Hi there,
I was wondering if anyone can provide recommendation on an ATX mobo and cpu pair. (I already have a Fractal Design Define 7 XL case, PSU, HDD/SDD, and enough DDR4 ECC (and non-ECC) RAM in hand)
I have $1200.00 budget for the mobo and the CPU.
I am looking for a mobo that supports minimum of;
6 x SATA 6gbps (more the better)
2 x LAN (preferably 10 Gbps)
1 x IPMI
3 x PCI 16x slots with bifurcation support (must)
CPU (Intel or AMD with max core count possible within the budget)
What’s your use case? Given your requirement of IPMI, I take it it’s server based?
Given the 3x PCIe slot requirement, you’re into the E-ATX and SSI formfactors and those boards cost. Not as much as their CPU’s, mind! You may want to reconsider your budget or give up on some of your requirements. When it comes to core-count, AMD is the Tier to beat now. Investigate the AM4 platform, you should be able to find a combo that fits your budget. For pure power: Threadripper, at a significant cost. In either case, IPMI is not an option.
Hi Dutch_Master,
Thank you for the welcome and your input.
The use case is an hypervisor (most likely Proxmox) with plenty of storage capacity. The reason for PCI 16x is that I already have some PCI storage cards (each supports 4 x SSD) that I need to utilize, which means bifurcation support is must.
IPMI is quite important as this system will be accessed remotely and I don’t want to purely relay on OS based remote access solutions.
The Fractal Design Define 7 XL case does support E-ATX and SSI-EEB boards so no limitation there.
While these requirements fall under server category (which is OK), there maybe some workstation boards as well.
For instance, Asrock X470D4U2-2T is a good option but not sure if it supports bifurcation (user man does not provide much info on it)
There are other brands out there, Supermicro is being one of them but their boards are expensive.
I have done quite a bit of investigation but I first wanted to find out if anyone at least used and can recommend any mobo/cpu combo from their own experience. I can stretch my budget a bit if needed.
Couldn’t find a suitable mainboard from my local supplier, so had a look at their German website and found the Supermicro MBD-H11SSL-I-O mainboard @ ~400euro. Pair that with the cheapest EPYC proc (7251) which is roughly the same price and you’re well under budget, even in your own currency. Of course, there is room to upgrade to a better proc, but that depends on your preferences, obviously. I think there’s room for an upgrade to a 16 core chip (7281, 7301) and with some budget stretching even a 7401, which has 24 cores. The top-of-the-line 7702 would set you back about 5 times your total budget, but 64 cores might be a bit overkill, right?
Thank you, yes I intend to use the PCI slots for NVMe housings.
I had found the Supermicro H11SSL-i board but couldn’t find a place it buy it here in France, I’d be happy to order it from the German site if you provide me the link for it. (I’d rather not order it from the U.S. sites due to import taxes)
Also, EPYC 7281, 7301 are perfectly suitable if I can find them online, so any link in the EU would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you again
Excellent, both DE and FR sites seem to be shipping from the same stock. 6 day ETA for the mobo. I found EPYC options on these sites as well one of which looks quite interesting, AMD EPYC 7401(w/ 24 core) but I am not able to confirm if this particular model is compatible with the board, as Supermicro site doesn’t seem to provide a full compatibility list. (not used EPYC before, so I am not clear). Any ideas where I can confirm the compatibility ?