Mini-ITX
https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/X12STL-IF
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I built one system with the SC721TQ-350B - a perfect home NAS in my opinion.
You need the proper cable, e.g. the Supermicro CBL-SAST-0556, to connect the Mini-SAS connector to the backplane for 4x 3.5" HDDs.
That leaves you with two standard SATA ports with DOM power support either for SATA-DOMs or for e.g. two cheap 2.5" SATA SSDs which can also be mounted in the case for booting.
And finally there’s an M.2 slot that supports NVMe SSDs and a PCIe 4x16 slot.
So plenty to work with.
The second system I built with a small rackmount case, detailed write up later. Although officially listed as a compatible case by Supermicro you need a ton of extra parts to make full use of it. I’ll post the list.
What do you use as silent PSU in there?
The default PSU has a small fan with an unbearable high pitch.
Then I must be deaf. I regard this case as whisper quiet, by which I mean not noticeable in a busy office, and I built at least half a dozen systems with it.
In a private study with one person at a desk you will notice it, but not annoyingly so - compare to the tower PCs we used to put right under our desks just a couple of years ago. My Macbook pro (Intel) is louder when the fan kicks in.
- Case: SC504-203B
- Passive CPU heatsink: SNK-P0049P
- 3x brackets for system fans: MCP-320-81302-0B
- 3x system fans: FAN-0100L4
- PCIe riser: RSC-S-6G4
- PCIe riser bracket: MCP-120-00063-0N
- Air shroud: MCP-310-50504-0B
- 2x brackets for 2.5" SATA HDD/SSD: MCP-220-00051-0N
To be able to add a second M.2 NVMe SSD I also added the AOC-SLG3-2M2 adapter card. Because of the mismatch in supported bifurcation only one SSD can be used. That together with the on board M.2 slot gives a total of 2.
The system will boot Proxmox from two SATA SSDs and then run among others a TN SCALE VM with both NVMe SSDs passed through.
If I can dedicate one network interface to TN exclusively I will see when all the parts have arrived. IOMMU groups something something …
All the small mounting thingies were quite a struggle to find and source. Finally Supermicro support gave me the SKUs and then I found a distributor in Poland … EU - great idea, that!
Kind regards,
Patrick
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I was really hoping to have the TN system rack mountable. I have plenty of room and so 3U, 4U, etc are fine. That case looks awesome, and as you say, the perfect home NAS but even though this is going in a home it has a rack which most homes don’t have so I would prefer to have all of the equipment rack-mountable even if totally unnecessary.
Yeah, running my home lab on a shelf and not in a proper rack I am quite satisfied with desktop and micro tower form factors.
Yet I every once in a while check if there might be attractive rack mount cases for a home or semi professional NAS.
As far as the case is concerned of course the iX Mini-R nails it. What I do not like is their price point in relation to the CPU power available. For my applications an Atom is just not going to cut it.
The Mini-R with a Xeon E would be more or less my dream machine.
I would love to find a case like this one on the free market for a Mini-ITX or Micro-ATX mainboard.
The new system I am assembling for my company will do fine, but for “storage”, i.e. a bunch of spinning drives I would not even consider any case that does not have drive cages, hot plug, and a backplane.
I’d love to see the Mini-R with more powerful CPU options or a similar case on the market.
Kind regards,
Patrick
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Take your pick…
All the ones with hot plug drive bays are at least four inches deeper than the Mini R.
Turns out each network interface is in its own IOMMU group. So TN SCALE running with two NVMe devices and one network interface all passed through.
Small system working absolutely great. Windows 11 virtualised in Proxmox, TN SCALE apps in SCALE, all in one box. Love it.
Limits for which I have not found a different mainboard that was affordable and available:
- 64 G RAM cap
- 8+8 bifurcation only
- Only 2 network interfaces, I’d have loved 4 to give each Proxmox and TrueNAS their own 2 port LACP bundle.
- Some mechanical parts (see list in my post above) difficult to source - might be easier in the US, I see lots of sellers on ebay, but 10$ parts with a 90$ for shipping is also prohibitive. I like my new polish supplier
For the bifurcation limit I found this card:
https://www.delock.de/produkt/90090/merkmale.html
You could at least use this to run 2x M.2 SSDs - placing them in the first and third slot of the card and configuring the mainboard for 8+8.
Of course you could also use a card with a PCIe switch. Or do something different altogether - heck, that’s a full PCIe 4x16 slot there. Graphics card for transcoding? 100 Gbit/s networking?
Kind regards,
Patrick
Needs newer generation, and DDR5 48/64 GB modules.
Needs EPYC4004 here.
There’s AM5D4ID-2T/BCM that is at least available in Germany. The jury is out on “affordable” and, most critically, whether the short chassis may accomodate “Deep Mini-ITX”.
In mini-ITX? Ouch! Newer than X10SDV-TLN4F, I can only think of Supermicro X12SDV-nC-SPT4F here, but it’s going to fail on “affordable” as well as “available” and you’ll lose the x16 slot for an x8, to be filled by a GPU for the Windows VM.
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@etorix Thanks. I invested quite a bit of time to find a good compromise server grade board. Maybe I should look into both AMD and Asrock more. Admittedly I am a bit of a Supermicro fan.
For a plain NAS without app and/or virtualisation workloads the A2SDi series would still be a fantastic platform. And they are available new even today.
What I do not understand is why sellers call 4 figures prices for these … ouch!
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I don’t understand it either, but find it striking that, as Patrick Kennedy put it, Xeon D and Atom have moved upmarket of Xeon E.
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