David
B.L.U.F. - This hardware is amazing... if you can afford it, BUY IT!
I ordered this to replace my virtual pfSense firewall, running on ESXi. Yes, I understand it is overkill for a home pfSense firewall, and my wife agrees with you. Although, it is not cheap, it is an amazing piece of hardware. I plan on buying two more to replace the two Dell R710's in my home/production/lab environment (I promised the wife, that I would not buy them, until the R710's stopped working or broke first). I wont be able to afford to keep the same amount of ram in the servers, but I will be able to reduce my electricity bill, and this E300-9D-8CN8TP is significantly more quiet than the R710's, even with the smaller fans... and they generate less heat. It does not have the same storage capacity, but that is of little concern because I have a NAS that will compensate for the lack of storage. The network ports on this thing.... are STUPID AWESOME... I run a 10 gig backbone at the house, and having both 10gb ethernet and spf+ available, at two ports each is just amazing. With link aggregation, I can vMotion 17 VM's from one server to the other in about 80-90 seconds.
I only have 2 complaints... the rackmount kit doesn't come standard, I understand... that I am special case, and it would be a waste of money on SuperMicro's end to including it as standard... still I am going to complain about it... and my second complaint... there is no active CPU cooler that I can find, that will fit in the included case. There is alot of technology packed into this small form factor... there is a real NEED to have active cooling supported for this CPU/motherboard. When I buy a replacement for my R710... it is going to generate some heat... my host CPU stays between 60-70% utilization... The Noctua NH-L12S wont fit in the included case. I bought one and I am just looking at it, looking at me, from inside the box, because it wont fit in the case... don't get it unless you plan on making modifications to your case, or unless you plan on putting this in a different case altogether. I am thinking about taking a Dremel to the top of my case to make an opening for it, but that wont be suitable for most users. I have not made any modifications to my case yet... and to be honest, I don't plan to... it runs warm, but I can't justify voiding my warranty... just yet. Most of us "Power Users" don't care about voiding our warranties anyways.
Again... this is an amazing device, if you can afford it, it is defiantly worth the cost.
| Standing screen display size | 5 Inches |
|---|---|
| Max Screen Resolution | 1920x1080 |
| Processor | 8032 |
| Memory Speed | 2400 MHz |
| Hard Drive | SSD |
| Graphics Coprocessor | ASPEED AST2500 |
| Chipset Brand | Intel |
| Card Description | Dedicated |
P. Larsen