At last the server is ready. Exchanged the mainboard with the SuperMicro board. Although it is now running “only” 16GB of RAM, it is ECC memory… So no more risk is broken ZFS pools.

Replacing the board was quite easy. I also took the opportunity to add a nice Noctua CPU cooler to the kit. Just a matter of preparing the board with the CPU, Memory and CPU-cooler. remove the MSI board and re-locate one spacer. Reconnect the wires and done.  Besides the benefit of ECC memory I also now have the access to IPMI, now I can control the fans and whatnot via a web-interface. Pretty interesting feature.

Additionally I have added a couple more 2.5" SATA SSD drives.

  • Kingston: 240 GB in use as log disks for the Mirror and Media pools
  • Crucial 240 GB as mirror in the boot pool.

In the end the complete list of hardware is:

Learned a lot and it turned out into a nice server, definitely one that is better then the trusted MacMini. Although the MacMini is it next life as the backup host at this location.

Running multiple streams via PLEX and even then the server is not breaking a sweat, both for the CPU and the temperatures.