mITX motherboard which can support 7+ drives on board


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I appreciate you replying to my post.  I did read most of that thread late last night.   Did you ever figure out what was causing the lockup’s?  Sorry if I overlooked it.  Any other issues cropped up that you think may of be of interest?  Do you think that larger cpu cooler will work with my case it is an iStarUSA D-3100HN 3U rackmount case?  Of course I am looking to future proof as much as I can.

 

Thank you,

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27 minutes ago, JM2005 said:

Did you ever figure out what was causing the lockup’s

The lockups stopped when I disabled Turbo Boost on the processor.  I think this is only necessary as long as I am running Boinc 24x7 as I am still doing.  Even though both CPU coolers I have tried kept the processor at around 84-85C at heavy sustained loads with Turbo Boost enabled, that seemed to be too much for the processor even though critical/lockup temp is supposedly 100C.

 

When I am done with Boinc, I will re-enable Turbo Boost and see what happens.  My HandBrake and Plex transcoding sessions use the iGPU (Boinc tasks do not) so I should not see the heavy CPU loads I see with Boinc tasks.

27 minutes ago, JM2005 said:

Do you think that larger cpu cooler will work with my case it is an iStarUSA D-3100HN 3U rackmount case

Height on the case is 5.22 inches (132 mm) but of course that is an external dimension.  I don't know exactly how much internal space you have for a CPU cooler.  That does limit your CPU cooler options. 

 

I am currently using a Noctua NH-U9S CPU cooler on my E-2288G.  It has a height of 125mm. My case limits cooler height to 146mm

 

Prior to that, I used a Be Quiet Shadow Rock TF2 CPU cooler.  It has a height of 112mm.  I only swapped it out for the taller Noctua when I thought perhaps it could not handle the heat of the E-2288G under heavy load.  It turns out both are equal in this regard.

 

Both of those coolers fit on the E3C246D4U motherboard without blocking anything important.  Even though the Be Quiet cooler is much larger (being a top flow cooler with a 135mm fan), It has plenty of RAM slot clearance. 

 

The Be Quiet will for sure fit in your case, as will the Noctua NH-L9x65.  The NH-U9S may be tight.  See if you case has any documentation on maximum cooler height.  Both the Be Quiet and the larger Noctua will give you more CPU cooling headroom than the smaller 65mm height Noctua.

Edited by Hoopster
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On 6/17/2020 at 1:26 PM, Hoopster said:

The lockups stopped when I disabled Turbo Boost on the processor.  I think this is only necessary as long as I am running Boinc 24x7 as I am still doing.  Even though both CPU coolers I have tried kept the processor at around 84-85C at heavy sustained loads with Turbo Boost enabled, that seemed to be too much for the processor even though critical/lockup temp is supposedly 100C.

 

When I am done with Boinc, I will re-enable Turbo Boost and see what happens.  My HandBrake and Plex transcoding sessions use the iGPU (Boinc tasks do not) so I should not see the heavy CPU loads I see with Boinc tasks.

Height on the case is 5.22 inches (132 mm) but of course that is an external dimension.  I don't know exactly how much internal space you have for a CPU cooler.  That does limit your CPU cooler options. 

 

I am currently using a Noctua NH-U9S CPU cooler on my E-2288G.  It has a height of 125mm. My case limits cooler height to 146mm

 

Prior to that, I used a Be Quiet Shadow Rock TF2 CPU cooler.  It has a height of 112mm.  I only swapped it out for the taller Noctua when I thought perhaps it could not handle the heat of the E-2288G under heavy load.  It turns out both are equal in this regard.

 

Both of those coolers fit on the E3C246D4U motherboard without blocking anything important.  Even though the Be Quiet cooler is much larger (being a top flow cooler with a 135mm fan), It has plenty of RAM slot clearance. 

 

The Be Quiet will for sure fit in your case, as will the Noctua NH-L9x65.  The NH-U9S may be tight.  See if you case has any documentation on maximum cooler height.  Both the Be Quiet and the larger Noctua will give you more CPU cooling headroom than the smaller 65mm height Noctua.

If you don’t mind me asking what made you to decide to go with this choice of equipment?   I like what I have read so far.

 

Thank you for replying with such detail.

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11 hours ago, JM2005 said:

If you don’t mind me asking what made you to decide to go with this choice of equipment?   I like what I have read so far.

Several reasons:

  1. I wanted a board with IPMI (my backup server has  a Mini-ITX ASRock MB with IPMI and I know how it works)
  2. I wanted a mATX board that supported the E-22xxG Xeon CPUs
  3. I wanted a board with 8 SATA ports and at least one M.2 slot that did not take away one or more SATA ports when occupied
  4. I wanted a board which would take advantage of the iGPU 
  5. I got a killer price on a bundle that included the E3C246D4U (met all the above criteria), E-2288G, 64GB RAM and a 256 NVMe PCIe SSD

Really, I would have preferred the E-2278G CPU for the lower TDP as the .3 GHz drop in CPU speed was not a factor for me; however, the bundle included the E-2288G and the seller had no E-2278G CPUs.  It might have prevented me from having the heat issues at high sustained loads that I have in my case with limited cooler height (146mm).

 

The closest Supermicro board match is full ATX and the vertical alignment of SATA ports at the edge of the board would cause cabling issues in my tight case space.

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9 hours ago, Hoopster said:

Really, I would have preferred the E-2278G CPU for the lower TDP as the .3 GHz drop in CPU speed was not a factor for me; however, the bundle included the E-2288G and the seller had no E-2278G CPUs.  It might have prevented me from having the heat issues at high sustained loads that I have in my case with limited cooler height (146mm).

Finally, someone calling out TDP for the ONLY correct reason. I get so tired of seeing posts about people thinking it will reduce energy consumption wanting a low TDP processor, it's refreshing to see it being brought up for the actual purpose TDP is specified. I think TDP may be the single most misunderstood specification a processor has.

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20 hours ago, Hoopster said:

Several reasons:

  1. I wanted a board with IPMI (my backup server has  a Mini-ITX ASRock MB with IPMI and I know how it works)
  2. I wanted a mATX board that supported the E-22xxG Xeon CPUs
  3. I wanted a board with 8 SATA ports and at least one M.2 slot that did not take away one or more SATA ports when occupied
  4. I wanted a board which would take advantage of the iGPU 
  5. I got a killer price on a bundle that included the E3C246D4U (met all the above criteria), E-2288G, 64GB RAM and a 256 NVMe PCIe SSD

Really, I would have preferred the E-2278G CPU for the lower TDP as the .3 GHz drop in CPU speed was not a factor for me; however, the bundle included the E-2288G and the seller had no E-2278G CPUs.  It might have prevented me from having the heat issues at high sustained loads that I have in my case with limited cooler height (146mm).

 

The closest Supermicro board match is full ATX and the vertical alignment of SATA ports at the edge of the board would cause cabling issues in my tight case space.

I really appreciate you taking the time to explain it all.  I am limited somewhat by my case and a full ATX motherboard would just be to large.  I have been reading several threads on AMD stuff and i keep coming back your setup as the one i feel that meets my needs. I have those 2-LSI SAS9201-8i cards i need to make sure i have room for.  Your setup with the modded firmware to use the video for transcoding saves me from having to buy an additional graphics card and save a slot.

 

Thank you for all your help.  I just need to get my funds ready now.  I may have a few other questions to ask and i will try not to bug you too much.

Edited by JM2005
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On 6/2/2020 at 8:54 AM, Hoopster said:

The latest versions of ASRock IPMI run as HTML5 in a browser.  Before that it was JAVA based (still an option), but the HTML5 is so much nicer.

 

Here's a screenshot:

image.thumb.png.2bd8a8115ffead2b47422be06340fc80.png

 

One thing you need to be aware of is that you will likely need a special BIOS from ASRock to support the iGPU and IPMI/BMC.

 

I have the mATX E3C246D4U motherboard and E-2288G CPU.  ASRock has provided several of us unRAID users with a special BIOS that allows the iGPU to be utilized for transcoding even though the board was designed for video output via the BMC only. 

 

 

 

I like board you have is there a miniITX version?

Edited by dv8ed
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1 hour ago, dv8ed said:

 

I like board you have is there a miniITX version?

Yes.  If you want IPMI there is the ASRock E3C246D2I

 

If you want the same board essentially, but, without the BMC/IPMI, there is the ASRock  C246 WSI

 

Both give you 8 SATA ports with an OCuLink cable (4 on the MB, 4 via the cable).

 

@trurl as noted earlier in this thread, just upgraded with the C246 WSI and the OCuLink cable so he can give you more information regarding that combination.

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  • 7 months later...
26 minutes ago, mgsvr said:

Hi @trurl

 

Sorry to bring up old post, but I am about to build with a similar spec to yours. Mine is also a ASRock C246 WSI

 

Do you need to set any jumper on the mobo when you plug the OCuLINK? I searched everywhere and it seems only Supermicro has it.

 

https://store.supermicro.com/supermicro-50cm-oculink-to-4-sata-cable-cbl-sast-0933.html

I had to get that cable from supermicro too. I don't remember exactly about a jumper but I just read the manual and didn't have any problems. Using the nvme slot disables one of the oculink sata ports. That is in the manual too.

 

Still loving my rebuild.

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Thank you. I've been taking advices from @Hoopster and @mgutt on my own topic. Hoopster directed me to your post too.

 

Which Ram did you actually went for back then? I tried to get the Micron (Crucial) from NewEgg but they cancelled my order a bit later due to being out of stock. I then get the Timetec Hynix. If you went for the Hynix it would be awesome to hear your experience. I always use Crucial on all my computers, and this is the first time I go with another brand.

 

 

 

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  • 6 months later...

I realize this thread is a bit old, but I like this list of parts, and I'm thinking IPMI  would be nice to have. I'm trying to build a rack-mounted server to replace my aging, massive 9-drive server.  I have 3 8TB drives ready to go (gives me the same storage capacity I have now).  I currently use my unraid server simply as NAS.  Given more time in the future, I may implement more though.

 

Just to clarify, to get IPMI and ECC, I need the AsRock Rack E3C246D2I?

 

Is ECC critical or just nice to have?

 

If I start with 3 8-TB drives and the other list of parts, what size power supply do I need?

 

Do I use a cache drive that's SSD?  (At one time, this was overkill, but I think this may have changed.)

 

By the way, trying to find stuff now is complicated.  I settle on a rack-mount computer case, for instance, and either it's out of stock or ships in months.  There's a limited selection of in-stock.  And parts prices are all over the map.  Sometimes cheaper on Amazon, sometimes unavailable, but on NewEgg, or just cheaper on NewEgg.  Sometimes other websites suggested here are cheaper (but I have never dealt with them).  Makes it quite time-consuming. 

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  • 4 months later...

I will be replacing my current backup server (see my signature for specs) with a new one built around the Asrock E3C246D2I Mini-ITX board with IPMI I mentioned earlier in this thread.  There is a new E3C256D2I for the Xeon E-23XX line of of processors but it is impossible to find.  Apparently, the price is also very high (over $400).  It has 0 SATA ports onboard and requires 2 OCuLink cables for 8 SATA drives.  I'll just stick with the older generation E3C246D2I with 4 onboard SATA and one OCuLink connection for 4 more.  I will pair it with a Xeon E-2246G processor.  Parts are ordered.

 

UPDATE:  All up and running in my Lian-Li PC-Q25 case I have had laying around begging for some occupants.  This is my first experience with the OCuLink cable and it works well.

Edited by Hoopster
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  • 4 months later...
On 6/17/2020 at 11:31 AM, Hoopster said:

Here is the thread that documents my experiences (and that of several others) with the bundle I purchased for my upgrade.  Towards the end is a link to the latest BIOS (L2.21A) that supports the iGPU for transcoding in addition to the BMC for IPMI.

Hello, I also use E3C246D4U, but I can't find BIOS (L2.21A) firmware, now the official firmware 2.3 already supports iGPU?
 

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