Chipset advice

[lfk]

I plan to build a new TrueNas server to replace my old on one bastardised from an old Inspiron 7010 SFF and various parts from the junk heap.  I've decided the case is going to the JONSBO N1 Mini-ITX NAS Chassis as seen the below.

 

I don't have a huge need for power or clock speed just CPU cores for my various VM's.  I'm running low CPU intensive VM's and jails only.  No render farms or anything crazy.  I am running Plex but I automatically convert media to a format that doesn't need transcoding on the fly so not CPU hit there (usually) and since TrueNas core doesn't seem to support GPU pass through I cant accelerate that hence why I just convert everything to a native format supported by my media players.

 

I have had decent experience with the Chinese MOBO and CPU's from Aliexpress in the past so I'm going to go for a mini-itx MOBO from Aliexpress and the best Xeon I can find (one with the most cores) that will fit the MOBO socket I choose.  My question is I need at least 32GB ram, what Chipset do I need to support this amount at a bare minimum?

 

 

 

 

[SupaKomputa]

afaik memory limitation are in the CPU, not chipset.

Xeon allow more memory than the consumer counterpart.

[Electronics Wizardy]

I woudln't worry about the exact chipset here, it won't matter. Look at the motherboard features and connectors, a higherend board will use features only higher end chipsets can provide.

 

Id personally pick something like this https://www.ebay.com/itm/284496569609?epid=17034031881&hash=item423d512509:g:vwoAAOSwM5FhcE-Z

 

Xeons d are pretty good chips, very low power too, 4 sticks of ram if you want a lot of ram, impi for remote management, and 10gbe on some models. And 6 sata ports(more on some models)

 

 

[lfk]

On 6/2/2022 at 10:44 AM, Electronics Wizardy said:

I woudln't worry about the exact chipset here, it won't matter. Look at the motherboard features and connectors, a higherend board will use features only higher end chipsets can provide.

 

Id personally pick something like this https://www.ebay.com/itm/284496569609?epid=17034031881&hash=item423d512509:g:vwoAAOSwM5FhcE-Z

 

Xeons d are pretty good chips, very low power too, 4 sticks of ram if you want a lot of ram, impi for remote management, and 10gbe on some models. And 6 sata ports(more on some models)

 

 

Thanks.  An interesting option but if I am going to do this excersie I want to go with as many cpu cores as I can.  This one wouldn't be an upgrade and since its BGA no upgrade options later on.

 

Anyone know of a mini-itx LGA 2011 motherboard?

[Electronics Wizardy]

7 hours ago, lfk said:

Thanks.  An interesting option but if I am going to do this excersie I want to go with as many cpu cores as I can.  This one wouldn't be an upgrade and since its BGA no upgrade options later on.

 

Anyone know of a mini-itx LGA 2011 motherboard?

You could get a board like this guy https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=EPC612D4I#Specifications

 

What do you need all the cores for? You said you didn't need much cpu power, and vms can share cores. I have 12 vms running on a quad core system now.

[lfk]

On 6/5/2022 at 12:34 AM, Electronics Wizardy said:

You could get a board like this guy https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=EPC612D4I#Specifications

 

What do you need all the cores for? You said you didn't need much cpu power, and vms can share cores. I have 12 vms running on a quad core system now.

I don't need sheer GHZ rather I need cores to dedicate to a large number of virtual machines.

 

Ideally i want one that has more than 4 sata ports also.

[Electronics Wizardy]

11 hours ago, lfk said:

I don't need sheer GHZ rather I need cores to dedicate to a large number of virtual machines.

 

Ideally i want one that has more than 4 sata ports also.

How many vms are you running? VMs can share cores, so you probably need way less cores than you think.

 

You don't really have many options in the itx world. Your not getting a 2011 system with lots of io.