Need to find a build on the cheap with lots of PCI express

[airborne spoon]

Budget (including currency): up to like $400

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: TrueNAS core running plex

Other details currently have Ryzen 5 5600G, 64GB DDR4, 8x 10TB WD red NAS drives in Raid Z2, Solarflare 10GB SFP+ NIC, LSI SAS HBA card, MSI x570A pro MB, EVGA 1060 6GB

 

I've been having server issues and all the diagnostic i did pointed to the MB went bad suddenly and i replaced the MB and everything didnt work but then i did a fresh install of truenas and everything just worked, (yes i tried a fresh install on the old MB and no luck) and i started over with scavenging parts from my gaming rig to get it running but its still being a PITA, when i transfer files it will crash and throw errors saying its not connected to the network anymore the error list is below if you're curious. And since the MB only has 2 PIC x16 slots i cant run my SPF+ card which limits me to standard built in networking  which is waaaaaay too slow when were talking about moving over 11TB of data. I could just remove the GPU and move the data then put it back in but since i move files to the server every few days i really don't want to use that slow crap when i have a fiber line run around the house just for that reason.

 

So i need a MB that has at least 3 PCI express slots. The NIC and the HBA card are both the same length not the full x16 so prob x8 maybe since its shorter? Ideally an AM4 board so i can just drop in my current CPU without having to find another one. but i get the feeling ill have to find an old gen 1 threadripper on ebay and a MB to match it. I'd really like to avoid intel because i've never had good luck with their products also team red for life lol

Spoiler

 

Quote

 

mps0: Controller reported scsi ioc terminated tgt 4 SMID 417 loginfo 31110000 (da4:mps0:0:4:0): WRITE(10). CDB: 2a 00 04 80 58 50 00 00 08 08

 

(da4:mps0:0:4:0): CAM status: CCB request completed with an error (da4:mps0:0:4:0): Retrying command, 3 more tries remain 2a 00 04 80 58 50 00 00 08 00

 

(da4:mps0:0:4:0): WRITE(10). CDB: (da4:mps0:0:4:0): CAM status: SCSI Status Error

 

(da4:mps0:0:4:0): SCSI status: Check Condition

 

(da4:mps0:0:4:0): SCSI sense: UNIT ATTENTION asc: 29,0 (Power on, reset, or bus device reset occurred> (da4:mps0:0:4:0): Retrying command (per sense data)

 

(da4:mps0:0:4:0): WRITE(10). CDB: 2a 00 04 co 44 90 00 00 08 00 (da4:mps0:0:4:0): CAM status: SCSI Status Error

 

(da4:mps0:0:4:0): SCSI status: Check Condition (da4:mps0:0:4:0): SCSI sense: UNIT ATTENTION asc: 29,0 (Power on, reset, or bus device reset occurred> (da4:mps0:8:4:0): Retrying command (per sense data)

 

 

[da na]

Xeon E5 hw seems to be the best choice for you. Very cheap, tons of PCIe lanes etc. Especially a dual socket board, like say, the HP Z640.

 

You mentioned wanting to "avoid Intel" but that's a pretty awful idea when looking for cheap server hardware.

[Needfuldoer]

5 minutes ago, airborne spoon said:

I'd really like to avoid intel because i've never had good luck with their products also team red for life lol

Then you're missing out on the vast majority of the cheap server parts on the used market.

 

An LGA2011-3 or LGA2066 Xeon would give you plenty of PCIe lanes and the ability to use dirt cheap registered ECC DDR4 server RAM.

 

Desktop platforms only have so many PCIe lanes to go around, and most consumer motherboards will put most of them into one x16 slot for a GPU. That's why I'm running a "real" server (PowerEdge R730) instead of a whitebox built around a consumer platform. 

[airborne spoon]

52 minutes ago, da na said:

Xeon E5 hw seems to be the best choice for you. Very cheap, tons of PCIe lanes etc. Especially a dual socket board, like say, the HP Z640.

 

You mentioned wanting to "avoid Intel" but that's a pretty awful idea when looking for cheap server hardware.

isnt a dual socket just a waste of money with the extra power consumption? Seems like overkill for a plex server

[da na]

8 minutes ago, airborne spoon said:

isnt a dual socket just a waste of money with the extra power consumption? Seems like overkill for a plex server

Yes, overkill for Plex but if you need more than the... 56? PCIe lanes one CPU provides, that's the route you'll need to go

[airborne spoon]

19 hours ago, da na said:

Xeon E5 hw seems to be the best choice for you. Very cheap, tons of PCIe lanes etc. Especially a dual socket board, like say, the HP Z640.

 

You mentioned wanting to "avoid Intel" but that's a pretty awful idea when looking for cheap server hardware.

 

19 hours ago, Needfuldoer said:

Then you're missing out on the vast majority of the cheap server parts on the used market.

 

An LGA2011-3 or LGA2066 Xeon would give you plenty of PCIe lanes and the ability to use dirt cheap registered ECC DDR4 server RAM.

 

Desktop platforms only have so many PCIe lanes to go around, and most consumer motherboards will put most of them into one x16 slot for a GPU. That's why I'm running a "real" server (PowerEdge R730) instead of a whitebox built around a consumer platform. 

Ok so this is what i found and since its cheap'ish i figured why not, shipped it cost me $300

Dell PowerEdge R730XD 14B LFF

2x Intel Xeon E5-2660 V4 2.00GHz 14 Core

No RAM

No Raid

No NIC

8x 3.5" Trays - 6x Blanks

although in hindsight maybe i should get ECC RAM or will the standard DDR4 2600 64GB (16GBx4) work fine for my use-case of a plex truenas server

[da na]

Just now, airborne spoon said:

 

Ok so this is what i found and since its cheap'ish i figured why not, shipped it cost me $300

Dell PowerEdge R730XD 14B LFF

2x Intel Xeon E5-2660 V4 2.00GHz 14 Core

No RAM

No Raid

No NIC

8x 3.5" Trays - 6x Blanks

although in hindsight maybe i should get ECC RAM or will the standard DDR4 2600 64GB (16GBx4) work fine for my use-case of a plex truenas server

You don't specifically need ECC RAM, but it'll actually probably be cheaper.

[airborne spoon]

7 minutes ago, da na said:

You don't specifically need ECC RAM, but it'll actually probably be cheaper.

I already have ram that's what I'm saying I have 64GB that I have in my current server setup so I don't wanna waste money to buy more ram if the standard ram i already have will work fine

[da na]

3 minutes ago, airborne spoon said:

I already have ram that's what I'm saying I have 64GB that I have in my current server setup so I don't wanna waste money to buy more ram if the standard ram i already have will work fine

Sorry for misunderstanding.

I have no problem running "unsupported" RAM in my old HP/Dell servers so non ECC RAM should work fine. Worst case scenario you sell your old RAM if it does not work