New Media Server

[LeoL]

I would stick with a newish Intel consumer CPU since Intel's iGPUs are very capable for transcoding.  Xeon CPUs do not have onboard graphics so you would need to get a dedicated GPU, if you decide to go that route.

AFAIK, no consumer board will have 9 SATA connections.  You will need an HBA card to add more SATA connections (they are not expensive).  Most full ATX, and even many M-ATX, boards will have two M.2 slots.

Thanks for the reply. The reason I was interested in server motherboards is the lack of 9 sata ports on consumer motherboards (at least I couldn't find any) and I'd really prefer to have the capability for 9 sata ports on the motherboard rather than an add-on card. Plus server motherboards seem to have other advantages like remote management.

I'm not sure I have any need for transcoding and so I'm not sure why Intel CPU's would have an advantage for me? Please correct me if that is not the case. Does transcoding not also require more CPU power? I'm looking for the least power consumption that I can find although I realise that the disks will use a lot of power.