Hardware recommendations

[denmalley]

Hey all, I've been running xpenology for about 7 years now, at the time I had acquired a Dell t30 at a great bargain of around $300 USD and this hardware has been serving me well throughout this time.  Back then, the search that lead me to xpenology was in the vein of "what software can I use with my hardware."  Now I'd like to reverse the search and find hardware that best fits the software. 

 

What would this community recommend for me to find a baremetal option:

 

In the $300-$500 USD range. 

No OS or HDDs needed.

Willing to upgrade memory, but looking to land at 32GB, ECC compatibility preferred.

Room for up to 8 HDDs preferred, but can live with 4, if there's room to squeeze in a SSD as a 5th drive. 

Not too noisy

 

Even just a few second-hand model recommendations, or links to vendors/ebay sellers to keep an eye on would be most helpful.  I'm also willing to build from mobo/cpu combos.

Edited March 6, 2024 by denmalley

[Fox Mulder]

Here's a AMD option (5xxx, 4xxx, and 3xxx Ryzen) with ECC support AND 8 SATA Ports:

https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/PRO-B550M-VC-WIFI/Overview

 

There are plenty of (intel or AMD) motherboards that would give you 8 SATA ports, but as for ECC - most will accept ECC RAM but will use it in non-ECC mode..

For that I think you'll need to go to industrial boards, or server boards.

 

Here's a list of standard consumer motherboards with 8 SATA boards: https://pangoly.com/en/browse/motherboard?extra=SATA6Ports%3A8%2C10&sort=low