New to home labbing - testing advice?

Ok so I'm a competent techy on PCs but I'm new to server gear, all my past experiments have been using desktop hardware on TrueNAS etc.

In the next few days I'm getting a X11SSH-LN4F, E3-1220 and 4 8gb ECC UDIMMs. I'll be adding an existing Quadro P400 and Mellanox Cx3.

IPMI is new to me, supermicro is new to me.

If this was desktop kit I'd be comfy - throw in a spare GPU so I have output, fire up memtest for ram and then move on to prime95 to check the CPU out.

Questions...

- I believe memtest86 will cope fine, please correct me if I'm wrong

- do I need a GPU in or can I run all of this over IPMI?

- any suggestions on how to test the sata ports?

My first priority is just ensuring the gear is good, other stuff I can take my time learning.

TIA