I may be wrong but I thought the E5-2*** chips were required for dual CPU setups.....

 

Must have been why I got this chip so cheaply.. I'll order a 2nd one

 

50 minutes ago, m.b.d said:

Looks like I'm ordering a 2nd processor

Hmm, maybe I'm not understanding.  But just to be clear - there's no point in ordering another E3-1245v6 unless you want to build two computers.  The chipsets for the E3 Xeon's only support 1 CPU.  It's a great CPU for unRAID, by the way - 10,445 Passmarks, supports unbuffered ECC RAM, it's modern and power efficient.  But you're only going to fit one of them in a box.  ASRock and Supermicro are the motherboards I'd look at for E3 Xeon support.

 

The E5 Xeon family does support dual CPU setups but you'll need the right motherboard - and by the way those are expensive.

 

You don't want to use that old Supermicro SATA controller, they've been having trouble with unRAID lately.  A SATA controller is a good idea because motherboards with lots of SATA ports are few and far between, but get an LSI based one like the 9201-8i, IBM M1015, or Dell PERC H310 (the latter two might need to be flashed to IT mode).

3 hours ago, tdallen said:

Hmm, maybe I'm not understanding.  But just to be clear - there's no point in ordering another E3-1245v6 unless you want to build two computers.  The chipsets for the E3 Xeon's only support 1 CPU.  It's a great CPU for unRAID, by the way - 10,445 Passmarks, supports unbuffered ECC RAM, it's modern and power efficient.  But you're only going to fit one of them in a box.  ASRock and Supermicro are the motherboards I'd look at for E3 Xeon support.

 

The E5 Xeon family does support dual CPU setups but you'll need the right motherboard - and by the way those are expensive.

 

You don't want to use that old Supermicro SATA controller, they've been having trouble with unRAID lately.  A SATA controller is a good idea because motherboards with lots of SATA ports are few and far between, but get an LSI based one like the 9201-8i, IBM M1015, or Dell PERC H310 (the latter two might need to be flashed to IT mode).

 

My fault I was reading the above posts while dealing with my 3yr. 

 

I've been looking at my build idea, and I think I can get away with 6 or 8 onboard SATA connections.  Then for my cache use something like this for cache drives.  I haven't found any posts about if its supported or not but the appear to be supported by most if not all Linux distros.  I ordered a single card and have an extra 500GB sdd that I can test out on my current server.

 

I'll do some poking around SuperMicro site I've had good luck with their hardware in the past.

Let us know if OWC card works out.  I'd be reluctant to dedicate an x4 slot to a single SSD, though.

 

Regarding the Supermicro SATA controller, the issue there is the Marvel chipset on the card (I'm assuming it's an AOC-SASLP or something along those lines).  This is relevant because Marvel chips are sometimes used to extend motherboard capabilities with more SATA ports (the Intel chipset typically only supports about 6).  So if you get 8 or more SATA ports on the motherboard, try to figure out where they are coming from - unRAID and the Marvel drivers aren't getting along well these days.