I’m sorry to disappoint you, in that this is a consumer motherboard. So yes, AMD PSP exists, no iLO.

However, that’s where the bad part ends.

Behold, what is in my opinion, the most server-like MicroATX board released to the consumers: the MSI PRO B550M-VC WIFI Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard/alternate link.

If you followed the link and read the specifications you would know exactly what I’m talking about, but for people who didn’t, here is the summary:

  • 4 x16 ports (3 of them work at x1 speeds, the one closest to the CPU is PCI Express 5.0 x16).
  • 8 SATA3 ports (people who wanted to build a NAS should be visibly salivating at this point).

Apart from that, there are 2 nice features that I would personally like to point out, as I look for these features in every board:

  • 128GB of RAM supported (no ECC, and I suppose a lot of motherboards support it now, but nice to have).
  • A 2230 E-key slot.
    • I know a few of you might be wondering why I’m mentioning the slot used for a WiFi card in this post - I invite you to take a look at this.
      • It’s a link to an Aliexpress item, so if you don’t want to click, here’s a short version: It’s an E-key to 2.5Gbe converter, using a Realtek RTL8125B chip. It’s amazing, I learnt about these adapters from a random Level1Techs video. I think a lot of people could use this.

And there you have it. If you’re building a system that requires heavy PCIe access and a lot of SATA3 storage, I think this is the best value you can find when purchasing new.

Cheers

  • krolden@lemmy.ml
    2·
    1 year ago

    If it’s old, it’s not efficient.

    Efficiency is relative. I’m not suggesting you get a high clock much core server chip (though you could technically limit the clock speed and TDP and it would use as much power as a typical desktop) as there’s plenty of low power options that are ‘old’ (read:~4 years old is not that old). Maybe look into some Xeon-D embedded boards solely for your storage system. Many of those boards were made specifically for storage appliances. They can also be had pretty cheap on ebay or wherever.

    If it’s new, it’s prohibitively expensive.

    I’d say $120 is too expensive for this motherboard. Seems like it should be ~$60 with those specs and not to mention it being last gen. So even though you’re buying new you have an upgrade ceiling so why not buy a year or two older gear with more features and expansion.

    Consumer hardware solves both of these problems. Yes, we don’t have iLO, but if someone is really motivated, they can use PiKVM. I am yet to figure out if I can run PiKVM without the hats on a different SBC but I think it can be done.

    FYI iLO is HPs out of band (IPMI) implementation. PiKVM is definitely cool but its just adding more cost and another point of failure in your setup.

    For me personally, I’ll be using said board in a NAS. With this board, I would no longer need an LSI HBA hogging my x16 port, which means if I ever decide to train ML models, I can get a GPU for myself.

    If you want to train models and other gpu compute stuff like that, I would definitely shoot for a more current gen box just for that. In my (good) opinion, you should not run heavy compute loads on a server that is also serving/backing up your data,

    I do not see why I absolutely need ECC memory for a NAS. I’m not going to store PBs of media/documents, it’ll likely be under 30TB (that’s a conservative estimate). I thought ECC memory is a nice-to-have (this is no enterprise workload).

    ESPECIALLY if you’re not going to use ECC memory. No reason to put your important data at risk of corruption like that. I highly recommend holding out for something simple with DDR5 and a discrete GPU of your choosing for any actual compute workloads like that.

    Prices for newer hardware like this may fall before you’re even ready to build this system, so keep that in mind. You’ll also have a much easier time selling it over older gen hardware in the future if you change your mind about whatever.

    A 2230 E-key slot.

    from original post. why would you want to do this in a server? if you got a different board with sockets that werent x1 you could just get a 2.5gbe card… or you know, 10gbit.