I’m currently running a Dell Poweredge R720XD with following specs:
- 2x Xeon E5-2650 v2 CPU’s
- 128GB ECC DDR3 1600Mhz (4x32GB) memory
- NVidia GTX1050Ti GPU (For Plex transcoding)
- 6x 10 TB WD Red Pro HDD
- 2x Intel 480GB SSD
This system runs TrueNAS Scale with ~20 ‘apps’ (docker containers on TN’s K3S cluster (which will go away with the coming TN release)) and 1 VM running home assistant.
In quite happy with the system overall, I’ve got some performance to spare which allows me to fire up various game servers me and some friends like to play from time to time (Valheim, ARK, LOTR Return to Moria when they finally release their standalone server, …)
But as I live in western Europe, I’d like to reduce this system’s idle power consumption, which is currently around 200W.
Since I’m really happy with how the system is setup (especially having a combined application and storage server) I’m basically looking for modern hardware which can support the same software stack on a lower idle power consumption.
Since learning about L1Techs last week, watching several videos and doing further research, I think I’ve concluded that sticking with ‘server-grade’ hardware is not going to help me achieve my goal. Upgrading to e.g. a Poweredge R730/740XD will only net me marginal power efficiency.
On the other hand, I’d like to stay with a 19" form factor. Any height U is fine since I’ve got a 42U rack which is a hole lotta empty right now 
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I’d also like to keep IPMI support if at all possible.
Lastly the chassis should have at least 8 LFF SATA bays.
What I’ve come up with so far is that I might be best of looking for a used Supermicro chassis, as most of them seem to fit standard ATX motherboards. This sale is available locally which seems to be a chassis that suits my needs, though I can’t identify the exact model number.
Going by this forum post the Supermicro X12SCA-F Mainboard and Xeon W-1290P CPU seems like a good choice.
I’m picking the CPU mostly based on the Passmark CPU benchmark list and picking a CPU which offers at least the score my current 2 CPU’s are giving me ( ~19k)
The only downside is that the mainboard only has 4 SATA ports, but that should be fixable by using either a M.2 or PCIe HBA controller.
Any obvious items I’m missing? Thanks for any advice freely given !
), I think I should albe to save quite some watts if I don’t have a dedicated PCIe GPU in the system, and I believe most modern iGPU’s should be capable enough of transcoding 2-3 4K video streams (which is what my current GTX 1050Ti is capable of).