Denverton c3xxx out a while now, who has one, with Plex?

[diskdiddler]

Now that you're back up and running, how are you finding the new machine?
I am coming over late this week and trying to decide on the Atom 8 core (not 16) or the Xeon D 1521.

https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...n4f-esxi-freenas-aio.57116/page-8#post-486377
Really not sure, they're about the same price. Although I have NO spare SATA if I go Xeon D and i need to dissipate 20 more watts of heat.

However the performance from AMD Turion N54L to Atom C3758 is surprisingly small for single core :(
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/AMD-Turion-II-Neo-N54L-Dual-Core-vs-Intel-Atom-C3558/477vs3129
https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/search?dir=desc&q=C3758&sort=score
https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/search?dir=desc&q=AMD+N54L&sort=score

Really hope the C3758 is very very responsive and fast. How is the multi-threaded code in FreeNAS 11.2 now? Is it getting better?

 

[hungarianhc]

So far, I REALLY like it. Here are just some initial impressions

- I was underwhelmed when I opened the box. I expected some extra SATA cables or something. It was just the board and the port plate adapter thing for the case.
- The board uses mini-SAS to SATA connectors for the drives. I was expecting at least one in the box. Nope.
- I have never used mini-SAS to SATA cables before - they're cool! It's so much cleaner plugging just two of these into my motherboard than having a spiderweb of sata cables coming off the board. I also like the way they come out horizontally from the side of the board. Really helped with cleaning up cables. The board supports up to 16 drives. I love that. I'm using 6 right now - 5 4TB drives and one SSD for jails. When I eventually upgrade to a new pool, I now have enough ports to run both in parallel until fully migrated.
- The FreeNAS UI is way faster now, but when I save things that update the config, it's still slow, as I'm limited by my USB stick's read / write speeds. That brings me to another thing...
- I was excited about the mobo having built-in 32GB eMMC! Took me a while to realize that FreeNAS doesn't yet support that, but it's coming in RC1, of 11.2, the next release. I'm excited to try that out.
- Keep in mind I was coming from a C2750 based system, so my expectations for performance might be artificially low.
- Plex movies open / pause / scrub so much faster than they did before. I notice this on Plex/Web, Apple TV, and iOS devices.
- I was sync'ing Plex movies to my son's iPad. The transcode rate used to be like 2x. Now it's 6x or 8x for the media I was syncing. I feel like that's a pretty good showing.
- In my mind, this system is beyond good enough until i want something that can transcode 4K in a few years. I don't even have a 4K TV or 4K media so... that's probably a ways off. Thus, I'll keep this for a good long while, I think.
- I haven't noticed any noise from the CPU fan - i was fanless w/ the C2750 so I thought I might notice it, but nope.

So far I REALLY like it. I'm hoping the eMMC boot drive works well in the next release. i wasn't expecting to be so delighted by the miniSAS connectors, but they're great.

If there are any specific benchmarks or something that are easy for me to run, I'm happy to give it a try!

 

[diskdiddler]

So far, I REALLY like it. Here are just some initial impressions

- I was underwhelmed when I opened the box. I expected some extra SATA cables or something. It was just the board and the port plate adapter thing for the case.
- The board uses mini-SAS to SATA connectors for the drives. I was expecting at least one in the box. Nope.
- I have never used mini-SAS to SATA cables before - they're cool! It's so much cleaner plugging just two of these into my motherboard than having a spiderweb of sata cables coming off the board. I also like the way they come out horizontally from the side of the board. Really helped with cleaning up cables. The board supports up to 16 drives. I love that. I'm using 6 right now - 5 4TB drives and one SSD for jails. When I eventually upgrade to a new pool, I now have enough ports to run both in parallel until fully migrated.
- The FreeNAS UI is way faster now, but when I save things that update the config, it's still slow, as I'm limited by my USB stick's read / write speeds. That brings me to another thing...
- I was excited about the mobo having built-in 32GB eMMC! Took me a while to realize that FreeNAS doesn't yet support that, but it's coming in RC1, of 11.2, the next release. I'm excited to try that out.
- Keep in mind I was coming from a C2750 based system, so my expectations for performance might be artificially low.
- Plex movies open / pause / scrub so much faster than they did before. I notice this on Plex/Web, Apple TV, and iOS devices.
- I was sync'ing Plex movies to my son's iPad. The transcode rate used to be like 2x. Now it's 6x or 8x for the media I was syncing. I feel like that's a pretty good showing.
- In my mind, this system is beyond good enough until i want something that can transcode 4K in a few years. I don't even have a 4K TV or 4K media so... that's probably a ways off. Thus, I'll keep this for a good long while, I think.
- I haven't noticed any noise from the CPU fan - i was fanless w/ the C2750 so I thought I might notice it, but nope.

So far I REALLY like it. I'm hoping the eMMC boot drive works well in the next release. i wasn't expecting to be so delighted by the miniSAS connectors, but they're great.

If there are any specific benchmarks or something that are easy for me to run, I'm happy to give it a try!

Where did you buy it? Was it pricey?
I guess it's like the Supermicro ones, with the bulk packing versions, you get very little. (but it's cheaper than the RRP ones)
"- I was excited about the mobo having built-in 32GB eMMC! " (I think that's just your Gigabyte version, not the SuperMicro, very cool)

Good to hear it's responsive, maybe FreeNAS is well threaded after all? I'd prefer to buy the Atom for the 25w in my cupboard over the 45w of the Xeon.

 

[hungarianhc]

Where did you buy it? Was it pricey?

eBay. $849, but there was a 15% off eBay coupon that day... so $721 + tax.

"- I was excited about the mobo having built-in 32GB eMMC! " (I think that's just your Gigabyte version, not the SuperMicro, very cool)

Yup! The eMMC is unique to the Gigabyte board, and the Supermicro has some different network / sata configs, I believe. I don't have 10gigE networking available at my house right now, but it's on the list. Glad this device supports it.

Good to hear it's responsive, maybe FreeNAS is well threaded after all? I'd prefer to buy the Atom for the 25w in my cupboard over the 45w of the Xeon.

Yeah I live in a relatively small apartment. I don't have a server room, basement, etc for noisy / hot server hardware. C2750 -> C3958 works for me. Twice as many cores, and these cores are faster than the old ones, as-is.

I'm excited to get my boot disk on the eMMC. Will feel like I'm more using the potential of the hardware. With this out of the way, now I can upgrade my disks at some point.... I want to go to 10TB Red Pros, but THOSE are pricey.

 

[diskdiddler]

What memory did you use?

I'm looking to buy this stuff:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA7S67Y99054&ignorebbr=1

and I'm hoping to make the order, before I get on the plane to save time.

 

[hungarianhc]

What memory did you use?

I'm looking to buy this stuff:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA7S67Y99054&ignorebbr=1

and I'm hoping to make the order, before I get on the plane to save time.

I went with this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01FM3GBC0/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Why are you getting registered RAM?

 

[diskdiddler]

I went with this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01FM3GBC0/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Why are you getting registered RAM?

Shrug, I dunno, is that a bad thing?

 

[hungarianhc]

Shrug, I dunno, is that a bad thing?

Potentially. My understanding of registered is this... It actually puts an extra register on the RAM, as an intermediary between the controller and the RAM itself. This offloads some of the work from the controller, and this is why, if you look at motherboard specs, they can take more registered RAM than unregistered. But from a performance / cost perspective, unbuffered is better. Of course you want ECC.

 

[diskdiddler]

Potentially. My understanding of registered is this... It actually puts an extra register on the RAM, as an intermediary between the controller and the RAM itself. This offloads some of the work from the controller, and this is why, if you look at motherboard specs, they can take more registered RAM than unregistered. But from a performance / cost perspective, unbuffered is better. Of course you want ECC.

Oddly enough, this is literally the cheapest drr4 ECC, 2400 I can find.

I googled and some systems do manage to alleviate the performance hit from registered memory.