Hello, I’ve built my first budget NVMe NAS for my 3D studio and now wish to build a similar setup in my homelab. However, I can’t find the same motherboard except for some offers on AliExpress, which are twice as expensive. I originally bought a used one in very good condition for $100. I’m looking for an alternative in a similar budget range.
Hardware:
- 2x10GbE NIC Intel X520 SFP (Used one ~60$)
- 3x Lexar NM790 4TB (RAIDZ1) configuration
- Motherboard: Asus X99-WS/IPMI (I bought it used for $100, and it’s excellent value for the price. It has 5x PCIe Gen3 slots operating at x8 when all are occupied (40 lanes support), allowing me to connect enough NVMe drives without requiring bifurcation or, worse, a PLX adapter. It also supports unbuffered ECC with Xeon CPUs.). It also has built VGA module and IPMI so I can use one PCIe for NIC and 4 for NVMe 4xPCIe adapters
- CPU: I’m currently using an i7-6850k, but I plan to replace it with a used Xeon (around $10) and upgrade my 32GB generic RAM from an old PC to used ECC sticks.
I’m seeking an alternative motherboard in a similar price range. This setup is very cost-effective when using a used Xeon and RAM (a 16GB stick costs around $60 in Poland, at least). I don’t need more than 4 NVMe drives—this setup is primarily for current projects and non demanding VMs, with data backed up and archived on my HDD TrueNAS system. Unfortunately, I can’t find this motherboard in my country anymore, and it’s challenging to find one with similar PCIe lane support and number of slots. Do you have any recommendations in a similar price range?I bought everything for approximately $300, excluding the drives, of course (assuming an upgrade to used 2x16GB ECC sticks). The worst case scenario is to buy same MB from aliexpress, also used one but 2x more expensive… https://pl.aliexpress.com/item/1005007384572571.html