Good ITX board with limited availability

[daquirm]

Man the worst build I can build bellow on commodity HW with dual ethernet costs 300 USD, I don't get, how UP is worse given the form factor, Intel NICs and power consumption....
Celeron g4900
Gigabyte b360n wifi motherboard
Kingston ddr4 2400mhz 4GB
Eurocase 300W SFX PSU
SilverStone SFF SG13-Q Sugo
WD Green 3D NAND SSD 120GB M.2

[daquirm]

Odroid H2 Might be a nice cheap sub itx platform for home use for those willing to risk Realtek NIC: https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-h2/

[harshw]

Still waiting for parts for my Supermicro build

X11SCL-IF
Xeon E-2126G
2 x 8GB Kingston DDR4 2667 ECC UDIMM
120GB M.2 SATA
Supermicro 350W PSU
Supermicro CSE-512L-260B Chassis
Intel 350-T4 V2

I got the motherboard and sadly, I had imagined using a SNK-P0046P heatsink and a passive blower - looks like this will not be possible as there's the DIMM slot and a small heatsink that interferes with this

Why Supermicro ? ? ? Oh Why ??!?!?!  >:( :(

[daquirm]

One of the reason I like Xeon D better, you just don't care about the heatsinks as they are integrated as well :) ...Supermicro has suggested heatsinks for each product for this it's: SNK-P0049A4 and SNK-P0046A4 and they use this passive one in their ready made builds SNK-P0049P...sometimes it's better to get inspired by the manufacturer...

[harshw]

I contacted SuperMicro for using passive heatsinks on the X11SCL-IF and they suggested I use the SNK-P0049P and not the SNK-P0046P, allegedly as it wasn't compatible. Long story short, I ordered the '49P heatsink and guess what I found?

]

They are identical in size!

HOWEVER - the newer heatsink is a LOT heavier (400 gms v/s 250 gms for the older one) and the fins are closer together, probably means one needs more static pressure from the fans. The newer heatsink is also better finished than the older one



I removed the paste that came with the heatsink and used Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut. Right now I have a CSE-512 case with a 92mm blower and the CPU is sitting at 30c with OPNSense doing nothing. Not a bad result I guess, will stress test the system and see how it goes.

[rungekutta]

Nice one! And yes it would be interesting to hear your experience of this setup under load, this is a TDP 80W CPU right? But with superb performance to boot, the equiv Xeon D costs $$$$

[harshw]

Nice one! And yes it would be interesting to hear your experience of this setup under load, this is a TDP 80W CPU right? But with superb performance to boot, the equiv Xeon D costs $$$$

Yes the build is as follows:

Mobo: X11SCL-iF
CPU: Xeon 2126G
RAM: 2 x Kingston 8GB ECC DDR4
SSD: ADATA 128GB M.2
Case: CSE-512L-260B
Cooler: SNK-P0049P

I purchased the case used from eBay for $30. Thanks to rebates and hunting for deals, the whole setup cost me around $700. A Xeon-D 1521 motherboard is $470-$500 so the cost of the E-2126G and the X11 motherboard is pretty much the same. I could have saved a bit by going with an i3-8100 and/or using normal RAM but decided not to. Also before blindly following Supermicro's advice or going by their website, I would have saved $50 on the new heatsink - had I noticed that the older SNK-P0046P has the same exact dimensions  :D

The reason for choosing the E-2126G over anything else was that I was given to understand hyperthreading hurts performance where network I/O is concerned c.f https://bsdrp.net/documentation/technical_docs/performance#disabling_hyper_threading.

The 2126G is the same CPU as the E-2136 without the hyperthreading. If you look at the benchmarks at servethehome - the Xeon E series are much faster than their Xeon-D counterparts (since they have 80W TDP and are based on Coffee Lake)



I used some foam pieces to (temporarily) create an airway for the blower. It seems to be working fine. And it is a LOT quieter than the 3  40x28mm Delta fans I had in there earlier.

[harshw]

All seems good, temps average 30c. Speeds without IPS/IDS turned on are good





HOWEVER - turning IPS on even with all the tunables, results in bad performance. I get 870/890 without IPS/IDs and with it, I get 460/2 - so need to check what's going on.

[Videopac]

Odroid H2 Might be a nice cheap sub itx platform for home use for those willing to risk Realtek NIC: https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-h2/

Realtek NICs aren't a risk anymore, since the use of new Realtek drivers a couple of years ago.
I have a Odroid H2 running for more than half a year now and had no issues at all.