3rd build hopefully the last

[the_owl]

Hey there, Ive built two freenas boxes both with 2750 boards . Ive replaced 4 mobos or so over the last few years. Tired of dickin with it.
Not looking to save money this time. Whats the mobo/cpu to go with these days? I dont really need speed, they are for streaming movies over 1gbit in a home. I just want the reliability.
Id like to keep the small form factor if I can.
Any suggestions for dream build v3 ?

 

[Chris Moore]

It's FreeNAS.

Hey there, I've built two freenas boxes both with 2750 boards

What is that? Never heard of it.

I've replaced 4 mobos or so over the last few years.

I have only ever needed to replace one for an upgrade.

Whats the mobo/cpu to go with these days? I don't really need speed, they are for streaming movies over 1gbit in a home. I just want the reliability.

It would be easier to suggest something if you had given more information about what you need.

Here is a build I suggested for someone else. These items are likely sold, but it might give you some pointers. Be careful about eBay suggesting a different item if the one in the link is already sold.

CASE: Fractal-Design-Define-R5-FD-CA-DEF-R5-BK-Black-Silent-ATX-Midtower-Computer-Case - - US $89.24
https://www.ebay.com/itm/253026336681

POWER: Corsair-Certified-CS-M-Series-CS650M-650W-80-Plus-Gold-Active-PFC-Modular-Power - - US $69.99
https://www.ebay.com/itm/291856449667

These are older components, but still very powerful.
I use similar components in both my 48 bay primary NAS and in my 24 bay backup NAS that runs ESXi with FreeNAS in a VM.

This one comes with a CPU and fan AND 32GB of memory, but it is really slow CPU, so probably want to replace that:

System Board: SuperMicro X9SRL-F AXT Motherboard w/ I/O, 32GB RAM Intel Xeon E5-2603 1.80GHz - - US $179.99 plus shipping $28.32
https://www.ebay.com/itm/401606434468

Nothing included with this one, so the price is lower, but an option:

Supermicro X9SRL-F Motherboard Socket LGA2011 System Board w/ I/O Shield - - US $189.98
https://www.ebay.com/itm/113216257183

Memory: SAMSUNG 16GB PC3L-12800R DDR3-1600 ECC Registered 1.35V RDIMM - - US $44.95
https://www.ebay.com/itm/302606459277

Note: You could go for the 32GB memory modules, but they are more than twice the price.

If the board above doesn't come with a cooler, or you want a better one, I use this model on two of my systems.
It is only slightly louder than the Noctua cooler I have on my wife's desktop PC.

CPU Fan: Dynatron R27 Side Fan CPU Cooler 3U for Intel Socket LGA2011 (Narrow ILM) - - US $39.59
https://www.ebay.com/itm/401284811045

The CPU that comes in the board above is pretty low speed, so you might find that you need a better one.
You have a lot of options for CPUs to go in this board, but I recently bought one of these for myself:

PassMark score of 13073... If you are wondering... This is the model I use for the NAS I run Plex in.

CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2650 V2 2.6GHz 8 Core 20MB 8GT/s SR1A8 LGA2011 ( Ivy Bridge ) Processor - - US $89.97
https://www.ebay.com/itm/142937685210

Only it was $30 more when I bought it... It works great. Plenty of resources for all the things I am doing.

If you want more, you can get a 10 core model like this:

Intel Xeon E5-2680 v2 Ten Core 2.8GHz 25MB CPU PROCESSOR LGA2011 SR1A6 - - Price: US $189.99
PassMark score of 15796... If you are wondering...
https://www.ebay.com/itm/192637399687

For the drive controller, I would suggest a SAS controller, just to get all the drives on a single controller. It works better that way. One SAS controller like this can run up to 256 drives by use of expander controllers. We can talk more about that when you need more drives but this will get you to eight drives to start.

Drive Controller: SAS PCI-E 3.0 HBA LSI 9207-8i P20 IT Mode for ZFS FreeNAS unRAID - - US $69.55
https://www.ebay.com/itm/162862201664

Drive Cables: Mini SAS to 4-SATA SFF-8087 Multi-Lane Forward Breakout Internal Cable - - US $12.99
https://www.ebay.com/itm/371681252206

I would suggest one of these SSDs for the boot drive.
These are used data-center drives, but as a boot drive in FreeNAS, it should last as long as the server, if not longer:

Boot drive: 120GB Intel SSD DC S3500 Series HP Model: TK0120GDJXT SSDSC2BB120G4B SATA 6Gb/s - - Approximately US $38.68
https://www.ebay.com/itm/323462963823


Boot drive: Kingston SSDNow V300 Series 2.5" 60GB SATA III MLC SSD SV300S37A/60G - - US $14.17
https://www.ebay.com/itm/223135682676


Thermal Compound: Noctua NT-H1 Thermal Paste Grease Conductive Compound for CPU/GPU - US $6.95
https://www.ebay.com/itm/302624513215

Just rough math in my head, I think that is all around $650.... Still, you might need some odd bits, and hard drives, but it should be simple to get there from here and this should save you a buck or two vs buying new and still do the job for years to come.


SAS Expander: IBM (46m0997) ServeRAID Expansion Adapter 16-port SAS Expander - - US $15.88
https://www.ebay.com/itm/192326557905

SAS interconnect: Mini SAS SFF-8087 to Mini SAS SFF-8087 - - US $3.49
https://www.ebay.com/itm/183129085895

 

[Chris Moore]

PS. you could always read the reference material:

FreeNAS® Quick Hardware Guide
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/freenas®-quick-hardware-guide.7/

Hardware Recommendations Guide Rev 1e) 2017-05-06
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/hardware-recommendations-guide.12/

 

[JohnK]

It's FreeNAS.
What is that? Never heard of it.

I believe he is referring to an Atom C2750. I have run my main server on a C2550. It was rock solid low power solution. Only reason I moved away from it was virtualization It lacks vt-d.

 

[CraigD]

Depending on your case you could just get replace your Motherboard with a x10 Supermicro motherboard and a 1200 v3 series Xeon CPU (or a lesser chip) and reuse everything else (unless you have 16 GB RAM modules)

Have Fun

 

[the_owl]

Thanks for the replies. There seems to be a lot of choices for the X10 supermicro. Indeed its the Atom C2750 .
My case is a mini ITX silverstone.

 

[JohnK]

Thanks for the replies. There seems to be a lot of choices for the X10 supermicro. Indeed its the Atom C2750 .
My case is a mini ITX silverstone.

My recommendations is to read some of the hardware recommendations. There are lots of options available, so a lot will depend on your needs. For example, storage size, virtualization, Plex, decibels. Grnrarally, I stay clear of mini itx for my server builds. Was your C2750, ASrock or supermicro?

 

[the_owl]

ASRock. Back when I built these everyone was goo goo for them. Then the failures started coming in.
I simply use them for file storage of movies and music. stream them or copy them for the road trips

 

[JohnK]

If you only want to do storage, I would recommend a supermicro board with a Pentium processor. You could pick up a good deal on eBay for the X9, X10. I picked up a good deal on my X11. I use all those boards in servers and they are rock solid. If at a later stage you want to virtualize , you could always get a Xeon.

As I have also mentioned earlier that I ran the C2550. Great for a low power solution.

 

[the_owl]

what do you mean low power? Im running 6 HDDs

 

[Chris Moore]

what do you mean low power?

Who are you asking, and in response to what?

Im running 6 HDDs

The number of drives is not that significant, 120 watts at the most and only that during initial spin-up, the running watts is probably closer to 7 per drive, but if you are using an Atom processor, you must be using it to try and have a low power consumption because there isn't any other reason to use one.

 

[Stux]

Here’s a link to my SFF build with a Xeon D (8 core/16 threads)

https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...node-304-x10sdv-tln4f-esxi-freenas-aio.57116/