Looking for advice.

[George51]

My current build is as per my signature block. Currently working fine, but recently just cropped up past the 80% full mark. I know I could look at replacing the harddrives with bigger harddrives. But I am unhappy with the limited RAM, and can't install any more on this board.

So tempted to upgrade, I would ideally like 1 zpool of two vdevs, each with 6 hdds in a raid Z2. Plus two SSD for booting from. I'd like to be ~32GB RAM, with a fairly beefy CPU. Points I've found so far with my current setup, is my cable management leaves a lot to be desired, and the box runs reasonably warm.

I have played around the supermicro website, and found some cracking boards that I'd love to get, however currently not financially viable.

My question is, is this ebay board a good deal: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Supermicr...e=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649

I know its older hardware, but the dual CPU is a slight improvement in terms of passmark over my current one. A lot more RAM, space for 12 HDDs, and I am sure I can get 2 SSDs in there as well. Would reuse my current UPS.

Would ask them for the HBA option as per the listing. Anything I am missing? For £375 seems reasonable to me. But I may be over looking all kind of things and getting blinded by the idea of upgrading.

 

[Inxsible]

Looks like a decent upgrade in terms of power. But since the box is 2U and it has dual CPUs, you might not get what you are looking for in terms of cooling. You might want to ask them if they would remove the RAID controller and cable and reduce the price by some.

 

[Chris Moore]

The included SAS controller (AOC-SAS2LP-H8IR) is a hardware RAID controller that you will need to replace with a plain HBA.
Something like this:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HBA-PCI-...H200-flashed-LSI-9211-8i-IT-mode/202088944062

That chassis will probably also be loud because of the smaller fans and you will have to do a good bit of modification to make it quiet because the CPU coolers require the high airflow to keep them cool. Slow the fans down and everything gets too hot.

For power efficiency, you may want to replace the system board, processor and memory with newer hardware because the existing setup will probably draw around 150 watts with no hard drives in it. You can totally replace that board though. You should be able to fit a standard ATX size board in that case easily. Later, when you are ready.