Mobo and other HW suggestions wanted for new OMV box with ECC

  • UPDATED:


    Thanks to all who have helped shape this build and for their advice and patience.


    The final build is:


    Mobo: Supermicro X10SRA-F (RMA'd due to IPMI bugs) ==> ASRock X99 WS
    CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2695v3 [preowned]
    CPU cooler: Corsair H105
    GPU: Nvidia 9500GT (ASRock doesn't have integrated graphics)
    Case: Thermaltake Core V71
    RAM: 32GB DDR4 ECC (2 x Crucial 16GB DDR4-2133 RDIMM (CT16G4RFD4213))
    PSU: Seasonic Platinum SS-400FL2 400w fanless
    Drives (RAIDZ2): 8 x Seagate ST4000DM000
    OS drive: Kingston SSDnow V300 120GB
    Additional LEDs: Purple, 4 x 30cm long strips with 18 5050s leaving these out for now.
    Additional fans: none at the moment. Don't think I'll need them.
    SATA cables: Blue flat for OS SSD, 8 x Black rounded for array drives



    REVISED POST:


    I'm upgrading my HP N54L


    I'd like suggestions for mobo/CPU combos, requirements:


    - I am looking for a Xeon CPU and board combo with DDR4 memory capable to taking at least 64GB of ECC memory


    - I would prefer to keep power consumption as low as I can, but it's not essential. It will be shut down when not in use.


    - I'll be running 8-10 SATA drives initially so I need either SAS ports or a lot of SATA ports on board, or ideally, room to put a decent PCI card. The more bandwidth the better. Eventually, I will be looking to double the drives, so I will need room for expansion.


    - I use 2 GLAN ports on my N54L (added extra Intel card in addition to on board LAN) so I would ideally want 2 LAN ports, preferably more - or room to expand in addition to any SAS/SATA cards.


    - as mentioned above, ECC is a must due to ZFS, I'd like the board to be able to take 64GB in order for future expansion, but will probably install 32GB to start


    - I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that this is not going to be a mini ITX build. I have been looking at other enclosures including the Node 804, I would welcome other suggestions, but ideally I would like to keep the footprint as small as possible. I would prefer the initial 8-10 drives to be housed in the same enclosure as the motherboard, but future drives can be external enclosures.


    Some of these ideals might conflict- that's why I'm after input. ;)


    Thanks :)




    ORIGINAL POST:


    I'm considering upgrading my HP N54L and have been look at the ASRock C2750D4I. I've also been toying with the idea of going a little further and getting a board that one of the newer i3s will sit on.


    The reason I am looking at one of the newer i3s is because some of them support ECC memory and I need this for ZFS.


    I'd like suggestions for mobo/CPU combos, requirements:


    - I'm trying to keep it as low power as possible. The N54Ls CPU is 25w, the C2750 is 20w and for example, the i3-4370T is 35w. I don't really want to go above this if it can be helped bearing in mind the nature of a NAS being on all the time. Even though I do occasionally shut it down, it gets a lot of use.


    - I'll be running 8-10 SATA drives so I need either SaS ports or a lot of SATA ports on board, or ideally, room to put a decent PCI card. The more bandwidth the better.


    - I use 2 GLAN ports on my N54L (added extra Intel card in addition to on board LAN) so I would ideally want 2 LAN ports, preferably more - or room to expand in addition to any SaS/SATA cards.


    - as mentioned above, ECC is a must due to ZFS, I'd ideally like the board to be able to take 64GB but I don't think any of the i3s that support ECC allow more than 32GB (even though that Avoton will accept 64GB :-S) - I could live with this but it's not ideal.


    - I really like the look of of the Silverstone D380 case, which would fit the mini ITX board that the Avoton sits on well. It may well be that I can't keep it as small as a mini ITX but I'd like to keep it as small as possible.


    I'm not saying I'd completely rule out an AMD CPU, after all the N54L has one in it- but I haven't come across a magic AMD combo... They're either gutless, or will give you a heart attack when your power bill comes in. If anyone has any AMD suggestions I'd certainly look. Equally, I'd consider Xeon's if they're as low TDP as possible (in this case it's likely to be 45w).


    Some of these ideals might conflict- that's why I'm after input. ;)


    Thanks :)

  • I have the Asrockrack E3C226D2I with the Xeon 1226v3, 2x 8GB ECC 1,35v.
    It draws idle (disk spun down) and with all 3 NICs plugged in 22-23w - the ASPEED 2300 BMC chip draws quite some power from what I have read online but it cannot be disabled.


    For idle consumption on Haswell v3 based chip you will not save a thing in idle between in example 4150 and 4150t.

  • Thanks both for the suggestions.


    That board looks pretty good. I can get one of those for about £140 and it looks like it will fit in the Silverstone case I have my eye on :P the info for the board says that it only supports 16GB - I don't suppose either of you tried it with 32GB?


    The Xeon 1220Lv3 looks like it's a bit of a pig to get hold of. The 1226v3 is a beast :P and will cost about £200. That's certainly have enough juice but I can't help but think all the lights in my place and the streetlights outside might dim and flicker if everyone starts transcoding 1080p streams! :D still... Very tempting.


    Assuming I were to go for that board and the 1226v3, it'd only come out at about £40 more than the Avoton... Mmmmm.....


    @blublub, what kind of noise does your box produce? What cooling are you using for your Xeon?


  • Depends on your usage, if it's going to be idling most of the time, then most modern processors with dynamic clocking will be able to keep power usage down.


    If you allow more power to be used, the i3-4130 is also a good choice, TDP 53W (if you can get i3-4130T, TDP 35W), supporting ECC memory + AES encryption, I believe it fulfills most of your need (normal Xeon eats 84W which is too much for me, and....if you fill all 8-12 drives in Silverstone 380 with all drives spinning, your little box will be consuming > 200W which might be fairly hot).


    And for the cost, don't forget to include extra HBA as the board has only 6 SATA while their Avoton series have 12 SATA...


  • @blublub, what kind of noise does your box produce? What cooling are you using for your Xeon?



    Such a powerful CPU only makes sense when you do transcoding or multiple VM - that's right, but if you do it is worth it.


    I use an Arctic Cooling Freezer 11 Pro and it cools it just fine. I have more problems keeping my 5 HGST NAS drives cool in my small Lian-Li q25 case.


    The Asrock-Rack board only supports 16GB of RAM officially, I have not found anyone trying to fit 32GB in it (somewehre I read it is a chipset limitation and won't work)
    As long as you don't do deduplication you will be totally fine with 16GB - I limit ZFS to 9,5GB because of my Emby server and I get speeds beyond 200mb/s



    EDIT: it is quite noisy but that is because of the 5 spinning drives - CPU is very quiet

  • I Am using:

    • Case: Lian-Li PC-Q25
      With a 140 mm Fan in the front and a 120 mm Fan in the top
    • Motherboard: Asrock rack c2750d4i
    • Ram: 32 gb ECC
    • 2x SSD and 4x HDD that don't spin down
    • Using a noname 300 watt fanless powersupply.

    When idle it uses just about 46 watts, maby it could be less if i used a better/more efficient powersupply and I did let the HDDs spin down.

  • I Am using:

    • Case: Lian-Li PC-Q25
      With a 140 mm Fan in the front and a 120 mm Fan in the top
    • Motherboard: Asrock rack c2750d4i
    • Ram: 32 gb ECC
    • 2x SSD and 4x HDD that don't spin down
    • Using a noname 300 watt fanless powersupply.

    When idle it uses just about 46 watts, maby it could be less if i used a better/more efficient powersupply and I did let the HDDs spin down.



    As the Avoton doesn't support latest Intel Speedstep technology, so idle power consumption won't be too low (it can only be clocked down to about 1.1GHz, while I've tested the Celeron C1037U - 1.8GHz, during idle it can be clocked down to 100MHz which saves huge amount of power). HDD standby can help a lot, as each HDD will consume 5-6W less. But looking at your setup, even it's on full loading it probably won't eat more than 60W.


    BTW are you using ATX PSU with Q25 case? I found that PSU is a bit too big and blocking airflow, so I bought ATX-SFX mount and mount a used 250W SFX. If I don't have that old SFX PSU, I think I will go for 90-120W picoPSU to further reduce size.



  • C226 chipset itself doesn't impose to have this limit, I guess Asrock didn't test. If you look at memory on market, a single stick 16GB DDR3 ECC is so freaking expensive, other than professional use I've never seen any amateur using anything beyond 8GB/stick.

  • BTW are you using ATX PSU with Q25 case? I found that PSU is a bit too big and blocking airflow, so I bought ATX-SFX mount and mount a used 250W SFX. If I don't have that old SFX PSU, I think I will go for 90-120W picoPSU to further reduce size.


    I have had a Pico PSU MiniPC 160-XT and it had a higher idle draw than my current ATX PSU (difference almost 2w - 1.8w to be exact when I remember correct). I am using a Cooler Master VS-Series V450S - so I don't recommend anybody to by a PicoPSU anymore if idle power draw is above 20w - and with server HW that is very likely

  • C226 chipset itself doesn't impose to have this limit, I guess Asrock didn't test. If you look at memory on market, a single stick 16GB DDR3 ECC is so freaking expensive, other than professional use I've never seen any amateur using anything beyond 8GB/stick.


    When I remember correctly it had something to with the board having only 2 memory bank and the limitation to dual-rank modules...

  • @edwardwong - I've looked into it, you are correct, the mini ITX boards only have the ability for 8GB in each because it's limited to 1 channel per slot.


    @blublub - my current NAS is used for transcoding to several devices at once and a ton of other things. In the not too distant future, it will need to transcode 4K as well.


    The wife perked up this morning and surprised me. I've been talking to her about the 16GB limitation that we're probably going to find ourselves in - and as she has rightly put it, it's not an upgrade over our HP, which already has 16GB. She suggested a X99M with a E5-1650. This would support DDR4 and a max of 64GB. We could get 32GB in the mean time for about £300. The Xeon is about £300 and the board is £200. Couldn't use the Silverstone with it though, but it would probably go nicely in a Node 804. :P


    I'm off out now but will discuss it further with her later and may amend the first post with different requirements. Thanks so far for the suggestions - it's helping us hone what we actually need/want.

  • If u really need32GB ram (as mentioned before 16GB goes fine with 25GB ZFS system) then go with somethig like this:
    EPC612D4U


    There you have a much better option to upgrade later on. However I am nout sure about the 4k thing though transcoding is quite about one thread performance and that goes with frequency ATM.

  • Thanks for the suggestion. That board looks good, but I don't think I can get it here in the UK at the moment. ;(


    With regards to the RAM, it's not a case of whether I /need/ 32GB right now 100%- it's a case of if I am going to spend money on an upgrade, I don't want to have to upgrade again when I find out that 16GB isn't enough down the line. ECC RAM being the price that it is, I'd rather invest now and have the box last me a little longer. Especially in a board that is likely to only have 2 slots, so upgrading from 16GB to 32GB would mean getting rid of the 2 x 8GB's.


    May I ask why you recommended this board instead of the X99M?


    @henkall, do you find that your case gives the components enough airflow? What is the case design like? Is the build quality good?


    EDIT: Sorry to mess you guys around - I've had the chance to talk to the wife about revised ideas and have updated the first post.

  • X99M takes DDR4 ram, as you need ECC DIMM, the DDR4 ECC probably higher price.
    And the EPC612D4U is still a server board, with IPMI which is nice for remote monitoring + configuration (just like my C2550, I don't even need a kb/mouse/vga to setup OS)

  • That would be great, but I can't find anywhere that has it :(


    The cost of 32GB of DDR4-2133 ECC is about £300. Whilst some might think this is excessive, I plan this to last a while. The DDR3-1333 16GB kit in the HP N54L is about £123 so it's not actually that much more expensive gig for gig.

  • @ellnic it is enough I think. It could be better if I did put a power supply with a fan in it. Under load the CPU is max 50 degrees. And when idle it is around 30. The box is in a room that is 22 degrees.


    Build quality is pretty solid. But the drawback is maby that you have to take the motherboard tray or the power supply out to get to the top fan filter if you want to clean it. It is really compact case but it is nice to have tool less design when you have to Chang the HDDs.

  • @ellnic it is enough I think. It could be better if I did put a power supply with a fan in it. Under load the CPU is max 50 degrees. And when idle it is around 30. The box is in a room that is 22 degrees.


    Build quality is pretty solid. But the drawback is maby that you have to take the motherboard tray or the power supply out to get to the top fan filter if you want to clean it. It is really compact case but it is nice to have tool less design when you have to Chang the HDDs.



    50 degree CPU temp isn't bad. I usually look at spec to see how hot it can tolerate.
    For example my CPU allows Tjunction 105 degree, so I would actually allow it to go up to 60-70 degree when idle, and try to minimize the assistance from fans, you know spinning parts fail much easier than you think, I don't want the system to break down immediately just because of one broken fan.

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