So I recently upgraded my NAS’s hardware to an AM4 platform using a spare 3950x i had not doing anything. I picked up an MSI B550 board to do it because it had 8 SATA slots and a 2.5G Ethernet.
Long story short, this board isnt enough for what im trying to do. I had to put in an intel nic in it as well as a dedicated GPU and dont have room for any more expansion cards. I didnt think the PCIe slot speed limitation would play much of a role, but it has.
Also the limited number of PCIe Slots is a problem with the 3950x not having an GPU integrated, meaning i cannot use my 1060 (in truenas) for video transcoding because it has to reserve it for monitor output.
So, im looking to ‘sidegrade’ my motherboard into something more capable. I’ve seen the existence of server level boards with onboard gpu’s, but the only one ive seen really is from AsRock and the feedback on them seems to be kind of hit or miss.. not to mention the specific cooler requirements for it.
Is there a board that anyone here would recommend as a replacement that i has (at least) 8 SATA, and enough PCIe lanes/speed to run my 10g NIC, 1060 GPU and (if no integrated graphics) a 2nd GPU card (which would be the ‘screen’ card) that my 3950x and 128GB of ram (and 500gb m.2) would go into?
Thanks.