I am considering this CPU/ Motherboard combo to replace my AMD 8350 server I currently have running 24/7.
The use case will be to run proxmox with two VMs. One VM will be pfsense with a 2 port 1G NIC passed through (if even possible on this board) and the other, a Linux VM for torrents or any other uses. I will also be running some samba shares on a x3 HDD mdadm setup off the debian host for proxmox. This is basically what the 8350 machine does at the moment.
Hardware wise, I will be pairing this with 16GB DDR3, 4 HDDs and housing in iSTARusa S-35 case.
Based on the specs I believe that this system should be able to handle the use case. I wasn’t able to find any in depth reviews on this product and only saw mention of a couple use cases with virtualization. Does anyone on here have any experience with these Asrock embedded setups and their performance?
Just wanted to share some experience with this setup which I implemented a couple days ago for anyone else who maybe interested in these integrated boards.
I am pleasantly surprised with this machine. It is currently running Freenas 11.3 with 2 VMs, one with pfsense and another with Lubuntu and it works flawlessly. Both VMs assigned 1 core and 2GB ram each with cpu idling around 2 to 6% usage. For comparison sake my original A4-5300 setup would choke with 2 VMS when in use…
The only issue was the IOMMU groupings. Initially installed latest proxmox version and enabled ACS but that did not help my issue as the PCI slot remained tied into the biggest group.
I had the board sitting for a while since last BIOS flash so there maybe new BIOS update since then…
I actually ditched proxmox in favour of freenas due to all kind of issues that popped up after a fresh install. While probably all fixable I decided to go with Freenas instead and not regretting it as I am liking the new sleek interface.
For anyone interested this would actually make a pretty decent PC for the non power user in their regular everday activities.