Hardware advice for an Old School clocker needing compact Server system

[dsumanik]

Hey all,

I used to be into gaming\watercooling\overclocking back in the day but as I've advanced in my career, my job has unfortunately taken over life.

IT responsibilities rule my world these days.

I get to play with some hefty network\server hardware on a regular basis, but I'm basically out of the loop when it comes to consumer market for years now.

Yes i could do the research, review benchmarks, read forums and pick winners, but I suspect many of you already know the best answers and honestly, im just burnt out.

All I do all day is design, deploy, manage and maintain networks and last thing i want to do when i come is research more hardware lol.

So help me be lazy!

The Situation:

I have 7 clients upcoming all needing major server\domain upgrades.
These clients vary in size from 250 users, down to only 7.
All of them need a very similar solution, and my plan is to build a (fairly) compact\portable temporary ESXI host with the following capabilities:

a) Virtualize any remaining bare metal servers on site
b) Temporarily Host the legacy systems while I deploy the new network\domain\server solutions
c) Deploy pre-built server templates via ESXI at a rapid rate, and perform high speed backups every 6 hours. (need RELIABLE, good disk\network IO)

Now I have access to all sorts of dell server hardware\chassis components in my graveyard.
But i'm looking for something

a) more compact that i can move around
b) is quiet enough\sharp looking to deploy in an professional office situation. Law firms and medical clinics.


What im looking for:

-dual 10Gbase-T ethernet OR SFP+ fiber connectivity onboard
-MINIMUM 16 core, 3.0 GHZ processor (AMD preferred, but not mandatory)
-MINIMUM 256 GM Ram support, ecc preferred
-Micro ATX form factor or smaller, maybe willing to go up to ATX
-3x16X PCIE4 slots (SAS Raid controller, External SAS HBA card, PCIE NVME card)

USB 3 and thunderbolt 3 or 4 would be great too.

money not really an object here, it's all a tax right off for me.

As far as cooling is concerned, i can probably dig up enough components to build a twin 120 or 140 radiator rig to keep noise down. I also have an older (but new) Silverstone TJ08-E case I was hoping to use.


What i want something in order of importance:

RELIABLE
compact as possible\quiet
extremely fast disk IO\Networking

Thank you in advance, look forward to hearing some suggestions!