Motherboard for NAS - XPEnology

[tfboy]

I'm potentially looking at changing my current HP N40L Microserver to something that supports more SATA ports.
I don't really need a mahoosive CPU as I'm not doing and live transcoding, the emphasis is more on something that's frugal in power consumption but supports at least 6 drives.

Size-wise, there are a few uATX boards that look tasty, I did come across the Supermicro A2SDi-8C-HLN4F that looks good with 8+4 SATA ports. There is also an ASrockc2750d4i board, but apparently plagued with issues and dies after a year / 18 months.

Case-wise, I'd probably go for the Silverstone DS380B if I end up with a uATX board.

All of this is to run xpenology, so a strong preference for Intel chipsets and NICs.

[Spreadie]

If you don't need the extra power, can't you just buy a HBA or RAID card for the N40L and fit something like an Icy Dock ExpressCage to add four to six 2.5" drives to the 5.25" bay?

[tfboy]

Thanks Spreadie. But I really want to stick to 5.25" drives.
I actually have a p410 raid hba with 512MB battery cache which supports up to 8 drives. It's finding space for them in the N40L case that's the problem, hence looking at other enclosures.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

These used to be £100 and is mini-ITX if you want to keep to a compact form factor and spend less money:
https://www.asrock.com/MB/Intel/H370M-ITXac/index.asp

6 SATA ports and dual Intel GbE LAN. You could use a Core i3 8100T - they were £65 on CEX. If a graphics output isn't required,a Core i3 9100F is not too expensive new. It will have a free PCI-E slot for any additional cards,if you want to support more drives.

[tfboy]

Thanks Cat, that's a pretty good option!

[tfboy]

The other option which looks really nice is the Supermicro a2sdi-8c-hln4f but stock seems sketchy and it's a little pricey, but 12x SATA ports and a half-decent 8 core low power CPU is perfect.

[Bonebreaker777]

Thanks Spreadie. But I really want to stick to 5.25" drives.
I actually have a p410 raid hba with 512MB battery cache which supports up to 8 drives. It's finding space for them in the N40L case that's the problem, hence looking at other enclosures.

Couldn't you get another N40L (aren't they stackable?) with a non-functional motherboard and use the case as an enclosure?

[Spreadie]

The Gen7s aren't really stackable - the Gen8s are.

[tfboy]

Thanks all. I've forked out for the Supermicro board in the end. Found a reseller in Germany who had stock Ordered some mini-SAS breakout cables to go along as I don't have enough I can pinch from my N54L. (It was an N54L I've used, but still have older N40L lying around)

[Spreadie]

I keep threatening to grab an old Gen7 and attack it with a Dremel, to fit a modern(ish) ITX board in there.

I have no reason to - already have a couple of ITX servers - I just really want to.