Here is my config. I use the i5-7500 and can say that it’s pretty good. It’s in the main node of my proxmox cluster that hosts my NAS VM and main Docker instance with lots of containers. Average power consumption is about 65-70W.
I started out with just this node as a standalone server so it has everything. I got a FD Define R5 case because it can hold lots of drives. Define R7 is recommended too. R6 isn’t because its generation is the only one using its own HDD trays (IIRC). Overall, they are the best NAS tower cases. Sound-proofed and every HDD is mounted with gromets. I use a Seasonic Focus PSU because they come with a lot of HDD power connections out of the box and I don’t need to daisy-chain.
This is the 4th iteration of this machine and the item I’ve carried over since v1 is the HBA. (RAID card in IT mode). It removes the requirement of the MB to have a high amount of SATA connections. The whole card is passed through in my NAS VM.
What I’m planning to do is to add a NIC. Not sure 4x1GbE or 2x10GbE. Or maybe both. With them, the power usage might go in the mid 80s but that’s fine for a machine that can be a hypervisor, a docker server, a NAS and a network appliance all in one. The downside is that if you reboot it, you lose the network for a while.
Additionally, I got two Lenovo Tiny 920q that run my experimental stuff. They are purely for compute and for HA failover in case the main node fails.
Kudos to you sir. I’m first to jump against RPi in homelab posts but this is on a whole other level. I think everyone would love a detailed explanation on it.
The Compute blade comes to mind and I’m drawing parallels between them. AFAIR, the compute blade does power and management over the front ethernet port. Which requires the PoE stuff to be there too. Does your backplane simplify the boards (and make it the project cheaper)?