[Guide] Anniversary 2.0 "SNAFU" - Server Needs a Friggin' Upgrade

It’s hard to imagine something being too big to fit in the Rosewill. I feel like I could park my car in it.

Doesn’t sound like it makes sense to switch the D30 out of its case. If eventually I end up needing more than 6-8 3.5" drives, I’ll sell it and start fresh in the rackmount case.

RSV-4100 is only listed to support up to ATX. Has anyone actually tried E-ATX inside?

Also, anyone have experience mounting an x16 GPU in a rack chassis? Most, if not all, show low profile pcie.

I fixed that, it is indeed ATX.
I’m not sure what you mean though as far as a GPU, 3U and 4U chassis are full height PCIe.
Also, why do you need a GPU?

Heavy Plex use. Unless the xeons have Quicksync? Have a 1060 lying around I can use so pretty much zero cost.

And Amazon is showing low profile only for the 4100, even though it’s 4u. Typo on their part? The Rosewill site isn’t clear on bracket height.

A $92 QuickSync box is just about zero cost. That 1060 is probably worth more on the used market!

Keep in mind that starting with 6-8 drives seems like a good idea. And it might very well be fine for you. Though, I can tell you from experience, it is easy to go from 5 drives to 30. Too easy. Lol.

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30 sounds great to me. I have 6x8TB and 6x2TB drives at the moment I think, only using 3x8TB though. Would prefer if I could be using all the drives I own, but I’ll make do with just the 8TB ones for now. Will use the 2TB ones in my old server. Maybe just to backup pics or something.

minorest of corrections.

it’s spelled “gammaxx” not “gammax”

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Were the LGA 1150 and 1156 pages of the motherboard spreadsheet deleted or are they new and not filled in yet? 1155 could be added too.

Those pages are not relevant to this guide.

Is it possible to fit this Server+pfSense build in the Rosewill server case?

I’m looking for some feedback on this build. They told me in Discord to drop it in the forums, so here you go.

Component Selection
Case Phanteks Enthoo Pro
Motherboard Supermicro X9DRD-7LN4F-JBOD
CPU Xeon E5-2650 v2 (x2)
Cooler Supermicro SNK-P0050AP4 (x2)
RAM 32 GB (4x8) PC3-14900 Reg ECC 1866MHz
Power Supply EVGA 650 GQ or better if cheaper at EVGA B-Stock

I’m debating starting with just one CPU to start but it’s not really that much more. Does this look like everything will work together ok? Any feedback on this specific motherboard? Thanks in advance for any help.

Just be careful, the x9drd I bought doesn’t support v2 cpus so I have a v1 on the way to allow me to flash the bios. Cheapest v1 is like $5 so not a big deal.

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So I was looking at THIS one. It says the motherboard ships with BIOS 2.0. Does this support the E5-2650 v2? I don’t want to assume that just since they’re both v2 that they will work together. Are you going to run both processors or just one for now?

The listing’s pictures show the board to be rev 1.02 which does not support V2 processors unless it has been RMAd.

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Yeah, I’ll have to check. It does say that the board in the photo isn’t what would ship. At the same time I see that the BIOS 2.0 comment wasn’t from the seller. It was in the review. Thanks for the heads up.

Both the BIOS and the hardware revision of the board must support V2.
Not one or the other, but both.

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@bob Where can I go to find out what board revision supports v2 chips? I looked at the motherboard manual and didn’t see anything on it. Sorry for being so dense.

It has been a while since I did the research myself, and I don’t recall a solid source of absolute truth.

I do recall that rev 1.11a and after had the hardware support for v2 processors, and that those with older revisions could RMA them and Supermicro would update them, so it is possible for older boards to support v2 chips, but only if the seller can verify it has had this modification.

BIOS can be updated on any hardware supported board, but you may need a v1 processor to do the update.

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