Server Motherboard Recommendations

Hi everyone,

So it seems my Asrock C2750D4I is dead again. The CPU was a little anemic for my purposes anyway so I’m looking to upgrade to a big boy motherboard (or at least something a little more serious that what I have).

The server will be running FreeNAS as well as Plex, sickrage and couch potato, so I’d like it to be able to comfortably handle two or three 4k transcodes.

-The budget is $500 AUD (so about $360 USD).
-I don’t need 10GB LAN (though wouldn’t be opposed to having it)
-Need to have IPMI or some sort of remote management interface.
-Minimum of 4 DIMMs.
-Maximum ATX form factor.
-Preferably an LGA1151 socket.
-Minimum 6x SATA (Preferably more though).

I’m looking at the ASUS P10S-V/4L at the moment. Can anyone comment on this board? Recommend a better one?

Thanks in advance for any help!

I had a look at that board and it actually doesn’t seem to have a dedicated management LAN interface. If you are willing to increase the budget further, you could get a better version of that; the P10S-E/4L. It’s mostly the same board, except it has less PCI slots in favour of 2x M.2 slots in the removed PCI slots’ space.

Additionally, it also has a “mini-SAS HD” port; from what I found out, it is an SFF-8643 connector and what it does is it can provide up to 4x SATA ports via a breakout cable, of that I’m not sure if the board does come with it. But that being said, the motherboard I posted the link to will provide you with a total of 8x SATA ports, along with a dedicated IPMI port.

And just in case the SAS cable isn’t included, you can get one off Amazon from here.

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Which version of LGA1151 are you looking for?

Theres 2 versions,

  • LGA1151 for Skylake/Kabylake - Xeon E3-12XX v5 or Xeon E3-12XX v6

  • LGA1151 for Coffeelake - Xeon E-21XX

The latter Coffeelake Xeon E-21XX is brand spanking new.

It’s a little older of a platform, however, the Asrock EPC602D8A is a great option (If you can find one). Unfortunately, it’s not a Socket 1151. But the compatible CPUs are relatively cheap and You’ll save money on the ram for sure cuz it’ll be DDR3 instead of DDR4. Just my $0.02. I run one of these boards and I’m super happy with it’s performance.

It doesn’t seem to have a dedicated LAN interface but Asus does mention that it has ASWM Enterprise. Will I be hampered at all by not having a dedicated interface?

I’ve looked at the P10S-E/4L but it’s kind of hard to find in Australia. There is one place, but I’ll have to wait for them to order it.

Either, or really. Again, given the difficulty of finding things in Australia, I have a slight preference for the Skylake/kabylake version but I’m open to suggestions from both,.

I’d love to try and find something a little older that takes DDR3 (since I already have a heap of ECC DDR3 from my old server). Again though, being in Australia, it’s hard enough to find new stuff.

With a dedicated LAN management interface, you are able to take control of the server, even at BIOS level. I have read somewhere that you may need IPMI for ASWM enterprise to function itself with all the features.

The manual for it can be found here.

Yeah, I saw that manual but it seems weird they advertise ASWM compatibility on that motherboard if it needs an add in card with dedicated lan to make it function properly. I just assumed it used one of the regular LAN ports and didn’t come with BIOS level support.