Supermicro SuperServer SYS-E300-9D w/Intel Xeon D-2123IT, 2 x 10GBase-T 10Gb/s LAN

The Noctuna fans recommended by other reviewers are more quiet, but they move less than half the air. They are great for what they are, but the factory fans max out at 13krpm and have a 28mm barrel. The Noctuna fans top out at 5krpm and have a 20mm barrel. The thing I noticed was that in a 74F room, the PCH temperature was hanging near the warning threshold. I had a couple surprise power-offs during the initial boot because of overtemp.There is a place for 2.5" SSDs in the bottom of the case, but you have to move the plastic shroud, or poke through it. Not a big deal, but something to be aware of. There is room enough for 2 or more drives, but no mounts for it. There are 4x SATA ports, and one power port. You'll need a splitter.There is an oculink port which is SFF-8611/8612 and can split into 4 channels. Each channel can be SATA, or it can be a 4xPCI. Default is PCIe x4 mode, but JNS1 jumper can be moved to pins 2+3 to switch modes. The oculink 4i / 4x cable can go to an NVMe board for an M.2 connector, or it can go to a U.2 drive plug. None of these cables or adapters come with the system. I recommend a right-angle cable if you can find one.You can also install a single PCI riser board, or a right angle PCI board. Neither come with the system, but you can get the part RSC-RR1U-E8 on Amazon. The system comes with the bracket and screws for mounting the riser. You'll need to snap off the last section of the board to fit in the case. It's designed to snap with no tools, but you could use a small cut-off wheel to take the very last section if you wanted the dust. Opening the back panel of the case to allow the PCI card bracket to be installed is a little delicate. You will probably bend the case a little. Brace it against a block of wood to limit the flex, and use a screwdriver and hammer to tap it out next to the little bits of metal that hold the coverplate in place.The BIOS does support setting the PCI slot to x4/x4 bifurcation mode, and you can use the SuperMicro AOC-SLG3-2M2 adapter to plug two NVMe M.2 M-Key drives in. Alternatively, you could use just a single NVMe M.2 to PCIe riser and leave the everything closed up.Firmware update is a bit finicky. Just let it sit and do its thing silently for half an hour. If you rush it or interrupt it early, it never resumes, and the IPMI menus will be useless. If that happens, the update binary that you download can do the update for you over the LAN. BIOS update is simple and as expected.There is no audio port on the system. This is a server. If you use it for a workstation or a desktop, you'll want a USB audio card.There is no aux power for a graphics card. The case size is not really suited for workstation use, but you could put in something low power. It's PCIe 3.0 x8 slot, so it's usable. Really, just use what's on-board. This is a server, not a desktop.You can get a rack-mount rail kit, or an RJ45 serial cable kit if you like, but the IPMI web interface lets you use a remote console, as well as power on/off/reset. You can also mount virtual CD and floppy images for OS install.All of the documentation is available on SuperMicro's website. It's not new-tab capable website, so expect to use back navigation, or clone your tabs to get everything downloaded if you are a packrat.The orange SATA plug supports superdom boot device without power. Vertical superdom modules will push up against DIMME1. Only one superdom is supported, so you cannot mirror the boot drive this way.There is a small GPIO block, a CDROM Audio connector, and an extra USB header.There is an internal dual USB2 header if you want to install a cable for that and put them out through one of the covered-up holes in the back, or if you want to use that for internal boot devices.On the back, you have the BMC Management 1gbit ethernet port which will get IP by DHCP and show you the IP on the boot screen. There are two USB3.0 ports. There is a VGA port. There is a 12V power plug with a screw-lock. There are two 10gbit ethernet ports though the internal chip supports 40gbit.

The unit requires CMOS to be reset in order to boot properly each time.Unfortunately, this sat on the shelf for sometime before we could start using it. You would think something sold by Amazon directly would work like brand new.

Summary:This is a great small form factor server. Unfortunately, I ran into a few obstacles but managed to overcome most of them. I love the 10Gbe network ports. The IPMI features are amazing and work great. If you don't mind spending a bit more money there is another version of this which includes a couple of 1Gb ports on the motherboard so if you're using it for a Pfsense router with dual 1Gb WANs that might be helpful. They also have a newer version which has 8 physical CPU cores which may be better for virtualization. Both of those versions cost more.Upgrade the fans!The noise on this unit is horrendously loud. It was so loud that I wanted to return the server within 5 minutes of turning it on. Even in another room, with a closed door, it was still loud. It had 3 small fans running at high speed. I also found out that the front of the case had not been properly prepared as only one of the fans had the knockout removed. So two fans not getting any air flow made it run even higher speed. I took a chance on upgrading and installing three Noctura fans costing $14 a piece. The difference is unbelievable. In fact, it was so quiet with the new fans that I didn't even realize the server was running. It's amazing how quiet those fans are in comparison. The screws that came with the Noctura fans were too big for the frame and the screws on the existing fans were too small. I tried using the included anti-vibration rubber mounting things. They work ok, but I destroyed a couple trying to get them installed. A quick trip to the local home depot for some hardware fixed the problem. I used #8-32 x 1.25 inch screws, #8 nylon locknuts, and #8 fiber washers to ensure there is no direct contact between the fans and the frame.Get something like this: Noctua NF-A4x20 PWM Premium-Quality Quiet 40mm FanStorage is a bit of a pain:The first thing I noticed was that it did not come with an OCuLink Cable, so you will want to order one of these if you want to use the OCuLink port for an NVME drive. As a side note, I called the Seller about the cable and only got voicemail, which they never returned. So maybe another seller would be better. Then you will need an adapter to go from the OCULink U.2 to the M.2 NVME drive. Once you get that Supermicro cable you will find that the Molex power connector on the OCuLink cable has nowhere to go on the motherboard or power supply, so you may need an adapter to go from the SATA power male to Molex female connector. You might run out of SATA power since the provided cable only has two ports, so you may also need a SATA power splitter as well. That's just to get an NVME drive and a couple other SSDs up and running. There is only one potential location to mount a 2.5 in drive adapter to the underside of the top frame but it might conflict with the add-on cards, so I am currently just sitting the various m.2 drives with their adapters in the case loose.An alternative to the OCuLink cable is to use a low profile PCIe to NVME adapter and just install the NVME drive in the PCIe slot directly. The downside is that it uses up all your expansion options.If you want to use the OCuLink port to connect to an external drive array using Mini SAS HD, theoretically you can order an OCuLink cable for that. I ordered the cable but haven't used it yet. So I don't know for sure if it works.You can also order a right angle riser card adapter if you want to use the PCIe slot for an add-on for a larger NVME adapter, a couple of extra NICs, or USB 3.1 v2 (10Gb USB) ports or a raid controller.I'm still working on my server configuration and usage, but at least it's getting there now with the fan upgrades. Otherwise, I couldn't live with the fan noise. The three fans do eventually spin up higher and louder but all three fans are quieter than just one of the original fans installed. You can also install a speed limiter to try to reduce the noise further. Personally, I'm relatively happy with the Noctura fans running on auto speed.Additional Items:-------------------------------- Supermicro Cable CBL-SAST-0956 55cm OCuLink to PCIE SFF-8639 U.2 with Power Cable Bare- Noctua NF-A4x20 PWM Premium-Quality Quiet 40mm Fan- #8-32 screws, nets, washers for the fans- 15-Pin SATA Male to Molex LP4 Female Power IDE Cable 6-Inch- SATA 15-Pin Power Y-Splitter Black Sleeved Cable- Supermicro RSC-RR1U-E8 1U Riser Card- USAC OCuLink 4i SFF-8611(Host) to Mini SAS HD 4i SFF-8643(Target) Cable(1M)- VGA to HDMI active adapter if your monitor doesn't have HDMI

Nice compact size, fans are fairly quiet (not silent) when the host OS is completely idle, any sort of load makes them noisy, heavy loads makes it pretty loud so its not a desktop machine, but you wouldn't hear it in a closet. Remote management interface works well, allows full remote console and hardware status info.Wish it had SFP+ instead of copper 10G and some way to mount SSDs internally included but these are minor issues in an otherwise nice small home server with pretty large memory support so you can run a several VMs or containers without using a lot of power.