[Build Advice] Compact, efficient Proxmox server

[Globul]

Hi everyone,

I’m looking to rebuild my Proxmox setup to make it more compact and energy-efficient, while keeping performance solid for my workload.

Current setup:

• HP ML110 Gen9
• Xeon E5-2640 v4 (2.4 GHz)
• 96 GB RAM
• 2 × SATA HDD 2 TB RAID1 ZFS
• 18 VMs (1 Windows, 1 Xpenology for NVR, rest Linux)
• Resource usage: CPU ~18% avg (max 60%), RAM 72 GB, load avg ~5% (max 50%), I/O delay ~4% (max 70% during VM backups)

Background:
I used to run a dual-CPU HP DL380p (Proxmox + NAS OpenMediaVault in VM), then switched to the ML110 + dedicated QNAP NAS for simplicity. Now I want to go further — less space, less noise, less power draw.

Planned build:

• Supermicro Micro ATX server motherboard
• 96 GB RAM
• CPU with fewer cores but higher clock speed
• 2 × SSD/NVMe 2 TB

Questions:

1. Any specific motherboard/CPU/RAM models you’d recommend (second-hand is fine)?
2. Is it better to go with 2 large SSDs/NVMes or multiple smaller ones?
3. Any experience migrating from HP servers to custom Supermicro builds?

Thanks for your feedback, especially if you’ve done similar builds using used/refurbished hardware.