Building a Server for Home Lab
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I am looking to a build a server for my home lab. I will likely run XenServer on it.
The problem is am not a hardware guy at all, so I don't really know what to get =P
My goals for this build is to make it small and quite. Thinking about a Micro ATX Board, with a small cube case.
What brands motherboards do you recommend? Is Mirco ATX good, or should I be looking at a full size board?
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I run a MicroATX board with a cheap quad core AMD processor... it works well for what I do, most of the time... although there have been some headaches. The nice thing about XenServer is that you can get pretty much any hardware and it works great. I would recommend getting a board that supports a ton of RAM and a decent multi-core processor.
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I have been thinking about this board:
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/gigabyte-motherboard-gaf2a88xmd3h
- Micro ATX
- Supports up to 64GB of RAM.
- Has RAID (I don't intent to use it)
- OnBoard Ethernet 1 x 10/100/1000 Mbps
- ONBOARD USB 3.0 HEADER(S)
- 8 SATA 6 GB/S Connectors
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Onboard Video Depends on CPU? Does this mean that the CPU and GPU are a single chip?
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@anonymous said:
Onboard Video Depends on CPU? Does this mean that the CPU and GPU are a single chip?
Yes, the FM2+ processors are generally APUs.
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So then I need to order a CPU that supports video or I have to buy a video card correct?
For server usage I was hoping not to have to buy a video card
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I run my home lab on Intel NUC. Great little machine and power efficient. And I didn't have to worry about anything but RAM and SSD.
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@anonymous said:
Onboard Video Depends on CPU? Does this mean that the CPU and GPU are a single chip?
Yup. They have been doing this for a long time now. Both in the AMD64 world and in the ARM world, too.
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@anonymous said:
So then I need to order a CPU that supports video or I have to buy a video card correct?
For server usage I was hoping not to have to buy a video card
Get XS to output over serial so no video needed
have no tried this, but would be a great way to go. All our servers always have IPMI so not an issue. -
@anonymous said:
I have been thinking about this board:
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/gigabyte-motherboard-gaf2a88xmd3h
- Micro ATX
- Supports up to 64GB of RAM.
- Has RAID (I don't intent to use it)
- OnBoard Ethernet 1 x 10/100/1000 Mbps
- ONBOARD USB 3.0 HEADER(S)
- 8 SATA 6 GB/S Connectors
Gigabyte makes me nauseous. Avoid like a plague. I know theses are recommended all over the internets, but the main user base are hobbyists, teenage gamers, overclockers and the likes. I've built thousands of PCs before, on all kinds of mainboards, and nothing gave me more headaches than Gigabyte products.
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For a home user type system, the onboard Video most Motherboards have is probably just fine. Nothing fancy needed.
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@marcinozga said:
Gigabyte makes me nauseous. Avoid like a plague. I know theses are recommended all over the internets, but the main user base are hobbyists, teenage gamers, overclockers and the likes. I've built thousands of PCs before, on all kinds of mainboards, and nothing gave me more headaches than Gigabyte products.
What do you recommend then?
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I've never had anything but good luck with Asus myself.
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@anonymous Personally I'd go with Intel NUC, but I don't know what are your requirements. Perhaps you need more memory than you can put in NUC, or more disks. If you really want to build it yourself, I recommend Asus, Supermicro or Asrock Rack, don't buy Asrock desktop products.
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I have a Gigabyte board in place right now in my home server. No problems with it thus far.
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@coliver said:
I have a Gigabyte board in place right now in my home server. No problems with it thus far.
It's been a long time since I build a computer (been living on laptops), but the last two were both Gigabyte and other than a chipset fan going noisy the machines worked fine.
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@coliver said:
I have a Gigabyte board in place right now in my home server. No problems with it thus far.
And my brother-in-law is sending his Gigabyte mainboard for repair, because he didn't want free professional advice from family member, and instead relied on Tom's Hardware or similar board.
Every vendor has bad products and every vendor has good ones. In my experience, Gigabyte mainboards are problematic and require more time investment than others.
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Who makes a nice looking case?
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@marcinozga said:
@coliver said:
I have a Gigabyte board in place right now in my home server. No problems with it thus far.
And my brother-in-law is sending his Gigabyte mainboard for repair, because he didn't want free professional advice from family member, and instead relied on Tom's Hardware or similar board.
Every vendor has bad products and every vendor has good ones. In my experience, Gigabyte mainboards are problematic and require more time investment than others.
Agreed completely. I generally follow the whatever is cheapest trend... That Gigabyte board was inexpensive at the time and the Gigabyte board in my main desktop computer was also super inexpensive. Neither have had any problems. You're right though all companies have a failure rate I've just been lucky to have good experience with them.
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@anonymous said:
Who makes a nice looking case?
Lian-Li for example. Fractal Design are not bad either.
