advice: cheap motherboard with 3+ x8 slots?

[kramertorium]

[I suspect many of you fine folks will have advice about why the following is a bad idea, and you're probably right. This project may be ill-advised, but I want to do it ]

 

I'm looking to build a system with some particular network cards I own; I'll need 3 slots, each at least x8.

Additionally I'll need video, of course, but since this will be a server I can use integrated graphics or even a PCI slot (!), or of course a proper x16 slot.

The goal here is to spend as little money as possible, so I'm fine with something old and used.

I will not need great performance, so a board that only supports old CPUs is fine; for cost savings I'd want a cheapish CPU anyway

Size can be anything that fits in a standard ATX case; most EATX boards are probably OK too

I have tons of DDR3 ECC Registered RAM lying around, so an appropriate server board would be cool, but RAM is cheap so this isn't very important

 

Lastly, if there's an old model of a fully-built PC (or tower server) with the appropriate slots that I can get used (read: cheap) I'd probably be happy with that (although it wouldn't be as fun as one that I build)

 

Thanks in advance for your advice!

[Bombastinator]

3x8=24.  You sure these things really need full x8? That’s a lot of pcie lanes. You’ll need a cpu that has  24 open lanes just for that.  There’s also going to be lanes needed for the chipset, so perhaps more than 24 lanes.  I suspect the cheap boat has sailed unless you get into used enterprise stuff which I personally know nothing about

 

if your boards can work on x4 data in x16 slots you could just plug in the 3 cards in any motherboard they will fit in along with a low end video card and you should be fine.  I don’t know if they can do that though or what the specifics of their x8 interface is.

Edited October 16, 2020 by Bombastinator

[Grabhanem]

An HP Z420 will take DDR3 and has a

1

16

4

8

16

slot layout. The motherboards are standard ATX I believe but require an adapter for their weird 18-pin or whatever proprietary connector, and the full systems are pretty cheap used.

[kramertorium]

Fair point about the actual required PCI lanes. The cards are physically x8, but of course those lanes may not all be required.

 

I think it's mooted b/c of Grabhanem reply; I found that newegg has a perfectly serviceable refurb hp z420 for $240, and I have 32gb ram I can re-use in it. That's more than I wanted to spend, but I think what I *wanted* was completely unrealistic, and I doubt I could get all the necessary parts for much less, even if I could find the right stuff.

 

thanks, y'all