Compare Local Supermicro Options

Looking at two servers locally:

Supermicro X9SRA, 1x 2.6 GHz 8c Xeon E5-2670 & 64 GB RAM, no drives $400cad

vs.

SuperMicro X8ST3, i7 950, 24gb ram, 4x 1TB Hard drives $300cad

#1 looks pretty close to one of the threadrunner? builds, and is my preference. Any opinions before I pull the trigger on either of these? From what I can tell, the X9SRA is a superior board, with a much better processor included. Both machines come in tower boxes, but I’ll be getting the small rosewill rack enclosure (R4100?) to install in my rack at home.

FWIW, my main goal is an unRAID based NAS setup mainly for plex, with dockers for torrent, VPN, etc. I’ve never had a dedicated machine before, so I’m really looking forward to having couchpotato and the other apps all set up, playing nice and running smoothly. I also want to dabble with VMs for pihole and whatever else interests me. I’d like this setup to last me a while before having to upgrade, giving me time to accumulate some data and bigger drives.

Just checking that the $400 box is looking like the better bet.

JD

X9SRA is a much better board. Avoid the other, older one IMO.

The man himself! Thanks, that’s what I was thinking too. Thank you for all the resources you’ve out together, I really appreciate all the info you have provided and consolidated in one place!

2 Likes

More Ram, better CPU, better upgrade options. #1 for sure