I couldn’t help myself. I got one for 90. Might be the fall before I get time to do anything with it. I think my overall goal will be to down size and mainly improve on energy efficiency.
If anyone finds good deals on boards for this please post them. Right now I’m thinking Intel 11th or 12th gen.
Most motherboards have an onboard M.2 NVMe slot if they are fairly current. 10Gb is nice, but not usually necessary on a build this small. 25Gb and 40Gb are definitely not going to happen.
I bought two of these (I might buy a third) for my builds. Going to steal some CPUs from my HP290 farm and use some DDR4 SODIMM I have lying around.
I also bought 2 of these to use as boot drives.
What’s up with the back? No space for a fan? or does that cover come off?
No need for a fan in the rear. There’s one in the front, under the drive cage with a duct.
I have this exact board and I also ordered this case. Interested to see what you end up building with this.
The board presents an interesting challenge with the USB C header on board. Ive not come up with a good way to use it yet. Maybe you will and you will share that with me.
What do you mean with the USB-C header onboard?
See here - X11SCV-Q | Motherboards | Products | Super Micro Computer, Inc.
There is no traditional USB 3.0 header on this board. It has a USB-C rear panel connector thats really only useful with the part I have found here - Supermicro CBL-CUSB-0835 USB 3.1B Key to USB 3.0A Female x2 55cm Cable Ive just not found a good way to use it. its just not connected to anything right now.
Im hoping the chenbro case has standard USB 2.0 connectors so that I can just connect them to the board instead. The Node 304 I currently have this board in does not have USB 2.0 connectors for the front panel.
This cable should do the trick. I don’t see much value in front USB or USB in general on a NAS, though.
Dang, wish I would have read this before I bought an AS Rock B365M-ITXac:
https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B07MW8S89F
Besides the additional LAN port, any other benefits to the Supermicro board?
Pickup 2 Chenbro @ $85 each.
I already have 2 x Chenbro NAS build , my feeling is love and hate this chassis.
Cooling is not that good, strange air flow pattern,
Solid construction, no issue with hot swap bay and tray.
But at the current market, it is a good deal.
3 Years ago, I purchased 2 units @ $95 each at Amazon.
Reason for purchase
I have few z490 itx boards, looking for housing.
I’d take Supermicro over ASRock any day, from a brand perspective.
Aside from that, the SATA DOM port is nice, it dual NIC (most people don’t need it). The Supermicro also uses SODIMM RAM, which can be a good or a bad thing. I have a bunch laying around, so that was convenient for me.
vPro can be used like a lite IPMI. Need a proper processor though. 8500 and 9500 are supported I believe.
Aaah, I see, thanks!
So if I were to switch I’d have to return/replace both mobo and RAM. 
https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B086X2W2MJ?th=1
Interesting!
Planning on i5-8500T, which I believe supports it, based on the Ark page:
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/129941/intel-core-i58500t-processor-9m-cache-up-to-3-50-ghz.html
Intel vPro® Platform Eligibility: Yes
Ive been using this to interact with vPro on my i5 8500 - Open Software Projects - MeshCommander
Free and opensource. Works well through my testing so far.
Wow, that seems pretty neat, thanks!
Will the 2.5 slots fit the thicker SAS drives? I’m on my mobile and having a hard time finding info.
They should not have any problem fitting 15mm drives, but I’m sure someone can confirm this.
Only built a tower desktop before. I’m looking to use this for Plex and media servers. Would this be a good newbie NAS?
It’s just a case and a power supply. It’s not a NAS until you fill it with supporting hardware.
4 bays is a decent start, but fairly limiting since you’ll use at least 1/4 of that space for parity in case of drive failure. Mini-ITX motherboards are generally more expensive than larger ones. Expansion to add more drives is pretty painful as well.
You can certainly get it done with this, but you may outgrow it quickly.