Replacement for ASRock Rack C2550D4I

[BlueBoy]

So, my ASRock Rack C2550D4I died today (again). I bought it in October 2014 and it died in May 2016. ASRock Rack replaced it and now that replacement has died. I'm going to contact ASRock Rack and see what they say but the board is out of warranty according to my understanding (3 years).

Even if they agree to replace it, I don't know if I would trust the replacement.

I have a budget of about $400 US to replace it with something else, but I have no idea what. So. my fellow forum members. what would you recommend? Here's what I need:

• 6x SATA 2 or 3 ports minimum but I would prefer more since I am still booting from USB thumb stick and would like to migrate to SSD eventually.
• Ability to use my current DDR3L Unbuffered DIMMs. If I have to I can get DDR4 ECC but that has to be factored into the budget.
• At least 4 cores.
• Gigabit Ethernet
• I would prefer new but would consider used from a brand/model with rock solid reliability.

I use the system mainly as a file & backup server as well as a PLEX server.

So community, any thoughts?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Constantin]

I'd go for the replacement, and save for a future system in the meantime.

I've been very happy with my Xeon D upgrade. The 2-core, 4-thread version is very reasonably priced, features a similar thermal envelope to the C2xxx series, higher turbo clock speed, etc. The mini-ITX versions are even less expensive but size constraints affect what they can offer. I bought the Flex-ATX board because it will be supported for a long time and offers a lot of flexibility for the future (like doubling my storage pool from 8 to 16 drives, for example).

To me, the Flex-ATX form factor seems to strike a perfect balance for Xeon D CPUs meant for storage applications (i.e. 2 PCIe 3.0x8 slots, a m.2 NVME at 3.0x4, 4 RAM DIMMs, SFP+, 16 Channels of LSI 2116 SAS2 happiness, etc.) However, you will have to buy new RAM and that can get as expensive as the motherboard.

All that said, another option is to look to older boards on ebay that use a discrete CPU, assuming your case can handle the cooling needs and the power supply can handle the power needs. Some of these boards are really inexpensive and may be DIMM compatible.