Hey team… I am in a pickle. I originally ordered an HL15 (chassis-only) with the intention of using it as a disk-shelf for a mini PC with an HBA with 2x external SFF-8643 that I was hoping to wire up to (half of) the backplane of the HL15. Fast forward a bit, and the mini PC is going to arrive on the wrong side of the shutdown for Chinese New Year and I need to get moving on this project. So instead of a build in this case “sometime in the future” to displace the mini PC, I need to come up with something quick.
It has been a hot minute (>10 years) since I have built a PC as I have been using off the shelf ultra portables and docking stations for my daily drivers during that time. Despite my confidence in my ability to put the pieces together, the technology has changed a lot since my last build, so I have come here to ask for some help.
I already virtualize on a set (3) of mini PCs for a bunch of services within my home, so I do not need a lot of additional virtualization headroom, though I may look at consolidation depending on the specs of this build. The primary purpose is to serve as a NAS to support media storage for plex, backups / archival, and some sort of LAN-based private Google Drive replacement. I have 5x14TB disks that I plan to use for the media storage and would like to build additional pool(s) for backups and local cloud.
So I am looking for a solid workstation / server motherboard with ECC support, hopefully 10gig networking (SFP+ preferred), and a CPU to match.
If I’m not mistaken the HL15 allows for standard ATX mainboards, right? If so, consider ebay for a used EPYC system based on a SuperMicro H11SSL-i board, EPYC 7551P CPU, a 2U cooler with(out) fan (depending on the rest of your layout) and 4x 32GB ECC LDIMM DDR4, which would set you back about 800-900 USD. Other core count CPU’s available, the 7551P is a 32c/64t model for a single socket system. Be aware AMD also has CPU’s specifically for dual socket systems, that use half the PCIe connectivity between CPU’s.
As it happens I purchased several quad-port 10Gb SFP+ PCIe cards from ebay recently for not a lot of money. One seller was aztechgroup, the other refreshedelectronics This was very recently, so neither of my orders have made it across the border yet. Hence I can’t judge their products. YMMV!
You will find a lot of Intel Xeon systems for fairly cheap. There’s a reason: they’re plentiful but also not as powerful as an EPYC system. AMD dominates the server market ATM, Intel has been lazy for too long, milking their Xeon platform for ages Still, they are pretty performant chips so may offer a cheaper alternative for a home-lab setup.
As for your network: consider fibre over copper as to ease any future upgrades should you need 25, 40 or even 100Gb/s networking.
This looks like one of those good news / bad news scenarios. The price seems to have come down on the low end (~600 for a bundle without a cooler), however these all appear to be shipping from China. Am I going to run into the same difficultly with running up against the shutdown for Chinese New Year? My experience is that waiting for shipping from China is slow enough even during normal times, is your experience different? Confirming; a lot of these sellers are “away” until February 17th.
The prices on those NICs are quite a bit cheaper than the last time I was looking around to upgrade some old Proliants (since decommissioned). Thanks!
Absolutely. I used to run some older refurb enterprise gear before the power bill started to hurt, so I am properly switched and cabled for 10gbps in the network cabinet and rack in my basement (yes, I have both), where most of the compute and network infrastructure lives anyway. The desktop in the office is 10gbps over copper transceivers which will be the primary client, however I have a lot of media-hungry clients over 2.5GbE, 1GbE, and various wifi standards.
I had not considered greater than 10gbps networking, however I am running a Unifi stack with an AggPro as my core switch with 25gbps-capable SFP28 ports. Perhaps an upgrade to consider down the road.
Still, they are pretty performant chips so may offer a cheaper alternative for a home-lab setup.