24 bay SuperMicro Server Chasis (Home Media Server)

[kapee]

Hi All, I have a 24 Bay SuperMicro Server H8DM8 with SAS Backplane connected to 3 RAID Cards (PCI-X). This supports a AMD Chipset currently I have Opteron 2000 2212HE (Dual Core) processor  (single chip). I am using this for Plex Media server but I want to increase the performance of the chipset. unfortunately the second socket does not work and the Opteron 6 Core processors don't work on my MB. I was wondering if I can upgrade the MB+Chipset+Memory and to include all my 24 HDD (3.5TB each) WDD Red NAS drives.

 

Could I get a recommendation for the same so that I don't have to buy another 24Bay Server to replace this but just use the existing Chasis (I have modified it to remove the Dual Rendundant Power Supplies which were small Jet Engines from a noise perspective and added a 750 Watt Thermal Take Power Supply) running very smoothly.

 

The Plex Server Transcoding requires a lot of CPU power and at my place at any given time there are 2 - 3 movies playing at different locations which is killing the CPU.

 

Any recommendations would be appreciated...

 

[79wjd]

Something like a single Xeon E3 1230v3/v5 could handle about 8 transcoded 1080p streams, or you could go bigger like a 2670v3...or bigger still and get a dual Xeon board/setup. How much did you want to spend and what kind of performance do you want to allow for? 

[RedWulf]

Well you can upgrade the ram/memory and maybe rework your raid, but you cant simply rip out chipsets and expect any real increase. You can try freenas with portforwarding or a vpn for a lighter load. Other than that you'll either need an upgrade, new board or set up a 2nd rig. 

[kapee]

2 minutes ago, RedWulf said:

Well you can upgrade the ram/memory and maybe rework your raid, but you cant simply rip out chipsets and expect any real increase. You can try freenas with portforwarding or a vpn for a lighter load. Other than that you'll either need an upgrade, new board or set up a 2nd rig. 

Thanks RedWulf. I plan to upgrade my MB + Chipset + RAM etc.. but I need help in selection of the upgraded parts i.e. Intel MB + Chipset + RAM. Most important is the SATA Cards which will support all the 24 bays and support my 3 TB Drives (most I have seen have a limit of 2TB). I have an older board P8Z68-V with Memory and Chip I am not using but the issue is the which Cards would work with this MB to support the 24 drives. I am using the RAID on the Windows 2008 Server and NOT the RAID Card itself.

 

Apologies If I sound naïve but very new to the actual HW forums especially when it comes to SATA Cards etc...

[kapee]

21 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

Something like a single Xeon E3 1230v3/v5 could handle about 8 transcoded 1080p streams, or you could go bigger like a 2670v3...or bigger still and get a dual Xeon board/setup. How much did you want to spend and what kind of performance do you want to allow for? 

Hi DJ, I already have an older Intel Board P8Z68-V Deluxe I think with a i7 + 32 GB RAM which I would like to recycle. The issue is which SATA Cards would (i) work with this board + (ii) support all my 24 3TB Drives . I am hoping my data would not be an issue since its Software RAID (Windows OOB) but i can back it up to another server which can hold it temporarily till i address the upgrade issue.

 

i am looking at this Syba PCI Express SATA II 4 x Ports RAID Controller Card SY-PEX40008 Card but not sure if it will work with the MB and i will need 6 to make it work  again not sure how to get this upgraded with using my old chasis.