Looking for a good value Xeon (or similar) CPU and Motherboard with a high count of PCI lanes

[dj_ripcord]

I built a NAS from and old Ryzen system and I am having a lot of stability issues, along with no internal graphics so I am looking to completely change my configuration and preferably move to Xeon.

 

I need a few PCI lanes because I need a dual 10G NIC along with an HBA and my current setup will only allow one port on the NIC to be used while the HBA is occupying a slot. It would also be nice to have a little headroom for expansion down the line. I would like to move to Xeon due to the high availability of Xeon CPU's along with their comparable lower prices. And since they are often used in servers or workstations, I understand they should have a high PCI lane count? If I am wrong or there is otherwise a better way to achieve my goals, I am more than happy to hear about it.

 

So if there is a better way (other than Xeon) to get Internal graphics, high PCI lane count, and low cost please let me know!

 

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

What NIc are you using?

 

What HBA are you using?

 

Do you care about power consumption?

 

You don't seem to need many pcie lanes here. Id just get a x1 gpu, and a more stable ryzen board. Ryzen also uses much less power than the xeons and is often faster due to the faster single thread speeds.

[dj_ripcord]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What NIc are you using?

Emulex OCE11102

4 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What HBA are you using?

LSI SAS9220-8i (IT mode)

6 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Do you care about power consumption?

Absolutely. I am using larger capacity drives to I have less spinning disks, and therefore less power consumption than if I were to use smaller drives.

7 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id just get a x1 gpu, and a more stable ryzen board. 

I do have a 1x GPU. Its an Nvidia Quadro NVS 300. But it does not work with both the HBA and NIC inserted.

 

Is there a path I should take in regards to chipsets that would give me the most expandability that's not gonna cost me $500?

[Electronics Wizardy]

11 minutes ago, dj_ripcord said:

Emulex OCE11102

LSI SAS9220-8i (IT mode)

Absolutely. I am using larger capacity drives to I have less spinning disks, and therefore less power consumption than if I were to use smaller drives.

I do have a 1x GPU. Its an Nvidia Quadro NVS 300. But it does not work with both the HBA and NIC inserted.

 

Is there a path I should take in regards to chipsets that would give me the most expandability that's not gonna cost me $500?

What board do you have?

 

Id just get a different ryzen board. They will use much less power, and will be much faster for most nas uses. I don't see the point of a xeon here. 

 

Ryzen should have plenty of lanes for 2x hbas and 10gbe nic and a x1 gpu(ive done that before), just need the correct board for it.

[YoungBlade]

How old and cheap are we talking here? You can get old Xeon X5650 chips for under $10, and that CPU has 36 PCIe lanes. However, they are PCIe 2.0 lanes. That said, it looks like your HBA is PCIe 2.0 and while I'm having a heck of a time finding the specifications for that NIC, it looks like it's x8, but even if it is just x4, then 2.0 speeds won't be a bottleneck (that's still ~2GB/s).

 

You can find whole towers with those old Xeons for about $100-200.

[dj_ripcord]

3 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What board do you have?

I have a Asrock AB350 Pro 4. It has just enough slots for what I need but it forces both slots to be 8x. It would be ideal if I could split them down to whatever I need for the device, but since the two PCI-E slots take up 8 each, the 16 total that I have can't be used for the 1x GPU.

 

There is currently a Ryzen 7 1700X in there which is just about perfect for what I need, it's just unstable. And finding a board with the correct BIOS for it is difficult, especially considering my need to have the ability to allocate lanes to specific slots. All I really need is to be able to allocate 4x lanes to the HBA so the GPU can take it's 1 lane from the 4 leftover.

8 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

 that NIC, it looks like it's x8,

It is x8. Technically it only needs to be x4 with one SFP port in use, but it allocates 8 regardless.

[Electronics Wizardy]

23 minutes ago, dj_ripcord said:

It is x8. Technically it only needs to be x4 with one SFP port in use, but it allocates 8 regardless.

You should be able to run it at x4 with 1 cables. Unless your maxing both, you won't need much bandwidth.

 

23 minutes ago, dj_ripcord said:

I have a Asrock AB350 Pro 4. It has just enough slots for what I need but it forces both slots to be 8x. It would be ideal if I could split them down to whatever I need for the device, but since the two PCI-E slots take up 8 each, the 16 total that I have can't be used for the 1x GPU.

You can use the x1 slots on the board for the gpu running off the chipset. the chipset has a good amount of additional pcie lanes.

 

Id look into x470 boards, they should work fine with 1st gen ryzen, and its pretty common for boards to have a x1 from the chipset for the gpu, 2 x8s from the cpu, and a x4 from the chipset.

[dj_ripcord]

13 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

You should be able to run it at x4 with 1 cables. Unless your maxing both, you won't need much bandwidth.

 

You can use the x1 slots on the board for the gpu running off the chipset. the chipset has a good amount of additional pcie lanes.

 

Id look into x470 boards, they should work fine with 1st gen ryzen, and its pretty common for boards to have a x1 from the chipset for the gpu, 2 x8s from the cpu, and a x4 from the chipset.

mmm. I've tried for hours to get this thing to downscale the PCI lanes allocated and I cannot get it to only allocate 4. With the HBA and the NIC installed, I cannot get the GPU to work. With either of them removed, the gpu works fine.

 

If you don't mind, please double check me with this mobo: 

 

https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/X470-GAMING-PLUS-MAX/Specification

 

It looks like it has all the PCI slots I could need, and it x470 so it should give me the ability to fan out the lanes appropriately, but I am still unsure because it says 1st gen ryzen will only do x16/x0, or x8/x8 mode.

[Electronics Wizardy]

12 minutes ago, dj_ripcord said:

because it says 1st gen ryzen will only do x16/x0, or x8/x8 mode.

Yea you get either x8 x8 or x16 and nothing. That will work well for you here.

 

This board should work well. Put a gpu in the x1 slot, then you have 3 slots for other deviecs.

 

[dj_ripcord]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Yea you get either x8 x8 or x16 and nothing. That will work well for you here.

 

This board should work well. Put a gpu in the x1 slot, then you have 3 slots for other deviecs.

 

Alright! I'm gonna try it out!

 

Worst case Ontario I won't get GPU use. But hopefully you are correct and this board will work for me. Thanks for all the help!