Supermicro X8SIL-F / Xeon x3440


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Hello!

 

I’d like to start messing around with Unraid to see if it’s something that I would like to invest in. I’m currently running a Synology NAS 1819+ with 30TB of storage.

 

I have a Supermicro X8SIL-F and an Intel Xeon x3440 laying around so I was wondering if these components are still viable with Unraid. I plan on running 1 Windows 10 VM and a few dockers to start. I’m running a Jellyfin docker on my Synology NAS and it just chokes if it needs to do any transcoding.

 

Do you think it‘s worth the time messing around with the hardware that I have? I would have to spend some money on some RAM but it shouldn’t be too much since I would be just looking for DDR3 ECC used.

 

Thank you!

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...sure, this is still a powerful platform.

I just retired my X8SIL-F Workstation with a L3426 running Win10 along with a 1x-PCIe Nvidia based GPU and 32GB RegRAM.

The new WS is based on a 10thGen G6400...only the NVMe system disk is what makes a noticeable difference to the L3426.

 

This thing will not idle below 45W, if this is of concern.

Also the board is picky, when it comes to the slot a HBA should be fitted, when other cards are also present.

Same applies to the make, Rank and distribution across the slots for RAM modules, especially when using Reg-DIMMs....Kingston RAM from the supported list will do fine, when following the manual.

 

Besides that, make sure the FANs are not running too low and that the CPU cooler / thermal compound is still fit or that MB will not stop beeping at you ;-) 

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Thank you for your reply.  That's good to hear that this is still a good combo.  

 

I'm not too concerned about the idle power, if Unraid ends up fitting me needs then I will look into investing into a more recent generation Xeon.  I know server grade hardware isn't necessarily needed, but I prefer to run it since I plan to have the final build run 24/7.

 

Appreciate the tips.  I was able to pick up some RAM off eBay that was on the QVL and I still have the stock cooler that came with the CPU.  It's not mounted right now, so I'll be able to put some fresh thermal paste.

 

Thank you again!

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....sounds good.

With the X8SIL-F you should be able to test/try all aspects, including VMs with passtrough of some PCI cards, like Ethernet or a dedicated GPU.

Encrypting disks of the array will be an issue, as the older CPU does not support hardware accelaration for AES (luks/dmcrypt) but everything else should be fine.

Edit_: ..and, as far as I recall now, going into S3 sleep and WOL was something I never got to work properly on that MB, but at that time the S3-sleep plugin hadn't been invented for unraid.

Edited by Ford Prefect
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