3 ms·

Unfortunately that board, like pretty much all consumer-like boards, suffers from a lack of PCI-Express lanes. It has: - 1x Gen4 x16 - 1x Gen4 x4 - 1x M.2 G

by crote 3y ago

Unfortunately that board, like pretty much all consumer-like boards, suffers from a lack of PCI-Express lanes. It has: - 1x Gen4 x16 - 1x Gen4 x4 - 1x M.2 Gen3 x1 That M.2 slot can do only 0.985 GB/s, so literally all NVMe SSDs on the market will be limited by that. Maybe useful for a boot drive, but that's about it. Assuming you want somewhat-decent storage your only realistic option is getting an x16-to-4x-M.2 adapter card, and stick at least two NVMe drives in there. The board has pretty lackluster network interfaces, so you want to get an external NIC. That probably means grabbing a cheap second-hand 40G NIC from Ebay. But those are designed for PCI-E Gen3, so sticking it in your only remaining (x4) slot means it is limited to 31.5Gbps - in a best-case scenario... With consumer CPUs it's all about compromises, and nobody seems willing to invest in making a low-volume homelab-focused board.

sandreas 3y ago
> Unfortunately that board, like pretty much all consumer-like boards, suffers from a lack of PCI-Express lanes. Depending on the use case, this is true. > That M.2 slot can do only 0.985 GB/s, so literally all NVMe SSDs on the market will be limited by that. Maybe useful for a boot drive, but that's about it. Yeah I stated speed limited, but you are correct. > The board has pretty lackluster network interfaces, so you want to get an external NIC This is also true (in my post I wrote 2.5G interface, actually this was a typo, I meant 2x1G interface). > That probably means grabbing a cheap second-hand 40G NIC from Ebay. But those are designed for PCI-E Gen3, so sticking it in your only remaining (x4) slot means it is limited to 31.5Gbps - in a best-case scenario... Ok, this might be not the normal persons use case... I think 10G is already pretty unusual in the homelab of most people, whereas I would say that 2.5G should be standard. > it's all about compromises That's the point. You can't get "fast, cheap and good" - I think the MC12 is a pretty good compromise. Sure, you can get a Supermicro X13SAE or ASRock IMB-X1314 (Intel, W680) - probably higher quality and far more reliable, but limited bifurcation and only the board would cost ~450 bucks. Another problem with the Supermicro may be that DDR5 ECC RAM is hardly available and expensive.

by crote 3y ago

sandreas 3y ago

> Unfortunately that board, like pretty much all consumer-like boards, suffers from a lack of PCI-Express lanes. Depending on the use case, this is true. > That M.2 slot can do only 0.985 GB/s, so literally all NVMe SSDs on the market will be limited by that. Maybe useful for a boot drive, but that's about it. Yeah I stated speed limited, but you are correct. > The board has pretty lackluster network interfaces, so you want to get an external NIC This is also true (in my post I wrote 2.5G interface, actually this was a typo, I meant 2x1G interface). > That probably means grabbing a cheap second-hand 40G NIC from Ebay. But those are designed for PCI-E Gen3, so sticking it in your only remaining (x4) slot means it is limited to 31.5Gbps - in a best-case scenario... Ok, this might be not the normal persons use case... I think 10G is already pretty unusual in the homelab of most people, whereas I would say that 2.5G should be standard. > it's all about compromises That's the point. You can't get "fast, cheap and good" - I think the MC12 is a pretty good compromise. Sure, you can get a Supermicro X13SAE or ASRock IMB-X1314 (Intel, W680) - probably higher quality and far more reliable, but limited bifurcation and only the board would cost ~450 bucks. Another problem with the Supermicro may be that DDR5 ECC RAM is hardly available and expensive.