Hi maniti,
So let me get this straight....you want to drop $2000 for a new NAS because you can't monitor the CPU temp & fan speed? That doesn't really sound like smart money to me.
/agree. If you are going to drop money for those 2 features, make darn sure that the hardware will reliably do its job. If you buy server grade parts (which generally are the same price or not that much more expensive than your prosumer stuff but are far far more reliable) just like is recommended in the "
So you want some hardware suggestions" thread you will never have any issues.
The forum has some great stickies of stuff that people seem to always get wrong when they build their FreeNAS server. Read them. Some of them might not be what you'd think will matter to you, but you can see what other people screw up and learn from their lessons instead of becoming a lesson for someone else(as you were in your other thread).
There's not much reason to worry about SATA2 vs. SATA3. Either interface is faster than your hard drive, so why worry about it. Really, if you think about it, do you think Intel would ship a current chipset that was going to hamstring your hard drives? The only thing that really takes advantage of a SATA3 port is an SSD.
/agree. And a high end SSD at that. You don't have 10Gb LAN included in your parts list, so why you think you need SATA2 or 3 is somewhat beyond me. Even if your drives were all on SATA1, just a single SATA1 connection is theoretically faster than Gb LAN. Your bottleneck in the system WILL be your Gb LAN.
If you are that worried about your CPU temperature why don't you just go out & get a nice quality aftermarket CPU cooler? That said, factory CPU coolers are actually pretty good when you operate them with a stock-clocked CPU....think about it, a stock cooler might not be the quietest unit but it's in the manufacturer's best interest to have it be both reliable & able to handle the thermal load of the proc it's sold with.
/agree. I always just stick with the stock coolers for stock clocked CPUs. My background in heat transfer has taught me one thing.. if you aren't trying to put your server in a hot attic or shed but are instead respecting your hardware and giving it reasonable cooling you shouldn't ever have a problem with temperatures. "Overcooling" your CPU with expensive aftermarket heatsinks for a server is just throwing money away. If you want to do that my address is.... :)
Now about your proposed builds.....it looks like you are trying to build gaming systems, not proper storage boxes.
With your AMD build I would strongly consider getting ECC memory, some Intel NICs (why do you need 3 NICs) and forget the OCZ PSU. The nice thing about AMD is most all their boards support ECC memory so you really ought to consider switching to that. I would forget about the TP Link cards because that most likely use Realtek Ethernet controllers and the OCZ PSU is both to big and simply to bad a brand to consider using....or a box of that size I would look into a nice 400W SeaSonic.
Your Intel build is simply silly. Why on earth would you drop over $450 dollars on a motherboard? Maybe if you were truly "Extreme" and looking to be the Overclock champion of the world it would make sense but for a file server that is totally the wrong choice. If you get past all the "Extreme" OC features and the built in wireless and bluetooth which won't work in FreeNAS you are still paying double what a proper Supermicro Haswel server board would cost you and getting a set of features completely ill-suited for the problem you are looking to solve.
-Will
/agree. The disappointing part.. if you had used that link above, you would have spent $150-$200 for a motherboard that comes with 1(or more) Intel NICs built in, ECC support, and would have 'just worked' in a more than adequate way for the future. I just upgraded my FreeNAS server for myself, and I used the Supermicro X9SCM-F-O($161), E3-1230V2-3.3Ghz Ivy Bridge CPU($235), and 32GB of ECC RAM KVR16E11K4/32 (just under $300 I believe) and poof, I upgraded my FreeNAS server.. bigtime. As far as I'm concerned, if you go with those 3 parts you are already better off than 95% of the people that show up in the forum and want to build a FreeNAS server.
And don't get me started on what your purpose of the SSD is for, why you'd buy a piece of grap Tplink network card for $30 when the high end Intel cards can be had for the same (or less) money, why you think having more than 1 NIC is going to help you out at all(hint: unless you have more than 10 machines hooked up to the server multiple NICs in LACP it won't help you at all), or why you have large disparities between the 2 builds:
1. You bought 3xTplink NICS at $91 a piece for the Intel build but bought 3xTplink NICs for the AMD at $30 a piece.
2. You bought what may be the world's most expensive single socket motherboard, but bought a "relatively" inexpensive and hardly comparable Gigabyte AMD board. (Hint: I paid less than that for my Evga SR-2 Dual Socket Xeon board 2.5 years ago when geeks used to drooled over it)
3. Your list includes a "?" which provides boatloads of insight into what that $160 is for. :)
4. You include an OCZ PSU for the AMD machine, but didn't include it on the Intel machine. The same PSU can be used for both systems. I used to be a fan of OCZ, but I'm with Survive. They aren't exactly the top dog anymore and 750 watts is a bit much. A high efficiency 500w PSU is more than sufficient.
5. You include an SSD for the AMD machine, but conspicuously left it off of the Intel machine. Not sure why exactly.
Read the thread in the hardware section titled "So you want some hardware suggestions"? Have you ever built a computer before? Just based off of your post in this thread, I'd wager you lack the experience and knowledge to do this correctly and have no clue when a given component adds value or not(SATA2 vs SATA3 is only one example in your post) but heavily rank "geek-ness" and "lots of great specs and flashing lights" as very important to a FreeNAS build. Building a good reliable FreeNAS server has nothing to do with those flashy specs, how big your e-peen is, or how much money you spend. It has everything to do with what individual components are on the motherboard and what the manufacturer of the component is well known for.
Sorry if some of this sounds like I'm flaming you. I'm having a bad day and tried to get rid of some of the BS. I just want you to be happy before you end up asking for a parts list for the 4th FreeNAS server because of problems on the other 3 builds.
