AMD E-350 Thread (now in new forum?)

[Bohs Hansen]

official no longer part of the E350 group. As previous mentioned I had to RMA my board cause of a defective PCIe slot and later a defective sata port (prolly same reason, sata port just delayed). I went with the ASUS F1A75-I Deluxe with a A6-3500 3core @ 2.1GHz instead. Just put it together and now its time to install OS. Didn't cost that much more and does give a performance boost compared to the E350.

So far I'm impressed with this, yet another masterpiece, from ASUS. Also no ram trouble this time, recognized it instantly and I got a full PCIe x16 slot for later expansion of bigger sata/sas controller

 

[jfr2006]

How about power consume?

 

[Bohs Hansen]

How about power consume?

If you meant me - the E35M1-I Deluxe board had a power consume of 49W at max load according to specs, this one run up on about 60W on full load, so not much more really. If I had gone with one of the A4 2core's instead I could have keept it on the same.
We also know that the full consume always never happens on a NAS machine as it never runs under full load (at least not for me) On top of that with disabled parts like wifi you can save even more.

I can't say much about the compatible to freenas right now, but I don't see a problem there as its about the same components as the E35M1-I Deluxe (LAN etc). Still forced to run mine on a windows install until freenas gets a plugin system so i can install a ftp server and user management that suits my needs or I have to just install a default *nix system and do it all myself without a fancy interface.

But that's more for another thread then the E350 here. My post was more of a "info" since I've previously posted here about the trouble with my old board.

 

[headconnect]

Code:

Erebus# dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/moirae/ddtest bs=1024k count=20000
20000+0 records in
20000+0 records out
20971520000 bytes transferred in 86.778172 secs (241668147 bytes/sec)
Erebus# dd of=/dev/null if=/mnt/moirae/ddtest bs=1024k count=20000
20000+0 records in
20000+0 records out
20971520000 bytes transferred in 76.209276 secs (275183299 bytes/sec)

So thought it was time to redo the test prior to upgrading to release of 8.0.1. since i feel there's been a performance degradation..

And so there had been:

Code:

Erebus# uptime
12:19PM  up 109 days, 13:56, 2 users, load averages: 1.18, 1.31, 0.99
Erebus# dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/moirae/ddtest2 bs=1024k count=20000
20000+0 records in
20000+0 records out
20971520000 bytes transferred in 1016.610907 secs (20628856 bytes/sec)

So going from 240 megabytes/second writing to around 19 megabytes/second writing...

Just for fun, i did a restart prior to upgrading - just to see:

Code:

Erebus# rm ddtest2
Erebus# dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/moirae/ddtest2 bs=1024k count=20000
20000+0 records in
20000+0 records out
20971520000 bytes transferred in 97.818221 secs (214392776 bytes/sec)

Sure enough, back to basics.

Anyone have any idea what might cause performance degradation over time which is not relative to usage? In those 109 days the raidz1 has grown to 4.8TB used and 1.6TB free - but after a restart back to 'normal'.

Will do another run after 8.0.1. release upgrade, and if any real difference from the after-restart test i'll post it again.

 

[jfr2006]

Yes, i asking to you. Thanks for answering. I'm also considering a platform upgrade, but i'm going to use an Athlon II 270u i just bought at ebay ;)

 

[enemy85]

Set the USB as HDD. Have you set up hdd boot priority from BIOS?
In BIOS setup (Advanced mode) first you need to go to:
Boot tab -> Hard drive BBS priorities (scroll down to the bottom) -> select your USB stick as Boot option #1
Then go back to boot tab main view and set your Boot option priorities.

I NEED HELP...

my system:
FreeNAS 8.0.1 release AMD64 installed on:
MB Sapphire IPC-E350M1W PURE WHITE FUSION MINI-ITX (LAN chip Marvell 88E8059)
HDD 2xSEAGATE ST2000DL003 (mirroring)
RAM GEIL 4GB PC3 10660 1333MHz Value Plus 9-9-9 GVP34GB1333C9SC

Previously i had 8.0.1 beta2 and everything was ok. after i formatted my 2gb usb stick and installed on it the final 8.0.1 release.
At first everything was ok but when i reboot the nas then my problems start....

i get this

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/402/foto15sl.jpg/

as the pc doesn't recognize the usb...
i did all was written in this post from the bios but nothing...anybody can help me? i'm getting crazy about it...

 

[tropic]

Just for kicks, would you mind going into your BIOS, disabling the onboard NIC, and double-checking the boot settings for your USB stick?

I've had assorted weirdness from FreeNAS setups in which I left the onboard Marvell NIC enabled.

 

[enemy85]

Just for kicks, would you mind going into your BIOS, disabling the onboard NIC, and double-checking the boot settings for your USB stick?

I've had assorted weirdness from FreeNAS setups in which I left the onboard Marvell NIC enabled.

i can check it, but this will mean i need an external NIC to make freenas working right? at the moment i use only the on board NIC module...
but i'll do this test, i guess i'll see at least if it works in this way after the reboot

i'll let u know

thanks

 

[tingo]

Another FreeNAS box:

tingo
Name: FreeNAS box
FreeNAS Version: 8.0.2 release / amd64
Case: Lian Li PC-Q11R
PSU: Corsair CX 430W V2
Motherboard: Asus E35M1-I
Memory: 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) Kingston DDR3 1066MHz CL7
Boot Device: Verbatim Store 'n' Go Pinstripe 4 GB usb drive
Network Card(s):
Expansion Card(s):
Media Bays(s): 6 x 2.5 inch drives in one 5.25 inch drive bay
Disk(s): 6 x 1 TB Samsung HN-M101MBB Spinpoint M8, 2.5 inch, 5400 rpm, sata2, 8 MB cache
Configuration: RAID-Z1

Performance:
(this is to be decided and discussed seperately, we need to standardise these measurements as much as possible)

Issues:
The PSU was a very tight fight in the case - I had to peel off the stickers on the sides to cram it in.
The USB memory stick has "synchronize cache" issues, but it eventually boots.
The two sata cables included with the motherboard has angled connectors (90 degreees) on one end; they don't fit easily in the media bay, and only one fits
on the motherboard. Changed for cables with straight connectors.
The fan in the case always spins at about 700 rpm (and is audible)
Currently, no temperature monitoring from FreeNAS / FreeBSD.
__________________________________________________ ______________________

 

[mr_clark]

I've been playing with FreeNAS over the last while and decided to go for it and build my own FreeNAS server for home. It's basically just going to be used for backing up a couple of laptops and my Linux box. Plus some video storage and maybe down the road when FreeNAS has torrent support back I'll do that too.

I'm trying to keep the power consumption and sound levels down as much as possible.

Here's my plan so far:

Case:Fractal Design Arc MIDI Tower
Disks: 5 x WD20EARS
LAN: Intel PRO/1000 MT NIC
(Already have the above items)

Motherboard: ASUS E35M1-I (Standard or Pro?)
Memory:Kingston KVR1066D3N7/4G x 2
Power Supply: Antec Earthwatts Green 430W

I'm stuck trying to decide between the standard e35m1-I Motherboard and the Pro. I can get the pro version for about $8 more than the standard unit.

My thinking for going with the Pro version is that it has more PCI/e slots so I can use one for an Intel GB server NIC that I have kicking around to get away from the Realtek but also gives me a spare PCI slot if I decide to go for more drives later and add an IBM M1015 card.

What do you guys think? Am I totally out to lunch with this setup?

Should I go with the Pro or Standard version of the MB?

Is there another Power Supply that you'd recommend? Something quieter? more efficient?

Any other recommendations from the experts?

 

[mr_clark]

One more question. I see that there's a fan included with the MB. Is that really needed? I thought the point of these boards were that they were very quiet and that no fans were needed.

Thanks.

 

[Durkatlon]

Pro version is not miniItx I think. There's the "I" standard and deluxe and the "M" pro. I have one each of the "I" versions. In hindsight I prefer the standard over deluxe. Standard has more SATA and a standard VGA monitor port. Deluxe is more of a bells'n'whistles board (HDMI, WiFi etc) which is not all that useful in a NAS.

 

[jfr2006]

Be carefull, as the e-350 motherboards from asus don't support anything else then a graphic card on the PCI-E 16x slots. I don't know if this is general for all e-350 boards or only applys to the asus boards.

 

[Bohs Hansen]

Be carefull, as the e-350 motherboards from asus don't support anything else then a graphic card on the PCI-E 16x slots. I don't know if this is general for all e-350 boards or only applys to the asus boards.

Might have been the problem mine had, but according to the replies i got from ASUS support prior to RMA'ing the board they should support SATA controllers just fine. Had it report one time before my PCIe slot broke/stopped working.
But I kinda don't mind now that its over, my new board and cpu pulls way better performance (get full gbit speeds on realtec onboard lan)

 

[jfr2006]

No, it was not a problem of yours.. I did some testing before changing my system, and could not make the IBM BR10i work on it. Also, if you take a look at the asus support forum, several people are having the same problem, although some have got it working in the E35M1-Pro version with some special BIOS provided by asus only to some.. Don't know if the latest BIOS for the PRO board solves this issue, but for the E-35M1-M it does not solve!

Glad to know you are happy with your system. I was able to get a amd 270u CPU, but even with this version, i got an increase of power consume of about 14W. Also, it seems that the board i'm using does not make full usage of the CPU saving energy features..

Regards.

 

[Bohs Hansen]

I did have a beta bios for my E35M1-I Deluxe, but the reason was to support my ram. Might have had the sata card fix as well.

 

[jfr2006]

I wish they would send me a beta bios that would fix that for my E35M1-M

 

[mr_clark]

Bit the bullet and ordered my E35M1-M motherboard with RAM, etc. I'll post here with my experience.

 

[jfr2006]

Bit the bullet and ordered my E35M1-M motherboard with RAM, etc. I'll post here with my experience.

Hope you don't want to add a SAS controller later, since it's not going to work....

Where are you from? I'm selling my E35M1-M ;)

 

[mr_clark]

Hope you don't want to add a SAS controller later, since it's not going to work....

Where are you from? I'm selling my E35M1-M ;)

I'm in Canada. I don't believe I'll want to add a SAS controller later at this point but who knows. Hopefully ASUS will get their act together and fix their BIOS for this MB.