when I saw those boards months ago I was wondering when I would see your video about it. Good to see a late entry to the "weird 2011 board from aliexpress" series
As nother european viewer I'd like to also emphasize the importance of information about power consumption: If the board uses just 30W more than a modern alternative, that difference will cost me more than the price of the motherboard PER YEAR to run. So the cost of running a homelab is incredibly power usage sensitive for us over here.
Hey Jeff, what does the power consumtion look like for this system, minus the drives? This board is very interesting, but for us over here in Europe, eletricity bills are a factor not to be trifled with :) Seeing as it has so many things integrated, I would guess it draws less than a "normal" x99 motherboards + PCIe cards for networking and storage.
the 2680v4 is a 120w tdp chip on it's own, probably often running a bit above that. But yeah the integrated chips should draw less than pcie add in cards. Likely making it better than other x99 boards. But honestly if you're in a country with higher power costs realistically that's a bad comparison, and you should probably be comparing it to slightly more expensive newer components that are way more efficient. And just trying to work with a bit less expandability. Unless you need something this specifically offers. Paying just a bit more for a 10th gen intel i7 or Ryzen 7 3700x or a 12th gen i5 or Ryzen 5 5600 tier chips give you similar multithreaded performance; way more single threaded, and for less power
While not exactly the same spec my C612 based nas with HP Z440 mobo and a 250W 80+ Gold psu and 3 seagate exos x12 12TB consumes 50-60W. Keep in mind that for idle your cpu and ram don't matter much, at least for intel (in case of ryzen the difference in idle power usage between monolithic and chiplet designs is huge).
@@daymianhogue1634 - I think the more interesting potential is if you pair this with a Pi KVM that can physically turn the computer on from a powered off state, by jumping the pins on the motherboard (same as hitting the power button). This means you could leave the server powered off most of the time, and only turn it on as needed. You could have a really beefy, power hungry server for rendering, AI workloads, and automated backups, and just leave it turned off when you're not using it.
@@arthurwintersight7868 even then it's less performance, for more power... And that kind of strategy invalidates it's for a lot of uses, plus again you could add a similar kvm set up to the newer system too to gain the same benefits.
@@aluxannar what chip are you using to have that low of power consumption or is that idle power consumption? And hedt Intel systems usually use only slightly less than Ryzen chiplets at idle due to the ringbus. And it's still often not that much, to the point it really should only be a priority if you know youre gonna be at idle a ton relative to the active power usage differential.
Месяц назад+73
12x 12 TB Drives for only $840 ?? You live in paradise man. Here in Sweden those same drives would cost me $1969 with shipping.
Very timely video. I have been searching for a motherboard/cpu combo and you have reassured me on this combo. My only regret is I never should have sold my Node 804...
That's a really cool motherboard but the coolest thing I took away from this video was "Fractal is still producing the Node 804". Looks like they even updated the logo on the front panel. I love that case, and I'm still using it for my own NAS. Just kinda wish it didn't have an acrylic window.
Thanks Jeff. My EPYC server died and I've been dragging my heels replacing it because everything is so expensive. But even I can afford $115. Power consumption was the only red flag but I can live with 80W idle. I can even use my existing RAM and case.
You mentioned plex. I'd like to see a video series on everything plex, from how to set up a streaming device to send media to an older HDMI supported TV, to VM installation and transcoding, etc. I don't know much about it, but I'd like to learn it.
Okay here's my pitch: My personal holy grail machine, the all in one-er of NAS / Forbidden Router / VM host do everything one-shot home server box! One machine to rule them all.
Just picked up a Node 804, (New opened box) for under $100au. MB and RAM on order. This will be just the thing to tidy up all my family Intel NUC's running Plex, Proxmox VM's, Filtering. Might even see if adding a 2nd dual NIC will allow me to move my pfsense to a vm setup. Excited for this series if it follows through - Thanks Jeff 🙂
Aaaaaand bought. This will hopefully replace my "old" (it's only a few months old) server/NAS build which was also a Craft Computing video - the Erying board with a built-in mobile CPU. The board I got has an i7-11700 and it's been good, but this one will allow me to have more RAM and actually be able to utilize one or more of the PCIe slots for a GPU. Not to mention the 2.5 gig networking.
and how does it work for you ?? is your VGA output working ?? at least i found driver for Windows just to test Hardware if its working for sure it will run Proxmox afterwards..
@@bernhardmeisriemel6080 The VGA output does work, which is good because the GPU that I plan on installing only has mini DP which is not a cable I keep on-hand (and I"m going to blacklist the drivers from being loaded to pass it through to a Jellyfin docker or LXC container anyway). I can't speak to functionality in Windows because I essentially just swapped the mobo out and installed my 2x NVMe drives on the new one and Proxmox never missed a step outside of some network interface oddities due to going from 1x onboard gigabit ethernet ports to 2x 2.5 gigabit ports.
@@cease70 yeah Drivers are all fine in Windows aswell you have just to install standard Intel Network drivers at first ;) the same would be for me Proxmox will never see my dedicated card but as long i cant get the ASPEED VGA to work it will not happen... i hope Support can help me here aswell or i have to send the Board Back ;( if you dont mind could you sent me Firmware Versions that are used on your board ? at least i got a newer Version of the Board compared to Craft Computings Version
i run same motherboard and buy 2 and put inside Jonsbo N5 case. 2 Node NAS kinda nice for my Home Lab needs. Setup already running 3 month non stop so far works find with my SAS pcie card.
I could see this being an AMAZING little second pc for streamers, pair it with a b580, capture card and a few tb of storage for recording the stream to later edit the videos or upload the vod at higher resolution
I have an 804 that's been sitting on the shelf for a few years. I've mocked up several builds, but never pulled the trigger. This might be the one that I go all in.
About 2 years ago, I bought a Lenovo RD450X motherboard on AliExpress. Dual Xeon v3/v4 (C612 Chipset), with dual 10Gb Base-T + 1Gb for IPMI (with VGA output). 2x SAS output + 2x SATA 3 ports. Worked very well until recently, when I tried to upgrade the CPU and the MB stopped working 🥲 at that time, the price was about $150 for the MB only.
I have this series of drive. They have a version that don’t require to block pin 3 or do any mods to drive or the PSU they just works I recommend to check them out before buying to make sure you get the right version
Props. I can't even remember the last time I learned something new about non-gaming hardware from a RUclips video. I stay pretty current with that stuff. However, I was totally unaware of the 3.3v "feature" on enterprise drives, nor the simple fix for it.
this board/cpu at the price is so tempting. was just pricing out a budget am5 nas build which would be new and high power but just overkill for proxmox,plex, truenas
Looking at the same thing a AM5 proxmox/truenas build with some other smaller vm's/docker container for running my own internal dns, adblock but still running into the fact that AM5 ECC capable motherboards are hard to find or really expensive.
I run the same CPU in my p410 upgraded from the e5-1603 v4. It seems perfect for a rtx 4060 or lower gpu's since I don't see a lot of performance loss compared to a lot of Benchmarks I've watched. It can play pretty much everything at 1440p and recently Dead Island 2 at 4k at 80fps The limitation so far is S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2 at 1440p on launch wich is a cpu killer . The p410 with 2680 v4 with a 1060 rog strix cost 250$ for the whole system . Thanks Jeff for the Xeon info , its a great platform for a small budget that decimates any Acer nitro .
I wonder if you could get SATA cables that are right angled but come out sideways to the left and right so that there's enough clearance for a full sized GPU.
I built something smaller from Temu, and passed a NVMe drive (first one or it doesn't boot on proxmox), the usb controllers, an RTX 4060, and the onboard audio card to a windows 11 VM with Proxmox 8.3 running a virtual TPM. Surprisingly windows 11 is not concerned with this, and all seems to be working well. Be interesting if you can rep[licate on your server there.
My server is also in a Nod 804!! I love it! Its currently setup with my old Ryzen 5 2600 running proxmox with a truenas vm with 3x 4tb nas hdds on an hba card Im still looking for a slim line Blu-ray drive for the front panel
Weird overbuilt boards like this would be interesting for more power efficient platforms like socket 1151 but i guess we dont have enough pcie lanes for quiet that big of a feature set
Thanks for the Video. I had this motherboard with the 2680v4 bundle in my Shopping cart for about four months and waited for a good review of it. There is also a Version with 4 2.5g NICs now
I have similar system at home, would love to see what you do with this build. I was looking to turn my NAS-ish machine into a multimedia editing station by adding a quadro P5000 or possibly an AI system with a couple of tesla P4's. Please continue making these types of videos.
all very interesting. I would like to understand the consumption of this configuration. both in idle and at full load. also you did not talk about optimized software on the nas side perhaps in eco mode if insertable. friend I ask you this because my asrock x99 has performance, normal and eco modes also based on the processor. and the consumption on server h24 we need to understand how to manage all that energy. a second episode where you talk about consumption and network transfer speed would be great, it would be really useful. as well as how to manage firewalls etc. thanks in advance
If this board was Full ATX it could move those SATA ports lower and allow at least 1 full length 2-3 slot PCIe card. That & native SAS support would make this board a must purchase for a couple of projects I am working on.
nice build , only thing is i prefer hot swap drive bays with front access and backplane with mini sas connectors for clean install . other than that 100
it's so frustrating. on one side there are the older server parts that offer a proper number of pcie lanes but perform poorly and require lots of power compared to modern architecture. on the other side is modern consumer hardware with great performance and performance per watt but chronically skimp on pcie lanes. or one pays an arm and a leg and goes with modern workstation/server hardwre...
riser cables so the pci 16x fits over the sata cables. or right angle cables etc. and power should be okish, intel idles pretty good most the time. save the cash and get 2x 2x4's and bolt all your parts to that save the money you spent on the case :P. I moved to just bolting my mobo to underside of my desk these days, no dust under there and cheaper anyway ^_^
It's not pretty, but you can clip the side of the sata and power connectors so they fit on a SAS drive. Have done it, and they've been working just fine for 4 years at this point.
I purchased this board and I think I got a different revision. The 4 memory slots on the right of the CPU are alternate blue and black in color the two on the left are also black. Also the PCI slots layout out is different. The 8x is in between the two 16x slots and also the m.2 is squeezed in there between the x8 and the top 16x slot.
currently looking into the 3647 platform, found a few nice deals on used supermicro-boards and the xeon Gold seems to be dirt cheap; wonder how that compares to the 2011-3
Great video. Like others have said it would be good to test power consumption but also it would be good if you could test them to see what types of ECC RAM they support (REG, LRDIMM) as well as check whether the reporting works. I have read with some Ryzen boards correct memory errors but don't report them.
I would love to see your review of Huananzhi X10X99-16D. Dual socket, 16 RAM slots (1TB of cheap DDR4 ECC?!) 5x8/16 PCIe slots, 2xNVMe, 2x 2.5Gbit NICs, 2xSAS connectors! 10xSATA. All that for ~170-200€ I forgot ASpeed 2600 for management and VGA output.
thank you so much. This is what I was looking for a long time now. I trust you with this and will replace my electricity hungry DL380. Just one question, is this one enough to host one Enshrouded Server and one Aska Server at the same time? And also a true nas server?
I would love a product stack that fit somewhere between consumer ryzen (am4 or am5) cpus and threadripper/low end epyc cpus for homelab and smb uses. I dont need monster core/thread count chips with several hundred watt tdps per socket but I would love a platform that offered ~16 modern cores binned for efficiency with 32-64 pcie lanes and motherboards laid out to properly take advantage of that. My homelab is very well served by an 8 core ryzen 7 with a 35w tdp, but I am absolutely limited by the expandability of that setup
For a purely NAS budget build, I would consider an ASUS P9-C/4L with a pike 2108 over this; they can be had for under $100 used or just over $100 new on AliExpress. It supports Haswell E3-V3 Xeons and up to Core i7's (up to 8 threads, either way), dual channel ECC DDR3, comes with an aspeed VGA chip, has the option for IPMI (although, if you buy the adapter, at that point you're coming up on the $150 mark), front panel USB 3, etc. With the pike 2108, you have your choice of 6 SATA and 8 additional SATA/SAS capable ports without physically blocking any of the PCIe or PCI slots. The compromises, IMO, are: it is a full size ATX board, rather than mATX, no M.2 support and it doesn't have a POST code display; I can live without those, for the price.
I should have chosen this mobo for my P40 GPU rig build. The AST2400 on this board would have saved me the headache of fitting another GPU just for a video output.
Edit: Would love to see more information about power consumption with that board. Got a couple of 2630Lv3 that'd be perfect for this. To disable the 3rd pin, you can also use a MOLEX to SATA adapter (1x to 4x) since the MOLEX connector doesn't power that pin.
I’ve only found the n305 and n100 boards but they will only do 6 onboard Sata and don’t have pcie. Would love it if there was a more modern version like this one though in the same form factor
Love the content and think this board fits my need nicely. Problem I've run into is I've tried two of them on on both of them the onboard LAN ports won't show active when plugged into my USW-Flex-XG switch. All of the ports on the switch work when connected to other NICs, but absolutely will not show active when connected to the onboard ports on this board. I don't believe I ended up with two bad boards, but I keep trouble shooting away and just cannot find a solution.
I ordered this board combo from AliExpress to upgrade my Unriad home NAS. I have all 6 dimm slots filled total 96G of RAM. The BIOS recognized and confirmed 96G RAM, but in the Unraid dashboard it saying I have 64G RAM installed but 96G available for use😀. Very strange.
Great build! But that made me remember of the absurd import taxes of my country! I'm better work like no tomorrow, because if I dream of build any these I may pay 92% directly to government. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!
I actually just bought this exact board. Did you have any issues getting the on board nics working? I cant seem to get them to work with debian but i havent tried anything else. Maybe proxmox would be better but isnt that built on debian?
@homelabaddict1 I ended up installing alma Linux and that worked but I think it was actually a pcie network card that wasn't working. I thought it was and got the onboard confused with the pcie card. Anyway I think it was all user error haha
wow... been looking what to put into my Fractal case... I have 2 x LSI 8i controllers, a dual port x520 and dual port x226... 8 x 12TB Seagate Ironwolf drives and 2 x SSD's. using this (current board Gigabyte+GA-B250M-D3H / Intel Core i5-7400 @ 3.00GHz) i can shelve the i226 and one of my LSI controllers and only install the 10GbE x520 allowing me to put one or 2 drives on the MB side on the bottom, taking me to 10 drives, i might have a idea to place 2 drives in caddies that fit into the rear pci blanking plate slots. the cpu, is also big big improvement it seems for me over my current i5... I only run Truenas and Plex and MinIO.
Currently running a X99-D8 with a E5-2630V3 running proxmox + 5 vms inc Blue iris, Linux, truenas, openwrt and HA. 2 x GPU (1 for pass thru Plex),1 x 10G and 1x HBA, 6 x 3.5" drives and 3xSSD 2.5" drive + 1 x NVME. idles (with my normal workload) @ 130W. Wouldnt take much of an overall power saving to man maths justify a swap - shame I cant buy without CPU or RAM - I dont need a CPU TDP uplift. the X99 D8 has been rock solid but no HBA and an extra NVME......
okie dokie - next video series… now add (1) home brew SFF router with PFsense/OPNsense, (2) DNS service and add-blocker, and (3) 2.5gbe switch. there ya go - desktop homelab and full network mgt and sys-admin playground.
You stated that 1st gen Ryzen puts the 2680 v4 "on-notice" in multi-threading, then show that the 3700X (4th gen Ryzen) just narrowly beats it in multi-core performance.
Context is important. When the Ryzen 1700 launched, it was only a couple percentage points slower than Intel's 5980X, and it was faster than the Xeon 2667 v3, both of which were 8-Core / 16-thread parts. The comment about the Ryzen 3700X is stating that AMD's Zen 2 8-Core CPU is faster in multithreading than Intel's 14-Core chip, and if you need fast single threaded performance, the 2680 v4 may not be your best bet.
Hey there, great video! I'm looking to build a NAS like the one you showed to store movies for streaming on Plex. Would that be a good setup for me? I'm new to Linux, so I'm wondering if it's the best route, or if I should go with a pre-built solution like Synology. Any advice is appreciated!
I got of one, one correction - Its not 2 x full x16 pci express slots. Its x16. x8 x8 with the 2x m.2 using the the last 8x lanes. Looks like all the pch lanes are going towards the onboard devices. Built this for an AI node. As for all the questions on power consumption - this setup with the cpu even idling at 85w (like mine currently is) the power usage over 2 years still doesnt add up to the cost of a motherboard to support a more power effiecient cpu for my workload. Well in Canada with our dogshit dollar. Any epyc boards out there are at least 1k+ CAD plus taxes, duty, shipping ect before adding a cpu. 203 CAD shipped to my door, and maybe 400 to run this for a year. still well under the extra 1000$ id spend on something more modern which would still chew up 150-250 a year in power. No, power in my area is not cheap by any stretch of the imagination either.
Hey don't know if anyone can help me here but I purchased this combo cpu ram mobo. It boots and seems to operate fine however I'm getting a ff post code and motherboard won't stop beeping
Overkill for most users unless your transcoding a ton of stream simultaneously but it's certainly up to the job.... Power consumption might be a worry though
Because they won't spin up when Pin 3 is connected. Pin 3 supplies 3.3v off consumer power supplies, while it's only supplied momentarily on server backplanes.
This is an interesting board. The listing is sadly not very good though. If you chose mobo+cpu+ram it isnt clear what you get. I THINK youj get 4 used sticks of ram, but not sure if its 4x4gb or 4x16gb. Wish they had an uption to upgrade to 4x32 also!
I appreciate these hardware necromany episodes
imo this is the type of content that brought me to this channel in the first place xD ty for keeping x99 relevant in 2025
when I saw those boards months ago I was wondering when I would see your video about it. Good to see a late entry to the "weird 2011 board from aliexpress" series
Just when I declare X99 a dead platform, they pull me right back in with lower prices and more features!
😮
As nother european viewer I'd like to also emphasize the importance of information about power consumption: If the board uses just 30W more than a modern alternative, that difference will cost me more than the price of the motherboard PER YEAR to run. So the cost of running a homelab is incredibly power usage sensitive for us over here.
no way 30W! no way 30W will cost 100 quid a year
UK here, 30W would cost about £68 running 24*7*365. But more expensive electricity exists elsewhere.
I have this motherboard my system is using 135W in avage.
I live in Germany and 30 Watt would cost me 123 Euro (128 USD) running 24*365.
It would be like $70 in Poland and that's a lot. As a true central european country, we have eastern wages and western prices :D
I like this kind of hardware. Some people are on a very tight budget. For me it's a wonderful piece of hardware it has everything that i want.
Hey Jeff, what does the power consumtion look like for this system, minus the drives? This board is very interesting, but for us over here in Europe, eletricity bills are a factor not to be trifled with :) Seeing as it has so many things integrated, I would guess it draws less than a "normal" x99 motherboards + PCIe cards for networking and storage.
the 2680v4 is a 120w tdp chip on it's own, probably often running a bit above that. But yeah the integrated chips should draw less than pcie add in cards. Likely making it better than other x99 boards. But honestly if you're in a country with higher power costs realistically that's a bad comparison, and you should probably be comparing it to slightly more expensive newer components that are way more efficient. And just trying to work with a bit less expandability. Unless you need something this specifically offers. Paying just a bit more for a 10th gen intel i7 or Ryzen 7 3700x or a 12th gen i5 or Ryzen 5 5600 tier chips give you similar multithreaded performance; way more single threaded, and for less power
While not exactly the same spec my C612 based nas with HP Z440 mobo and a 250W 80+ Gold psu and 3 seagate exos x12 12TB consumes 50-60W. Keep in mind that for idle your cpu and ram don't matter much, at least for intel (in case of ryzen the difference in idle power usage between monolithic and chiplet designs is huge).
@@daymianhogue1634 - I think the more interesting potential is if you pair this with a Pi KVM that can physically turn the computer on from a powered off state, by jumping the pins on the motherboard (same as hitting the power button). This means you could leave the server powered off most of the time, and only turn it on as needed. You could have a really beefy, power hungry server for rendering, AI workloads, and automated backups, and just leave it turned off when you're not using it.
@@arthurwintersight7868 even then it's less performance, for more power... And that kind of strategy invalidates it's for a lot of uses, plus again you could add a similar kvm set up to the newer system too to gain the same benefits.
@@aluxannar what chip are you using to have that low of power consumption or is that idle power consumption? And hedt Intel systems usually use only slightly less than Ryzen chiplets at idle due to the ringbus. And it's still often not that much, to the point it really should only be a priority if you know youre gonna be at idle a ton relative to the active power usage differential.
12x 12 TB Drives for only $840 ?? You live in paradise man. Here in Sweden those same drives would cost me $1969 with shipping.
Theyre used
@@MrFl0rp still! In Germany: 139€ (~144USD) per old recertified Seagate 12TB Ironwolf or 12TB Enterprise Capacity so close to 1728USD as well
@RawmanFilm wow. Thats crazy.
😢
The refurbished HDD drive prices are going up after many youtubers started advertising serverpartdeals
Very timely video. I have been searching for a motherboard/cpu combo and you have reassured me on this combo. My only regret is I never should have sold my Node 804...
Oh, I have been looking at this for a while. I'm looking at adding a L cpu sku & using it as a media server.
Thanks for the review.
Love your choice of drink! Belgian Quads have a special place in my heart...
That's a really cool motherboard but the coolest thing I took away from this video was "Fractal is still producing the Node 804". Looks like they even updated the logo on the front panel.
I love that case, and I'm still using it for my own NAS. Just kinda wish it didn't have an acrylic window.
Thanks Jeff. My EPYC server died and I've been dragging my heels replacing it because everything is so expensive. But even I can afford $115. Power consumption was the only red flag but I can live with 80W idle. I can even use my existing RAM and case.
A 3900X would kick it into next week with half the power and wouldnt cost much more.
@@mycosys Show me where I can get an AM4+3900X for not much more than $115 which runs under 65W.
I have the exact same motherboard it have been running my Unraid server for the last 4 months without any problems. So I can recommend it.
I would also chime into the other comments asking for the idle and stress load power consumption. Do you have any rough data?
You mentioned plex. I'd like to see a video series on everything plex, from how to set up a streaming device to send media to an older HDMI supported TV, to VM installation and transcoding, etc. I don't know much about it, but I'd like to learn it.
Okay here's my pitch: My personal holy grail machine, the all in one-er of NAS / Forbidden Router / VM host do everything one-shot home server box! One machine to rule them all.
Thank you for this! I saw these the other day but didn’t want to roll the dice, think I will now!
..an idle power consumption is always welcome
I expect this to draw at least 80-90watts idle without any drives, probably more
Yes..if 90wats is correct this is useless for a Server these days
It’ll be AT LEAST 80W. With a 8 core v4 CPU the lowest I can get on an Asus X99 is 80W with 1 DIMM, 1 SATA SSD and no video.
@@zstation64the lowest I've seen is 75w so this lines up with my experience
😂
Hey Jeff, thanks a lot for the video! This is the content I like most.
Just picked up a Node 804, (New opened box) for under $100au. MB and RAM on order. This will be just the thing to tidy up all my family Intel NUC's running Plex, Proxmox VM's, Filtering. Might even see if adding a 2nd dual NIC will allow me to move my pfsense to a vm setup. Excited for this series if it follows through - Thanks Jeff 🙂
Aaaaaand bought. This will hopefully replace my "old" (it's only a few months old) server/NAS build which was also a Craft Computing video - the Erying board with a built-in mobile CPU. The board I got has an i7-11700 and it's been good, but this one will allow me to have more RAM and actually be able to utilize one or more of the PCIe slots for a GPU. Not to mention the 2.5 gig networking.
and how does it work for you ??
is your VGA output working ??
at least i found driver for Windows just to test Hardware if its working
for sure it will run Proxmox afterwards..
@@bernhardmeisriemel6080 The VGA output does work, which is good because the GPU that I plan on installing only has mini DP which is not a cable I keep on-hand (and I"m going to blacklist the drivers from being loaded to pass it through to a Jellyfin docker or LXC container anyway). I can't speak to functionality in Windows because I essentially just swapped the mobo out and installed my 2x NVMe drives on the new one and Proxmox never missed a step outside of some network interface oddities due to going from 1x onboard gigabit ethernet ports to 2x 2.5 gigabit ports.
@@cease70 yeah Drivers are all fine in Windows aswell you have just to install standard Intel Network drivers at first ;)
the same would be for me Proxmox will never see my dedicated card but as long i cant get the ASPEED VGA to work it will not happen...
i hope Support can help me here aswell or i have to send the Board Back ;(
if you dont mind could you sent me Firmware Versions that are used on your board ?
at least i got a newer Version of the Board compared to Craft Computings Version
i run same motherboard and buy 2 and put inside Jonsbo N5 case. 2 Node NAS kinda nice for my Home Lab needs. Setup already running 3 month non stop so far works find with my SAS pcie card.
I don't even need this and its caught my eye.
I could see this being an AMAZING little second pc for streamers, pair it with a b580, capture card and a few tb of storage for recording the stream to later edit the videos or upload the vod at higher resolution
I have an 804 that's been sitting on the shelf for a few years. I've mocked up several builds, but never pulled the trigger. This might be the one that I go all in.
About 2 years ago, I bought a Lenovo RD450X motherboard on AliExpress. Dual Xeon v3/v4 (C612 Chipset), with dual 10Gb Base-T + 1Gb for IPMI (with VGA output). 2x SAS output + 2x SATA 3 ports. Worked very well until recently, when I tried to upgrade the CPU and the MB stopped working 🥲 at that time, the price was about $150 for the MB only.
Xeon silver and Xeon gold CPUs are getting very cheap, it'd be great if you could make a video about AliExpress motherboards for these newer chips 😃
I have this series of drive. They have a version that don’t require to block pin 3 or do any mods to drive or the PSU they just works
I recommend to check them out before buying to make sure you get the right version
How common is this issue? I have my eyes on some Seagate Exos drives and this is the first I've heard of this problem.
thank you for the info, very valuable
@@AidenPryde3025 I always use exos drives for my home NAS and they last for years without any problem, on Amazon the 8TB is the sweet spot brand new.
@@AidenPryde3025
Very common especially on enterprise drive but if WD has version that requires this I think everyone has one
Thanks for the review!
Although I purchased the BKHD X99 board, this seems like the better option. Those extra DIMM slots and PCIe lanes sure would come in handy.
Props. I can't even remember the last time I learned something new about non-gaming hardware from a RUclips video. I stay pretty current with that stuff. However, I was totally unaware of the 3.3v "feature" on enterprise drives, nor the simple fix for it.
this board/cpu at the price is so tempting. was just pricing out a budget am5 nas build which would be new and high power but just overkill for proxmox,plex, truenas
Looking at the same thing a AM5 proxmox/truenas build with some other smaller vm's/docker container for running my own internal dns, adblock but still running into the fact that AM5 ECC capable motherboards are hard to find or really expensive.
I run the same CPU in my p410 upgraded from the e5-1603 v4.
It seems perfect for a rtx 4060 or lower gpu's since I don't see a lot of performance loss compared to a lot of Benchmarks I've watched.
It can play pretty much everything at 1440p and recently Dead Island 2 at 4k at 80fps
The limitation so far is S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2 at 1440p on launch wich is a cpu killer .
The p410 with 2680 v4 with a 1060 rog strix cost 250$ for the whole system . Thanks Jeff for the Xeon info , its a great platform for a small budget that decimates any Acer nitro .
I wonder if you could get SATA cables that are right angled but come out sideways to the left and right so that there's enough clearance for a full sized GPU.
I built something smaller from Temu, and passed a NVMe drive (first one or it doesn't boot on proxmox), the usb controllers, an RTX 4060, and the onboard audio card to a windows 11 VM with Proxmox 8.3 running a virtual TPM. Surprisingly windows 11 is not concerned with this, and all seems to be working well. Be interesting if you can rep[licate on your server there.
My server is also in a Nod 804!! I love it!
Its currently setup with my old Ryzen 5 2600 running proxmox with a truenas vm with 3x 4tb nas hdds on an hba card
Im still looking for a slim line Blu-ray drive for the front panel
Weird overbuilt boards like this would be interesting for more power efficient platforms like socket 1151 but i guess we dont have enough pcie lanes for quiet that big of a feature set
More videos with this build would be awesome
Thanks for the Video.
I had this motherboard with the 2680v4 bundle in my Shopping cart for about four months and waited for a good review of it.
There is also a Version with 4 2.5g NICs now
Do you have the link? is from aliexpress? I'm looking for only motherboard (not the combo) but i can't find it
I have similar system at home, would love to see what you do with this build. I was looking to turn my NAS-ish machine into a multimedia editing station by adding a quadro P5000 or possibly an AI system with a couple of tesla P4's. Please continue making these types of videos.
all very interesting. I would like to understand the consumption of this configuration. both in idle and at full load. also you did not talk about optimized software on the nas side perhaps in eco mode if insertable. friend I ask you this because my asrock x99 has performance, normal and eco modes also based on the processor. and the consumption on server h24 we need to understand how to manage all that energy. a second episode where you talk about consumption and network transfer speed would be great, it would be really useful. as well as how to manage firewalls etc. thanks in advance
Great Case,
I managed to fit 10 3.5 drives and 2 2,5 SSD within the case.
If this board was Full ATX it could move those SATA ports lower and allow at least 1 full length 2-3 slot PCIe card. That & native SAS support would make this board a must purchase for a couple of projects I am working on.
nice build , only thing is i prefer hot swap drive bays with front access and backplane with mini sas connectors for clean install . other than that 100
it's so frustrating. on one side there are the older server parts that offer a proper number of pcie lanes but perform poorly and require lots of power compared to modern architecture. on the other side is modern consumer hardware with great performance and performance per watt but chronically skimp on pcie lanes. or one pays an arm and a leg and goes with modern workstation/server hardwre...
You don't need many lanes to drive HDDs. Especially if it's gen 4
@@vadnegru Many HBAs that still run SAS2008 or similar have PCI-E2.0 8x. if you have one that supports PCI-E3.0, x4 might suffice
The problem is pairing a GPU or literally anything else in one box.
@@badharrow i used 2,5gigabit pci-e 2.0 1x card for this reason, n100 has only a few lanes to spare. But has a nixe decode encode engine
riser cables so the pci 16x fits over the sata cables. or right angle cables etc. and power should be okish, intel idles pretty good most the time. save the cash and get 2x 2x4's and bolt all your parts to that save the money you spent on the case :P. I moved to just bolting my mobo to underside of my desk these days, no dust under there and cheaper anyway ^_^
Still very capable, but IMO the platform is on its last legs now. I'm going to be moving on to Skylake Xeon scalable this year.
It's not pretty, but you can clip the side of the sata and power connectors so they fit on a SAS drive. Have done it, and they've been working just fine for 4 years at this point.
Would love to see PCI risers and any shenanigans you can get up to with those
I purchased this board and I think I got a different revision. The 4 memory slots on the right of the CPU are alternate blue and black in color the two on the left are also black. Also the PCI slots layout out is different. The 8x is in between the two 16x slots and also the m.2 is squeezed in there between the x8 and the top 16x slot.
currently looking into the 3647 platform, found a few nice deals on used supermicro-boards and the xeon Gold seems to be dirt cheap; wonder how that compares to the 2011-3
that 3,2,1 Backup shirt is one of the most evil visual puns i have seen
Great video. Like others have said it would be good to test power consumption but also it would be good if you could test them to see what types of ECC RAM they support (REG, LRDIMM) as well as check whether the reporting works. I have read with some Ryzen boards correct memory errors but don't report them.
I was gonna say I get the urge to put three P4:s in that one. Oooor... five with two x16 to dual x8 adapters 😛
I am so here for this.
...but my pihole blocks the s.click.aliexpress link in the description :D
I would love to see your review of Huananzhi X10X99-16D.
Dual socket, 16 RAM slots (1TB of cheap DDR4 ECC?!) 5x8/16 PCIe slots, 2xNVMe, 2x 2.5Gbit NICs, 2xSAS connectors! 10xSATA. All that for ~170-200€
I forgot ASpeed 2600 for management and VGA output.
Power consumption? Happy New Year guys.
thank you so much. This is what I was looking for a long time now. I trust you with this and will replace my electricity hungry DL380. Just one question, is this one enough to host one Enshrouded Server and one Aska Server at the same time? And also a true nas server?
I am still on X99 for my main PC...part of me wants to "upgrade" to a 12+ core v4 CPU and the GPU and use it for a few more years.
Look for the Xeon E5-1681v3 10c cpu
Hey 👋 Merry xmas jeff greetings from 🇩🇰
I would love a product stack that fit somewhere between consumer ryzen (am4 or am5) cpus and threadripper/low end epyc cpus for homelab and smb uses. I dont need monster core/thread count chips with several hundred watt tdps per socket but I would love a platform that offered ~16 modern cores binned for efficiency with 32-64 pcie lanes and motherboards laid out to properly take advantage of that. My homelab is very well served by an 8 core ryzen 7 with a 35w tdp, but I am absolutely limited by the expandability of that setup
For a purely NAS budget build, I would consider an ASUS P9-C/4L with a pike 2108 over this; they can be had for under $100 used or just over $100 new on AliExpress. It supports Haswell E3-V3 Xeons and up to Core i7's (up to 8 threads, either way), dual channel ECC DDR3, comes with an aspeed VGA chip, has the option for IPMI (although, if you buy the adapter, at that point you're coming up on the $150 mark), front panel USB 3, etc. With the pike 2108, you have your choice of 6 SATA and 8 additional SATA/SAS capable ports without physically blocking any of the PCIe or PCI slots. The compromises, IMO, are: it is a full size ATX board, rather than mATX, no M.2 support and it doesn't have a POST code display; I can live without those, for the price.
The AliExpress special 🙌
Rather than block pins, I generally use molex to SATA connectors which seems to work well.
I should have chosen this mobo for my P40 GPU rig build. The AST2400 on this board would have saved me the headache of fitting another GPU just for a video output.
Did I miss the power usage or was it not shown?
Edit: Would love to see more information about power consumption with that board. Got a couple of 2630Lv3 that'd be perfect for this.
To disable the 3rd pin, you can also use a MOLEX to SATA adapter (1x to 4x) since the MOLEX connector doesn't power that pin.
But then you have a fire risk instead.
@ didn’t think about that since I use server backplates I don’t have that problem but that’s true of adapters.
Any similar boards but with more modern cpus for power efficiency?
I’ve only found the n305 and n100 boards but they will only do 6 onboard Sata and don’t have pcie. Would love it if there was a more modern version like this one though in the same form factor
Building this server in an old Antec Sonata case that holds 8 drives. With 128 GB for RAM and some parts I already have I am in for < $250.
Love the content and think this board fits my need nicely. Problem I've run into is I've tried two of them on on both of them the onboard LAN ports won't show active when plugged into my USW-Flex-XG switch. All of the ports on the switch work when connected to other NICs, but absolutely will not show active when connected to the onboard ports on this board. I don't believe I ended up with two bad boards, but I keep trouble shooting away and just cannot find a solution.
I ordered this board combo from AliExpress to upgrade my Unriad home NAS. I have all 6 dimm slots filled total 96G of RAM. The BIOS recognized and confirmed 96G RAM, but in the Unraid dashboard it saying I have 64G RAM installed but 96G available for use😀. Very strange.
X99 for life. i feel like intel could get on track if they got back into HEDT.
Great video, thanks Jeff, what is the power consumption like with this combo? Cheers.
Nice video, now there is newer version of this motherboard available with 4 x 2,5Ghz!
Finally you release some good content again.
Great build! But that made me remember of the absurd import taxes of my country!
I'm better work like no tomorrow, because if I dream of build any these I may pay 92% directly to government. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!
I actually just bought this exact board. Did you have any issues getting the on board nics working? I cant seem to get them to work with debian but i havent tried anything else. Maybe proxmox would be better but isnt that built on debian?
Did you get it resolved?
@homelabaddict1 I ended up installing alma Linux and that worked but I think it was actually a pcie network card that wasn't working. I thought it was and got the onboard confused with the pcie card. Anyway I think it was all user error haha
wow... been looking what to put into my Fractal case... I have 2 x LSI 8i controllers, a dual port x520 and dual port x226...
8 x 12TB Seagate Ironwolf drives and 2 x SSD's.
using this (current board Gigabyte+GA-B250M-D3H / Intel Core i5-7400 @ 3.00GHz) i can shelve the i226 and one of my LSI controllers and only install the 10GbE x520
allowing me to put one or 2 drives on the MB side on the bottom, taking me to 10 drives, i might have a idea to place 2 drives in caddies that fit into the rear pci blanking plate slots. the cpu, is also big big improvement it seems for me over my current i5... I only run Truenas and Plex and MinIO.
I see computers and belgian beers, proud belgian guy here xD
wow very nice, what is the highest end CPU you could install on that motherboard?
2699v4. 22 core 44 thread. I have just ordered this motherboard with a 2698v4 20 core CPU for my backup unraid server.
@@dieseldes6578 thx
Certainly an interesting board.
I have a 5820k in a dead board, I wonder if I could repurpose it for this kinda thing.
im from germany and cant find the board on aliexpress. The Link doesn't work for me. can you provide the unshortened link to the board?
Does this board have tpm 2 header?
Currently running a X99-D8 with a E5-2630V3 running proxmox + 5 vms inc Blue iris, Linux, truenas, openwrt and HA. 2 x GPU (1 for pass thru Plex),1 x 10G and 1x HBA, 6 x 3.5" drives and 3xSSD 2.5" drive + 1 x NVME. idles (with my normal workload) @ 130W. Wouldnt take much of an overall power saving to man maths justify a swap - shame I cant buy without CPU or RAM - I dont need a CPU TDP uplift. the X99 D8 has been rock solid but no HBA and an extra NVME......
Can you bifurcate the PCIe x16 slots to be four x4 lanes? So you can use the four port NVMe card? You mentioned the card but not the layout.
Yes, bifurcation is supported on all three PCIe slots.
okie dokie - next video series… now add (1) home brew SFF router with PFsense/OPNsense, (2) DNS service and add-blocker, and (3) 2.5gbe switch. there ya go - desktop homelab and full network mgt and sys-admin playground.
Out of curiosity : Why were the first parts of the HDD barcodes/numbers blurred out?
warranty purposes i think
You stated that 1st gen Ryzen puts the 2680 v4 "on-notice" in multi-threading, then show that the 3700X (4th gen Ryzen) just narrowly beats it in multi-core performance.
Context is important. When the Ryzen 1700 launched, it was only a couple percentage points slower than Intel's 5980X, and it was faster than the Xeon 2667 v3, both of which were 8-Core / 16-thread parts.
The comment about the Ryzen 3700X is stating that AMD's Zen 2 8-Core CPU is faster in multithreading than Intel's 14-Core chip, and if you need fast single threaded performance, the 2680 v4 may not be your best bet.
Hey there, great video! I'm looking to build a NAS like the one you showed to store movies for streaming on Plex. Would that be a good setup for me? I'm new to Linux, so I'm wondering if it's the best route, or if I should go with a pre-built solution like Synology. Any advice is appreciated!
if i had the money i'd love to have a little hobby machine.
This would go well into a ZhenLoong-X86 case.
I got of one, one correction - Its not 2 x full x16 pci express slots. Its x16. x8 x8 with the 2x m.2 using the the last 8x lanes. Looks like all the pch lanes are going towards the onboard devices. Built this for an AI node. As for all the questions on power consumption - this setup with the cpu even idling at 85w (like mine currently is) the power usage over 2 years still doesnt add up to the cost of a motherboard to support a more power effiecient cpu for my workload. Well in Canada with our dogshit dollar. Any epyc boards out there are at least 1k+ CAD plus taxes, duty, shipping ect before adding a cpu.
203 CAD shipped to my door, and maybe 400 to run this for a year. still well under the extra 1000$ id spend on something more modern which would still chew up 150-250 a year in power. No, power in my area is not cheap by any stretch of the imagination either.
What would you recommend if lights out management is desired? Something like jetkvm?
Hey don't know if anyone can help me here but I purchased this combo cpu ram mobo. It boots and seems to operate fine however I'm getting a ff post code and motherboard won't stop beeping
Would this make a good plex server or maybe just a nas storage for the plex server to access?
Overkill for most users unless your transcoding a ton of stream simultaneously but it's certainly up to the job.... Power consumption might be a worry though
This is the first I've heard of the pin issue on hard drives and consumer power supplies. How do you know if you need to tape those pins off?
Because they won't spin up when Pin 3 is connected. Pin 3 supplies 3.3v off consumer power supplies, while it's only supplied momentarily on server backplanes.
@@CraftComputing Sorry, should have been more clear. How do I know that any potential hard drives need the pins taped before I buy them?
😮
This is an interesting board. The listing is sadly not very good though. If you chose mobo+cpu+ram it isnt clear what you get. I THINK youj get 4 used sticks of ram, but not sure if its 4x4gb or 4x16gb. Wish they had an uption to upgrade to 4x32 also!
They make it pretty clear you get 4x 16GB sticks.
Honestly, the RAM combo isn't a great deal. I'd shop for that on eBay, or another seller on Ali. But the Board and CPU are an amazing value.
try xeon e5 2697A v4 if the vrm can keep up with it please
well, at 36 cents/kWh where i live, this would cost far too much to run 24/7. i guess its an n100 and a 2 drive raid 1 for me...