Hi folks, this is my first post, yay me.
Apologies for any incorrect use of nomenclature, I’ve been learning, got quite some ways to go as you’ll likely see.
I’ve purchased this motherboard along with the matching BKHD 4x 10Gb NIC card with the obvious intention of building a router.
My original intentions were to simply build this router out with a 12400 and learn about this kind of stuff. I know very little and this’ll be my first managed router.
My intentions are to start home-labbing, I had a jellyfin server built from an old thin client. It died a couple days prior to buying this. I was a bit torn about wether i should replace that thin client with something more appropriate or leave it for now and go for the router with the intention of building out better. Couple beers figured that one out for me
Should I spec the processor, ram etc. based on this being a router, or should I go for a higher spec so in the longer term i can use this as a forbidden router to save some costs (after some obvious XP challenges have been accomplished).
Like most, I don’t have a ton of spare money lying around and there’s a lot I’d like to put together.
Thoughts and opinions greatly appreciated
Thanks
Any questions on the board, I’ll try my best to answer
After purchase i realised a few things:
: I should’ve joined up here prior to purchase
: I should’ve checked a bit more before buying and found the complete router and bought that instead
: The motherboard needs a 24V supply - industrial stuff i believe
: I shouldve stuck with my original intentions for a router.
some questions then.
How do i supply the 24v to the 2 off 4 pin CPU connectors, is a 600w LED type Constant Voltage supply OK?
Given the intended future use, which LGA1700 processor would you choose?
I originally planned on a 12400 but the 12500 has a better iGPU and extra decode engines i believe.
Should I stick to 12th Gen or go newer?
" Overclockers have the 12700K down in price to a little over the price of a 12500, i think thats what I’ll get based on price. it’ll be run stock (maybe without the Ecores).
Also, the HD770 iGPU seems like it’ll be enough for my needs on jellyfin and immich a little down the road.
I maybe won’t need the bifurcation, time for research on SAS controllers and disk shelves"
How does PCIe bifurcation work?
I’m not looking to split the lanes from the chipset, they’re pretty much all used. But I believe the sideways facing slot is the Gen 5 x16 from the CPU. I don’t know how or i f that can be split but a SAS controller and a GPU might be nice a little down the road.
Thanks for any help or critique
There’s probably more you folks need to know but i don’t know enough to know what you need to know haha.
Well, the motherboard is probably the most important choice for any build, because it ties all components together. The amount of features, socket, connectivity largely drive the overall power consumption, etc. This websites seems to be manufacturer of your board, but I couldn’t find a product that looks like your pictures. That means I couldn’t find any information about your mobo online. This mobo looks like a special purpose design, probably for an appliance.
Unless you have access to technical specs, a user manual or something of the like I need to warn you about the challenge you’ll have with this product given your declared experience building computers.
Because this mobo clearly doesn’t adhere to common standards (ATX, mATX, etc.) I don’t want to hazard a guess how to properly power it. That means plugging in the wrong plugs may release the magic smoke!
Assuming my assessment if correct you need to ask yourself if you really want to continue investing in this board or rather abandon it for another, better documented, product with a community worth of experience (and a resulting higher chance of success).
Browsing the manufacturer website a little more I think your mobo belongs to this network appliance.
The page has links to two documents, a specs document and a manual.
WARNING! I don’t know if these are the correct instructions for your mobo. They just look like they may apply.
A quick glance shows that the mobo seems to support 12/13/14 gen CPUs. Given the current kerfuffle with Intels 13/14 gen CPUs I’d stick with the sage 12th gen for this.
It supports “2*DDR5 SO-DIMM Memory slot, Up to 128GB 4800MHz”. So, that is positive.
The appliance can be accessed using VGA port, but the mobo doesn’t come with one.
“The motherboard provides 1J_VGA and 1J_HD display output expansion pin.”(manual p.14) It will be on you to find appropriate adapters.
You can access the system using one of three COM ports on the mobo. One, like many network switches, exposed in a RJ45 port, two via ports on the mobo (page 11 manual).
Once you added a CPU and memory you can boot your mobo using the front panel connectors on the mobo documented in manual p.16.
Finally, on page 19 the manual explains how to power the mobo. It calls it “ATX PWR (2x2pin with transparent enclosure)”. Luckily “The power socket has a fool-proof design, just confirm the correct direction and plug it in.”
Where and when did you buy it? Is it returnable? How much did you pay?
I would suggest that you open a new thread and describe your intended use case. Most likely you’ll be better off with a used dell / lenovo / hp mATX Box.
Hi, thanks for the reply.
That is indeed the product it came from. I found that after buying the motherboard.
I’ll stick with 12th gen then. Right now, the 12700K is on sale at the price the 12500 normally retails for. I’m leaning towards it at the minute though my gut tells me to stick with a 12600 non K if i want to take advantage of the sale pricing .
It’ll be either 32Gb (216) or 64Gb (232) 5600 I buy, depending on any deals available.
I have a VGA port adapter lead ordered and have a panel mount HDMI flylead that I’ll make an adapter from. I still have an old VGA monitor kicking around but HDMI might be nice
Thanks for the links, I hadn’t noticed the manual link on that page. Those instructions got me too
I did think about abandoning this board when it started to get difficult to find a PSU. I’ll contact BKHD and see if they sell the power supply. It was their Alibaba store I bought this from.
I’ll also check with them about bifurcation of the x16 slot. I’m not sure I’ll need that now but always handy to know i guess.
I bought this from BKHD, the manufacturer, through their Alibaba store, just under a week ago. It came in at a bit over 430 for the motherboard and the 4*10Gb card with shipping and taxes
I have thought about returning it, I guess the price of 2 power supplies will determine the outcome.
My original intention was to simply build a Pf Sense router and that was it.
I’m still going to do that, however, in the future when i have a bit of experience it’ll be moved on to become a forbidden router.
If it turns out not to be too great for that, or if it’s a me problem that can’t make things work I’ll leave it as a standard router.
I do have larger, longer term plans for a small homelab setup. The cobbled together thinclient “server” made me want proper hardware this time around. I guess this was a step past proper
A bit of digging in the literature from the links you gave provided the model number of the PSU they use, a Mean Well LOP-200-24. I’ll get a LOP-500-24, should be big enough.
Thankyou
It’s not that expensive so I think i’ll be going ahead and giving this motherboard a try. I like the look of that Qotom unit but this has TPM, Cellular fallback and a couple other things I’m studying up on since buying this.
If you can return it, I would still go with a Workstation / Server. Especially if you want to turn this into a virtual router / proxmox server.
As far as I understand, you got no case, no power supply, no RAM, no CPU and a board that might get no / limited updates for $430.
Getting a used Workstation / Server, will probably give you more options for a similar budget, but that is just an assumption since I don’t exactly now whats your target for this build.
EDIT:
Oh and I forgot you got a X710-DA4 custom board, you should check which FW is installed and if it is upgradeable. Some of the 3 party boards (e.g. 10Gtek) are delivered with a old FW version and are presumably not upgradeable.
Which is really bad for the X710, older FW versions have massive problems.
Thanks for the heads up on the X710 firmware.
I contacted BKHD after seeing your reply. They say its delivered with the latest firmware and can be updated using the intel NVM.
This being a bare motherboard was intentional, though i hadnt realised it was 24v (which ive found is actually quite common with these types of enterprise units, they go upto 50Vdc). No different to any other scratch build.
I did look at some old workatations prior to this, cost wise, after adding 8x 1Gb or 2.5Gb & 4x 10gb it didnt come in any cheaper, not that that was the lone deciding factor.
I understand (more so now) that the old WS would have been a more straightforward approach, and i definitely wouldnt have been limited in peripherals in the same way this board is.
I’d really prefer newer hardware though as this needs to last quite some time, 5 to 6 years min.
My general experience with old HW is that 5 to 6 yrs can be a big ask.
I have 3 kids gaming rigs that need updating over the next couple of years (1 really needs updating over a year ago) and i would like to build a dual epyc based compute station for offloading the kids renders to and running openfoam (this’ll be datacentre cast offs).
This is also partly why ill try the router as a forbidden router. Id prefer to follow standard practice and have seperate machines but i might be able to move onto the other things quicker by not following standard practice. See how that pans out a few months down the line.
Ive taken onboard the warnings and ill have a bit of a think.
Thanks again
My recommendation for pfsense for a homelab is to use an HP Elitedesk 800 G3 or higgher small form factor, add in some cheap memory, buy whichever processor you want if it doesnt come with the one youre looking for, pickup an x520 da2 or better yet an x710 da4 (but itll need to be the narrow version), pickup a pair of intel i226v dual port cards and a single i226v quad port card. Thatll give you two to four 10g nics, a total pf 8 2.5g nics, and a 1g nic for management. I can do 9.4gbps through iperf through one of those with an intel 7700 non-k though newer chips with better single threaded performance would be better…the thing is, these are a dime a dozen, theyre cheap, plentiful, upgradeable, repairable, and easy enough to work on and expand. Imo its a great homelab starter router. Personally i use the cheaper realtek 8125b nics but i do NOT recommend that for newcomers (but dont let people scare you into thi king theyre inferior, they work wonderfully it just takes a bit of extra setup thatd be offputting for new folks)…buy that exact build, its all available from ebay, youll be happy you did and pricewise should come in less than your mobo alone
Don’t know if I’d be better with a new topic for this or not.
While kicking around on ebay checking the prices of aodix’s parts, I’ve come across what seem to be fairly cheap disk shelves. I’ll be needing storage after the router build, I’m not spending out on the router till i figure out what I’m goin gto do.
Would anyone mind having a bit of a look please and giving me thoughts on them before i go make this same mistake twice
I’m not sure if they’re that cheap for a reason or not and they seem too good to walk past. I’m happy to spend router money on these and set them aside till I start the new server.
Maybe I’ve read the description wrong but it seems theyre fully loaded, ready to plug and play (ish).
Now that you figured out much required information it looks like an interesting build.
Please note that just the fact that you can tons of network ports doesn’t make it a switch. The difference being that even cheap switches use ASICs to move packets between ports at line speed. Even a top of the line 14th gen CPU cannot do that at line speed.
For home use it’ll be great to have the flexibility that many ports bring.
I wont be buying those shelves. I expected a few hundred watts to run it, which i dont mind but the point about enterprise NVMe drives hit home.
Ill leave it till i start to build the server.
Saved wasting money twice in a row haha
Thanks for the replies Jode, I’m not sure there’ll be much in the way of excitement with this build. Its making more and more sense to build a plain router, maybe even following aodix’s suggested parts.
Well, if you add a bunch of storage to your mobo, it morphs into more that a simple router. The requirements change, the performance and power envelop change, even the risk considerations change.
A router/firewall should be an always-on device that is rarely touched as it controls access from/to your network. If you co-mingle this function on a NAS/mixed use hw this function may/will be affected every time you work on other aspects of your mixed use hw.
That can be acceptable if the router controls a single person environment, but I shudder to think about what would happen if my kids suddenly would lose access to the interwebs