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another home lab thread :)

D

defuseme2k

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Oct 7, 2004
Messages
1,074
Hopefully I don't get yelled at too loudly. I've done quite a bit of reading, but I want a sanity check.

I'm not much into lower end hardware / whitebox type stuff, but it is exactly what I'm going to need.

I want to spend sub 800. Case / PSU aren't an issue. I want IPMI, so I'm going to guess I'll want a supermicro board. However, when I look at them, I have a hard time sorting out which one to get especially with the mixed-bag of reviews.

Other than that, just for ESXi 5. I have legit vSphere Ent+ licensing to use, so I'll build a couple of vESXi servers and vCenter in there to lab out stuff. I'd like to have vt-d but it isn't a requirement, I'll probably never use it. So a recommendation on the board with ipmi, cpu, and memory would be helpful.
 
defuseme2k said:
What about this one? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182255

Thats a link to the X9SCA-F
Click to expand...

For the needs you mentioned.... either would work.

SCA = ATX, has PCI slots, 1 less USB port
SCM = mATX, all PCIe slots, extra USB header

So the questions would be:
Do you want/need PCI slots (possibly to pass through old devices?)?
Do you care if it is mATX vs ATX form factor? (if your existing case is mATX that limits your choice or buy a new case)?
 
I've pretty much narrowed down my own home lab search to the SM C204 boards myself. The SCM in my case. The one thing I keep seeing about the SCM is that it's very finicky when it comes to power supplies. Not sure if the same holds true for the SCA.

Just wondering if any X9SCM-F owners that happen to see this would be willing to share which P/S they're successfully using.
 
Great stuff. I'm not sure about the superbiz site, but if you guys trust it I guess I will. I also checked on the memory "tested" modules page that supermicro has. Any suggestions on that? I can always just buy what is listed there... but I'm kind of curious if I can actually 32GB working.
 
Im using an FSP Group 400w fanless PSU on my X9SCM-F board, and (4) Kingston 4gb running 8 VM's with no problem (booting from USB and using 2x 2TB sata and 2x 240gb ssd as storage drives)
 
defuseme2k said:
Great stuff. I'm not sure about the superbiz site, but if you guys trust it I guess I will. I also checked on the memory "tested" modules page that supermicro has. Any suggestions on that? I can always just buy what is listed there... but I'm kind of curious if I can actually 32GB working.
Click to expand...
They are excellent. They now have that board in stock when few do because a couple months ago, they were willing to special order it for me. At a great price.
 
I bought the board, the memory, and the CPU all from them. I went ahead and paid the extra $ for the 1230 v2 to get hyperthreading. Hope this thing is worth all the money, I think it was sub 600$, can't really complain. I only paid for 16 gb of memory, but I'll buy the other 16 gb soon.
 
defuseme2k said:
I bought the board, the memory, and the CPU all from them. I went ahead and paid the extra $ for the 1230 v2 to get hyperthreading. Hope this thing is worth all the money, I think it was sub 600$, can't really complain. I only paid for 16 gb of memory, but I'll buy the other 16 gb soon.
Click to expand...

Which board did you end up ordering?
From "them" = Superbiz?

I think you will be happy with your new ~$600 system regardless. :)
 
Netwerkz101 said:
Which board did you end up ordering?
From "them" = Superbiz?

I think you will be happy with your new ~$600 system regardless. :)
Click to expand...

X9SCM-iiF. And yes, superbiiz. Ordered it all from them. Hopefully it fits into this centurion 5 case that my old lab-in-a-box was in. It was ddr2 / 8 GB of memory and to push it to 16 would cost me more than it was worth. So that coupled with the ability to go to 32GB made this purchase worth it.
 
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