TexasUnraid Posted July 31, 2020 Share Posted July 31, 2020 (edited) So long story short, in my effort to enable PCIe gen3, I ended up with a spare mobo and cpu (ordered the same mobo but with the xeon chipset thinking that was it, turned out it was the CPU preventing pcie gen 3). I used this setup for a few years and never had a single issue, reliable, quite and low power consumption. with the drives spun down it would idle around ~35w in windows. The motherboard is a dell optiplex 7010, it takes a few mods to get it working in a normal ATX case but they are not that hard. https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/987783-optiplex-70109010-front-io-panel-pinout/ https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/925354-optiplex-7010-power-pinout/ It has the following features: pcie 8x pcie 1x PCI pcie 4x 2x sataIII ports 2x sataII ports 2x front panel USB 3.0 onboard video with VGA and display port outputs 6x rear USB 2.0 ports 2x front panel usb 2.0 ports (need an adapter from above links) Can be upgraded with a xeon CPU as well from my research. The CPU is an I5 2500k, you can't overclock in this Mobo obviously but it is what I had laying around. never had an issue with processing power. Power supply is a 90+ gold rated 190w dell unit. It is a really good match for this setup, maxed out I think the highest draw I saw was around 130w IIRC. With another power supply my idle wattage was around 45-50w vs 30-35w IIRC with this one. Only thing to be aware of is it is a bit taller then a normal ATX unit and will hit the pcie slots on some cases. I got around this by simply using some long screws and it worked fine. I can include the screws if requested. This is a really nice lower power consumption setup, it is darn near silent, good starting point or good if you need lower power draw and quite. I have my current setup like this running with a 16i HBA card, 4x gigabit card and 10gig network card, 2x external usb 3 to dual sata bay docks and it can handle up to 20 drives internally and 4 more via usb if I wanted (although I only have 3 array drives so far). Asking $60 + shipping for the whole combo via Paypal. I can get a shipping quote if you let me know your zip code, think it will weigh around 8lb from Texas. I am open to parting it out as well. Edited July 31, 2020 by TexasUnraid Quote Link to comment
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.