The BEST AliExpress X99 Motherboard for Servers! - Cloud Star CS612 NAS Build

[@Thewickedjon]

imo this is the type of content that brought me to this channel in the first place xD ty for keeping x99 relevant in 2025

[@vicolin6126]

Hey Jeff, what does the power consumtion look like for this system, minus the drives? This board is very interesting, but for us over here in Europe, eletricity bills are a factor not to be trifled with :) Seeing as it has so many things integrated, I would guess it draws less than a "normal" x99 motherboards + PCIe cards for networking and storage.

[@daymianhogue1634]

the 2680v4 is a 120w tdp chip on it's own, probably often running a bit above that. But yeah the integrated chips should draw less than pcie add in cards. Likely making it better than other x99 boards. But honestly if you're in a country with higher power costs realistically that's a bad comparison, and you should probably be comparing it to slightly more expensive newer components that are way more efficient. And just trying to work with a bit less expandability. Unless you need something this specifically offers. Paying just a bit more for a 10th gen intel i7 or Ryzen 7 3700x or a 12th gen i5 or Ryzen 5 5600 tier chips give you similar multithreaded performance; way more single threaded, and for less power

[@aluxannar]

While not exactly the same spec my C612 based nas with HP Z440 mobo and a 250W 80+ Gold psu and 3 seagate exos x12 12TB consumes 50-60W. Keep in mind that for idle your cpu and ram don't matter much, at least for intel (in case of ryzen the difference in idle power usage between monolithic and chiplet designs is huge).

[@arthurwintersight7868]

@@daymianhogue1634 - I think the more interesting potential is if you pair this with a Pi KVM that can physically turn the computer on from a powered off state, by jumping the pins on the motherboard (same as hitting the power button). This means you could leave the server powered off most of the time, and only turn it on as needed. You could have a really beefy, power hungry server for rendering, AI workloads, and automated backups, and just leave it turned off when you're not using it.

[@daymianhogue1634]

@@arthurwintersight7868 even then it's less performance, for more power... And that kind of strategy invalidates it's for a lot of uses, plus again you could add a similar kvm set up to the newer system too to gain the same benefits.

[@daymianhogue1634]

@@aluxannar what chip are you using to have that low of power consumption or is that idle power consumption? And hedt Intel systems usually use only slightly less than Ryzen chiplets at idle due to the ringbus. And it's still often not that much, to the point it really should only be a priority if you know youre gonna be at idle a ton relative to the active power usage differential.

[@TheCreat]

As nother european viewer I'd like to also emphasize the importance of information about power consumption: If the board uses just 30W more than a modern alternative, that difference will cost me more than the price of the motherboard PER YEAR to run. So the cost of running a homelab is incredibly power usage sensitive for us over here.

[@gh975223]

no way 30W! no way 30W will cost 100 quid a year

[@afaulconbridge]

UK here, 30W would cost about £68 running 24*7*365. But more expensive electricity exists elsewhere.

[@CentauriDK]

I have this motherboard my system is using 135W in avage.

[@mskaesz]

I live in Germany and 30 Watt would cost me 123 Euro (128 USD) running 24*365.

[@Ubersmieszek]

It would be like $70 in Poland and that's a lot. As a true central european country, we have eastern wages and western prices :D

[@DavidLee-cr4xv]

I appreciate these hardware necromany episodes

12x 12 TB Drives for only $840 ?? You live in paradise man. Here in Sweden those same drives would cost me $1969 with shipping.

[@MrFl0rp]

Theyre used

[@RawmanFilm]

@@MrFl0rp still! In Germany: 139€ (~144USD) per old recertified Seagate 12TB Ironwolf or 12TB Enterprise Capacity so close to 1728USD as well

[@MrFl0rp]

@RawmanFilm wow. Thats crazy.

[@ranjitmandal1612]

😢

[@Jaska1]

The refurbished HDD drive prices are going up after many youtubers started advertising serverpartdeals

[@chrizzlibaer]

I would also chime into the other comments asking for the idle and stress load power consumption. Do you have any rough data?

[@LuisYomba]

..an idle power consumption is always welcome

[@kayburcky7146]

I expect this to draw at least 80-90watts idle without any drives, probably more

[@Lara-tk2wg]

Yes..if 90wats is correct this is useless for a Server these days

[@zstation64]

It’ll be AT LEAST 80W. With a 8 core v4 CPU the lowest I can get on an Asus X99 is 80W with 1 DIMM, 1 SATA SSD and no video.

[@StephenDeTomasi]

​@@zstation64the lowest I've seen is 75w so this lines up with my experience

[@ranjitmandal1612]

😂

[@marcogenovesi8570]

when I saw those boards months ago I was wondering when I would see your video about it. Good to see a late entry to the "weird 2011 board from aliexpress" series

[@CraftComputing]

Just when I declare X99 a dead platform, they pull me right back in with lower prices and more features!

[@ranjitmandal1612]

😮

[@definitelynotthefbi725]

Love your choice of drink! Belgian Quads have a special place in my heart...

[@anime_reference]

That's a really cool motherboard but the coolest thing I took away from this video was "Fractal is still producing the Node 804". Looks like they even updated the logo on the front panel. I love that case, and I'm still using it for my own NAS. Just kinda wish it didn't have an acrylic window.

[@Itay1787]

I have this series of drive. They have a version that don’t require to block pin 3 or do any mods to drive or the PSU they just works I recommend to check them out before buying to make sure you get the right version

[@AidenPryde3025]

How common is this issue? I have my eyes on some Seagate Exos drives and this is the first I've heard of this problem.

[@kosmos3718]

thank you for the info, very valuable

[@g.s.3389]

@@AidenPryde3025 I always use exos drives for my home NAS and they last for years without any problem, on Amazon the 8TB is the sweet spot brand new.

[@Itay1787]

@@AidenPryde3025 Very common especially on enterprise drive but if WD has version that requires this I think everyone has one

[@RukhWhitefang]

I don't even need this and its caught my eye.

[@adamturtle69]

I like this kind of hardware. Some people are on a very tight budget. For me it's a wonderful piece of hardware it has everything that i want.

[@nhand42]

Thanks Jeff. My EPYC server died and I've been dragging my heels replacing it because everything is so expensive. But even I can afford $115. Power consumption was the only red flag but I can live with 80W idle. I can even use my existing RAM and case.

[@mycosys]

A 3900X would kick it into next week with half the power and wouldnt cost much more.

[@nhand42]

@@mycosys Show me where I can get an AM4+3900X for not much more than $115 which runs under 65W.

[@deechvogt1589]

Okay here's my pitch: My personal holy grail machine, the all in one-er of NAS / Forbidden Router / VM host do everything one-shot home server box! One machine to rule them all.

[@kayburcky7146]

Weird overbuilt boards like this would be interesting for more power efficient platforms like socket 1151 but i guess we dont have enough pcie lanes for quiet that big of a feature set

[@cease70]

Aaaaaand bought. This will hopefully replace my "old" (it's only a few months old) server/NAS build which was also a Craft Computing video - the Erying board with a built-in mobile CPU. The board I got has an i7-11700 and it's been good, but this one will allow me to have more RAM and actually be able to utilize one or more of the PCIe slots for a GPU. Not to mention the 2.5 gig networking.

[@ccleorina]

i run same motherboard and buy 2 and put inside Jonsbo N5 case. 2 Node NAS kinda nice for my Home Lab needs. Setup already running 3 month non stop so far works find with my SAS pcie card.

[@zeroturn7091]

Although I purchased the BKHD X99 board, this seems like the better option. Those extra DIMM slots and PCIe lanes sure would come in handy.

[@AaronHendu]

I am still on X99 for my main PC...part of me wants to "upgrade" to a 12+ core v4 CPU and the GPU and use it for a few more years.

[@bonganimkhwanazi6485]

Look for the Xeon E5-1681v3 10c cpu

[@lnormcook]

Thank you for this! I saw these the other day but didn’t want to roll the dice, think I will now!

[@1leggeddog]

My server is also in a Nod 804!! I love it! Its currently setup with my old Ryzen 5 2600 running proxmox with a truenas vm with 3x 4tb nas hdds on an hba card Im still looking for a slim line Blu-ray drive for the front panel

[@JanusDarke]

If this board was Full ATX it could move those SATA ports lower and allow at least 1 full length 2-3 slot PCIe card. That & native SAS support would make this board a must purchase for a couple of projects I am working on.

[@johngaltline9933]

It's not pretty, but you can clip the side of the sata and power connectors so they fit on a SAS drive. Have done it, and they've been working just fine for 4 years at this point.

[@msolace580]

riser cables so the pci 16x fits over the sata cables. or right angle cables etc. and power should be okish, intel idles pretty good most the time. save the cash and get 2x 2x4's and bolt all your parts to that save the money you spent on the case :P. I moved to just bolting my mobo to underside of my desk these days, no dust under there and cheaper anyway ^_^

[@mycosys]

that 3,2,1 Backup shirt is one of the most evil visual puns i have seen

[@6LordMortus9]

Out of curiosity : Why were the first parts of the HDD barcodes/numbers blurred out?

[@AtomskTheGreat]

it's so frustrating. on one side there are the older server parts that offer a proper number of pcie lanes but perform poorly and require lots of power compared to modern architecture. on the other side is modern consumer hardware with great performance and performance per watt but chronically skimp on pcie lanes. or one pays an arm and a leg and goes with modern workstation/server hardwre...

[@vadnegru]

You don't need many lanes to drive HDDs. Especially if it's gen 4

[@RawmanFilm]

@@vadnegru Many HBAs that still run SAS2008 or similar have PCI-E2.0 8x. if you have one that supports PCI-E3.0, x4 might suffice

[@badharrow]

The problem is pairing a GPU or literally anything else in one box.

[@RawmanFilm]

@@badharrow i used 2,5gigabit pci-e 2.0 1x card for this reason, n100 has only a few lanes to spare. But has a nixe decode encode engine

[@Bob_Smith19]

Did I miss the power usage or was it not shown?

[@harrybryan9633]

Oh, I have been looking at this for a while. I'm looking at adding a L cpu sku & using it as a media server. Thanks for the review.

[@legomaniac601]

I could see this being an AMAZING little second pc for streamers, pair it with a b580, capture card and a few tb of storage for recording the stream to later edit the videos or upload the vod at higher resolution

[@stephendee7839]

You mentioned plex. I'd like to see a video series on everything plex, from how to set up a streaming device to send media to an older HDMI supported TV, to VM installation and transcoding, etc. I don't know much about it, but I'd like to learn it.

[@CentauriDK]

I have the exact same motherboard it have been running my Unraid server for the last 4 months without any problems. So I can recommend it.

[@pajarocarpintero570]

try xeon e5 2697A v4 if the vrm can keep up with it please

[@louisstanwu]

Power consumption? Happy New Year guys.

[@Perplexed1185]

this board/cpu at the price is so tempting. was just pricing out a budget am5 nas build which would be new and high power but just overkill for proxmox,plex, truenas

[@rizz0d]

X99 for life. i feel like intel could get on track if they got back into HEDT.

[@SimonBetty]

So are those normal drives or SAS drives?

[@mimmolagonigro]

all very interesting. I would like to understand the consumption of this configuration. both in idle and at full load. also you did not talk about optimized software on the nas side perhaps in eco mode if insertable. friend I ask you this because my asrock x99 has performance, normal and eco modes also based on the processor. and the consumption on server h24 we need to understand how to manage all that energy. a second episode where you talk about consumption and network transfer speed would be great, it would be really useful. as well as how to manage firewalls etc. thanks in advance

[@PKM762x54]

For a purely NAS budget build, I would consider an ASUS P9-C/4L with a pike 2108 over this; they can be had for under $100 used or just over $100 new on AliExpress. It supports Haswell E3-V3 Xeons and up to Core i7's (up to 8 threads, either way), dual channel ECC DDR3, comes with an aspeed VGA chip, has the option for IPMI (although, if you buy the adapter, at that point you're coming up on the $150 mark), front panel USB 3, etc. With the pike 2108, you have your choice of 6 SATA and 8 additional SATA/SAS capable ports without physically blocking any of the PCIe or PCI slots. The compromises, IMO, are: it is a full size ATX board, rather than mATX, no M.2 support and it doesn't have a POST code display; I can live without those, for the price.

[@84Actionjack]

Rather than block pins, I generally use molex to SATA connectors which seems to work well.

[@jordan010203]

Xeon silver and Xeon gold CPUs are getting very cheap, it'd be great if you could make a video about AliExpress motherboards for these newer chips 😃

[@druxpack8531]

well, at 36 cents/kWh where i live, this would cost far too much to run 24/7. i guess its an n100 and a 2 drive raid 1 for me...

[@johnboyboy919]

Would love to see PCI risers and any shenanigans you can get up to with those

[@amsg3243]

Great Case, I managed to fit 10 3.5 drives and 2 2,5 SSD within the case.

[@kovalsky117]

Edit: Would love to see more information about power consumption with that board. Got a couple of 2630Lv3 that'd be perfect for this. To disable the 3rd pin, you can also use a MOLEX to SATA adapter (1x to 4x) since the MOLEX connector doesn't power that pin.

[@CraftComputing]

But then you have a fire risk instead.

[@kovalsky117]

@ didn’t think about that since I use server backplates I don’t have that problem but that’s true of adapters.

[@LordChariot]

Can you bifurcate the PCIe x16 slots to be four x4 lanes? So you can use the four port NVMe card? You mentioned the card but not the layout.

[@CraftComputing]

Yes, bifurcation is supported on all three PCIe slots.

[@zushiba]

I have a 5820k in a dead board, I wonder if I could repurpose it for this kinda thing.

[@cobmahavishnu]

Cant find that board though

[@movedToChinaForStudies]

I should have chosen this mobo for my P40 GPU rig build. The AST2400 on this board would have saved me the headache of fitting another GPU just for a video output.

[@opensourcedev22]

My 28 core Xeon cost me $20. I already have a motherboard. Memory was dirt cheap... It ask cost less than a modern AM5 high view CPU

[@mutosanrc1933]

thank you so much. This is what I was looking for a long time now. I trust you with this and will replace my electricity hungry DL380. Just one question, is this one enough to host one Enshrouded Server and one Aska Server at the same time? And also a true nas server?

[@sjukfan]

I was gonna say I get the urge to put three P4:s in that one. Oooor... five with two x16 to dual x8 adapters 😛

[@BossNerd]

I have similar system at home, would love to see what you do with this build. I was looking to turn my NAS-ish machine into a multimedia editing station by adding a quadro P5000 or possibly an AI system with a couple of tesla P4's. Please continue making these types of videos.

[@jonasedvstuff3369]

Does it support RDIMM? You could get lots of it for relatively cheap.

[@fullbodydenim]

The C612 chipset does support it when using a Xeon CPU while the consumer X99 chipset is more hit and miss. I really depends on the firmware/BIOS of the manufacturer to enable it.

[@andrewheuvelmans]

I see computers and belgian beers, proud belgian guy here xD

[@Esteban-k7c]

I run the same CPU in my p410 upgraded from the e5-1603 v4. It seems perfect for a rtx 4060 or lower gpu's since I don't see a lot of performance loss compared to a lot of Benchmarks I've watched. It can play pretty much everything at 1440p and recently Dead Island 2 at 4k at 80fps The limitation so far is S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2 at 1440p on launch wich is a cpu killer . The p410 with 2680 v4 with a 1060 rog strix cost 250$ for the whole system . Thanks Jeff for the Xeon info , its a great platform for a small budget that decimates any Acer nitro .

[@sushisoup6840]

No info on power consumption? 😢

[@RandomDude989]

So is there any odd network traffic calling home to China from any malware that may be baked into the firmware of any of the controllers on board?

[@erikveiga2363]

That's why it was a relief, not a disappointment, that the ASPEED chip was there only to provide VGA.

[@elikirkwood4580]

I would love a product stack that fit somewhere between consumer ryzen (am4 or am5) cpus and threadripper/low end epyc cpus for homelab and smb uses. I dont need monster core/thread count chips with several hundred watt tdps per socket but I would love a platform that offered ~16 modern cores binned for efficiency with 32-64 pcie lanes and motherboards laid out to properly take advantage of that. My homelab is very well served by an 8 core ryzen 7 with a 35w tdp, but I am absolutely limited by the expandability of that setup

[@SimRacingFanDK]

Hey 👋 Merry xmas jeff greetings from 🇩🇰

[@g.s.3389]

wow very nice, what is the highest end CPU you could install on that motherboard?

[@dieseldes6578]

2699v4. 22 core 44 thread. I have just ordered this motherboard with a 2698v4 20 core CPU for my backup unraid server.

[@g.s.3389]

@@dieseldes6578 thx

[@VidenTheColdOne]

if i had the money i'd love to have a little hobby machine.

[@ROFLMAOwithExtraCheese]

Great video. Like others have said it would be good to test power consumption but also it would be good if you could test them to see what types of ECC RAM they support (REG, LRDIMM) as well as check whether the reporting works. I have read with some Ryzen boards correct memory errors but don't report them.

[@regularguy1934]

Hello, I am runing a 2683 v4, fells slow in docker containers. Loading times of home pages of radarr, jellyfin are about 3-10 seconds. While using nvme storage and cpu usage is low with more than 16 GB of ram available of 128GB. Is that because low frequencies?

[@alexturnbackthearmy1907]

Yes. Since a lot of stuff doesnt actually use these extra cores...

[@bembelknecht]

currently looking into the 3647 platform, found a few nice deals on used supermicro-boards and the xeon Gold seems to be dirt cheap; wonder how that compares to the 2011-3

[@MegaKrustyman]

I am so here for this.

[@MegaKrustyman]

...but my pihole blocks the s.click.aliexpress link in the description :D

[@middle_pickup]

I've considered building something like this, but I want to know what the power draw of the build is at idle, and maxed out.

[@Dean_Smith]

Currently running a X99-D8 with a E5-2630V3 running proxmox + 5 vms inc Blue iris, Linux, truenas, openwrt and HA. 2 x GPU (1 for pass thru Plex),1 x 10G and 1x HBA, 6 x 3.5" drives and 3xSSD 2.5" drive + 1 x NVME. idles (with my normal workload) @ 130W. Wouldnt take much of an overall power saving to man maths justify a swap - shame I cant buy without CPU or RAM - I dont need a CPU TDP uplift. the X99 D8 has been rock solid but no HBA and an extra NVME......

[@poohhappy4548]

Why do you need to blur out the serial num of the drive?

[@daymianhogue1634]

Multiple people who've been sponsored by serverpart deals have done it. I believe it's something they request.

[@ASSASSIN1509]

im from germany and cant find the board on aliexpress. The Link doesn't work for me. can you provide the unshortened link to the board?

[@AidenPryde3025]

This is the first I've heard of the pin issue on hard drives and consumer power supplies. How do you know if you need to tape those pins off?

[@CraftComputing]

Because they won't spin up when Pin 3 is connected. Pin 3 supplies 3.3v off consumer power supplies, while it's only supplied momentarily on server backplanes.

[@AidenPryde3025]

@@CraftComputing Sorry, should have been more clear. How do I know that any potential hard drives need the pins taped before I buy them?

[@ranjitmandal1612]

😮

[@ajhieb]

Props. I can't even remember the last time I learned something new about non-gaming hardware from a KZbin video. I stay pretty current with that stuff. However, I was totally unaware of the 3.3v "feature" on enterprise drives, nor the simple fix for it.

[@radialblur]

Great video, thanks Jeff, what is the power consumption like with this combo? Cheers.

[@williammusick3345]

okie dokie - next video series… now add (1) home brew SFF router with PFsense/OPNsense, (2) DNS service and add-blocker, and (3) 2.5gbe switch. there ya go - desktop homelab and full network mgt and sys-admin playground.

[@Gingersnap155]

As I’m literally looking this up for making a cloud gaming rig 😂

[@nevillethomas7321]

P.S. Mr. craft im looking to build a multiplatform computer server hogi built . How do I go about getting the large casing-mother board and the needed accsessories to create this bogus machine ? Im willing to buy/purchase .

[@petersvideofile]

Ide love to see cloud gaming performance on this. My dual e5-26xx nas with a 3060 12gb is abysmall and I cant figure out why. Then moonlight and sunshine stutter/chug a lot :(

[@DaveBoxBG]

your link for serverpart deals is not working in description

[@tiagojs]

Great build! But that made me remember of the absurd import taxes of my country! I'm better work like no tomorrow, because if I dream of build any these I may pay 92% directly to government. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!

[@thatLion01]

How does this compare to the AMD board you got before?

[@blazebox71]

Man i wish this video wouldve come out a month ago i would have bought this board for my server instead of the jingquye board i got

[@CptBlackEye]

You said the 804 wasn't the right solution for SAS drives with SATA power adapters. What case would you recommend for using drives like that?

[@forsaken1776]

I'd use it for an unraid nas and media server.

[@czanderrr]

ouch. Hurts me in the belgian to see Straffe Hendrik in a pint glass 😂

[@CraftComputing]

It's bottle-fermented, which means it should be poured out of the glass, otherwise you'll end up stirring up the unfermented yeast at the bottom.

[@czanderrr]

@CraftComputing oh I was just having fun, but was referring to the kind of glassware, not that it was poured out of the bottle. I think the Belgians consider it a crime to use anything other than a tulip/goblet style glass for that kind of beer haha 🍻

[@ranjitmandal1612]

😮

[@MyersJ2Original]

This is an interesting board. The listing is sadly not very good though. If you chose mobo+cpu+ram it isnt clear what you get. I THINK youj get 4 used sticks of ram, but not sure if its 4x4gb or 4x16gb. Wish they had an uption to upgrade to 4x32 also!

[@daymianhogue1634]

They make it pretty clear you get 4x 16GB sticks.

[@CraftComputing]

Honestly, the RAM combo isn't a great deal. I'd shop for that on eBay, or another seller on Ali. But the Board and CPU are an amazing value.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

I'm fine with the no IPMI, it's always a bloated and buggy thing even on "big brand" servers. Does this board support serial redirection? That's all I need, I pipe that to a small ARM device with Linux so I can control it through ssh

[@davismccoy77]

no one uses IPMI commercially anymore. It’s all redfish.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

@@davismccoy77 yeah you wish everything was using redfish. Anwyay I meant the hardware device not the protocol. All servers from Dell/HPE/Lenovo/Fujitsu/Huawei/whatever still have a management device that provides a web interface to control the server.

[@wojtek-33]

I don't know. My supermicro and Asrock Rack ipmi work great.

[@nonamewizard8000]

Does this board require ECC ram? I know the CPU can support with/without but not clear from video or aliexpress page

[@lbenegas]

I would go for the latest aoostar box. 550 usd. Only 4 drive slots, but probably more powerful and efficient…

[@mightydh]

Where is the idle power draw timestamp?

[@wilwyman451]

How well do those intel arc gpu's handle plex? I have been thinking about an upgrade on my plex server. currently using a 1060 but I no stream much over 1080p

[@msolace580]

fine

[@ychto]

Not TheNetGuy first

[@nvbnvb2240]

590 usd is a lot to end up with 2011 v3 aca huge power consumption...what you save you pay in powerbill over next 10 y

[@Theshadowfang]

Finally you release some good content again.

[@wobb_]

I've got that same cpu in my gaming pc.

[@SilentdragonDe]

This is great value, but not really worth it for me to upgrade to from my X79 eATX build. It's such a shame that even 5+ years after I built my current server, there still isn't really a proper upgrade if you value having lots of PCIe lanes. AM4 seems to be the only semi-recent platform that is affordable and supports ECC RAM, but it lacks PCIe lanes, while Threadripper is still way too pricey and doesn't really offer an improvement in terms of idle power consumption. And Intel, uh, well X299 exists but... Yeah no that's kind of the nicest thing I can say about it.

[@xgeko2]

Man I just need 4 of these motherboards for my vmware cluster. This would solve all my problems and I already have 4 2680 v4's lol

[@rangersmith4652]

Would this board support a 6850K?

[@gandalfilgrigio97]

130 for a 2016 board with a cpu isn't exactly cheap; tho you can't find most of those features on newer consumer boards, i'm not sure it's worth it

[@MD_Builds]

:o D: Can i have a few of those 12TB drives pls ? :D Not sure that shop has a UK outlet.