A1SRi-2558F - have I made a mistake buying this board?

[BigDave]

I may have done something stupid. I'm looking for another project and bought this board to build
another pfSense 1U chassis. I settled on this board because it has the PCIe X8 slot for adding a 10GB
SFP+ NIC, the board has all the bells and whistles I wanted BUT!

I went to start searching for a stick of RAM to put in it and found that DDR3 SODIMM in a ECC configuration is a rare thing to find. It's out there but a 4GB stick approaches $100 USED! (I have no need for a lot of RAM here, this is after all pfSense

Should I cancel the order for the board, or am I just not seeing the market clearly. Love to hear what you think.

 

[Jailer]

Wow, doing a bit of searching myself and you may be out of luck unless you are willing to go the ebay route. I didn't realize how slim the ECC DDR3 SODIMM market had gotten.

Might want to reconsider that purchase if you still can.

 

[tvsjr]

Probably not as low-power, but I bought a complete Supermicro 1U box, ready to go with rack rails, for $300... E3-1270, 32GB RAM, etc. IMO, you could do better...

 

[MrToddsFriends]

I may have done something stupid. I'm looking for another project and bought this board to build
another pfSense 1U chassis. I settled on this board because it has the PCIe X8 slot for adding a 10GB
SFP+ NIC, the board has all the bells and whistles I wanted BUT!

I went to start searching for a stick of RAM to put in it and found that DDR3 SODIMM in a ECC configuration is a rare thing to find. It's out there but a 4GB stick approaches $100 USED! (I have no need for a lot of RAM here, this is after all pfSense

Should I cancel the order for the board, or am I just not seeing the market clearly. Love to hear what you think.

Just for the case an European seller is not out of question (UK included in this query):
https://www.heise.de/preisvergleich...DDR3~5830_unbuffered+ECC+(UDIMM)~5831_SO-DIMM
I'm not surprised about variety and prices over here. 8GB ECC SO-DIMMs starting below 90€.

I'm using Kingston ValueRAM Server Premier KVR16LSE11/8KF DIMMs in my Supermicro A1SAi-2750F board for over three years now without problems. These DIMMs aren't available any more. I can't say if the newer KVR16LSE11/8HD Server Premier DIMMs work as well in the Supermicro mini-ITX Avoton/Rangeley boards.

And be aware of the Avoton/Rangeley AVR54 bug.
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...s-system-fault-may-lead-to-dead-system.50314/

Newer SOCs not suffering from this bug can only be identified after removing the heat sink (which might void warranty).
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...4i-boards-now-shipping-with-fixed-cpus.60518/

 

[BigDave]

I'm looking for another project and bought this board to build
another pfSense 1U chassis.

Thank you all for your input.
I was able to cancel the order for the A1SRi-2558-F motherboard.

I was able to find a model X10SDV-2C-TLN2F which should meet
my needs very well. I'll spend about $50 more for the Broadwell Pentium board
but hey, it's my hobby

 

[Arwen]

Oh, and one thing about DDR3 SO-DIMMs. The slot configuration is different between ECC and non-ECC. You HAVE to use whatever memory type the board was designed to use. Stupid in my opinion. Something they fixed for DDR4 SO-DIMMs.

Because of that, I would highly recommend avoiding servers with DDR3 SO-DIMMs.

 

[BigDave]

Because of that, I would highly recommend avoiding servers with DDR3 SO-DIMMs.

Avoided, thank you Arwen!

I ended up getting the X10SDV-2C-TLN2F and testing went well and the board is 100% functional.
I'm glad y'all chimed in (and confirmed my bad vibe) regarding my original choice of board, pitfall
avoided thanks to you :D

I'm now looking for a chassis and am leaning towards a 2U with 80mm fans and also keeping to
the front I/O configuration that I prefer in my rack. Having a SOC processor means the air flow
will be important, so going with 2U allows options over 1U when it comes to speed/pressure/noise
of the fans.

So far this chassis design has all the options I'm looking for, but it's just the front runner so far.
http://www.genesysgroup.com.tw/c236.htm

Thanks again, and keep those opinions coming.
Dave

 

[Stux]

Love the x10sdv boards :)

Broadwell rocks :)

 

[Inxsible]

What exactly will you be using the pfSense for? Are you going to run a lot of packages? Is there a particular reason why you would need ECC support on a pfSense box?

I am in the process of building a low power pfSense box in a 1U chassis as well. My needs are basic -- 50Mbps down, but I will be using it as a VPN client. I eventually also plan to put a VPN server on the pfSense box and I might access my home network when I am away (but this will be very few times a year)

I built in @ 103.69

1. J3355B-ITX (10W TDP) ($56.70 + $1.99 shipping NEW)
2. 4GB Kingston 204-pin DDR3 SO-DIMM ($16.99 USED)
3. IBM 49Y4242 - Intel i340-T4 card ($28 USED)
4. my existing 1U Supermicro chassis CS813MTQ-350CB (350W Gold PSU)

The 4 drive bays of the chassis will be wasted -- as I plan to install pfSense on a 2.5" PATA IDE drive that I sourced from my old old laptop.

I eventually plan to move that into a 1U chassis like http://www.plinkusa.net/webitx125.htm with a picoPSU, once I feel the need to have 4 more drives as JBOD to my existing FreeNAS box (12 bay)
The good thing is that you can reverse mount this chassis, which will be great to put the CAT6 cables from the router into the switch.

 

[BigDave]

What exactly will you be using the pfSense for? Are you going to run a lot of packages? Is there a particular reason why you would need ECC support on a pfSense box?

I use pfSense for my router and firewall. I would love to eventually play around with packages,
but don't have time for it now. I'm building this with a 10GB SFP+ card, but will admit I have no
reason for doing so, other than it's fun and interesting.
ECC memory for a stand alone machine that has no storage other than the boot device is IMHO
unnecessary.

 

[BigDave]

An update on my 10GB SPF+ pfSense build...

The X10SDV-2C-TLN2F motherboard turned out to be a bust for me because there
was no way it would interface with my 10MB ISP incoming line (thanks @Ericloewe).

Anyone interested in taking it off my hands for a reasonable price just send me a PM.

So I ended up buying an X10SDV-2C-TP4F instead, now it's up and running with one
little issue
The 10GB SFP+ NICs onboard this most recent board are Inphi CS4227 and AFAIK are
not supported in FreeBSD as of this post, hopefully this will be coming in later versions.
For the time being, I've just added a Chelsio T420-CR NIC to the PCIe expansion slot
which works just fine as frogs hair

My new chassis for this build is working well and with the upgrade of the two 80mm fans
in the rear (stock fans totally inadequate) and have also ordered a 60mm fan which I will
attempt to mount blowing straight down on the passive (stock) heat sink. The rig is up
and running now, doing what pfSense does...;)