Need help finding a good build for XenServer Mini ITX

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morbidsteve

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Jan 26, 2011
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Hey so I have been looking for about a week now for a build that would work for a MiniITX box that I could run XenServer on.

I'm looking for the following or better:
Mini ITX (I like small)
32gb RAM capable (I will be starting with 16gb most likely)
Quad-core 3.0GHz+


Yea, that's about it. Everything that I'm finding for one reason or another won't be good. I was looking into the ASRock FM2A88X-ITX+ Mini ITX FM2+ Motherboard with an AMD A8-7600 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor.

That would have kept my power consumption REALLY low (something like 120W), while still providing me with enough power to run a decent home lab. But after conducting much research, I found that the IOMMU is not supported for anything but Windows products.

Can anyone give me any pointers on what hardware to use? I've already looked through almost every single pcpartpicker miniITX that fits what I'm looking for, and I find one or another reason not to do each of those builds, be it excessive cost, lack of IOMMU, etc..

Pleas lend me a hand! Thanks

Steve
 
Hmm, the part with 32gigs of ram is hard. At the moment this is only possible with 2 slots if you use DDR4, supported by the latest Intel Skylake platform, which is still quite expensive, power consuming and maybe overkill. I also remember to have seen some Intel Haswell Server mainboards from ASRock, which allow for 32gigs if you're ok with laptop-style SODIMM ram.

edit: nevermind, those 4 ram slot ones were the LGA2011 server boards...
 
How much storage and upgradeability do you need? Have you considered a NUC-style unit? A super-simple solution would be something like a barebones Gigabyte Brix Pro for 400 USD. Pop in a 2.5" HDD and your 16 GB of RAM, and you're done for under 600 bucks. It's a quad-core i5, so you can install whatever OS you like, Anandtech measured its i7 bigger brother drawing 88 W at max load, and it just about fits in your pocket.

Can't do 32 gigs, though, plus it's Haswell, and not Mini ITX.
 
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inchikiboze said:
How much storage and upgradeability do you need? Have you considered a NUC-style unit? A super-simple solution would be something like a barebones Gigabyte Brix Pro for 400 USD. Pop in a 2.5" HDD and your 16 GB of RAM, and you're done for under 600 bucks. It's a quad-core i5, so you can install whatever OS you like, Anandtech measured its i7 bigger brother drawing 88 W at max load, and it just about fits in your pocket.

Can't do 32 gigs, though, plus it's Haswell, and not Mini ITX.
Click to expand...

Hey thanks for the suggestion. That looks great but I'm afraid that's to limited.

I did start looking into mATX and have put together the following. I'd love to hear people's opinions on it.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/XQnv99
 
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