AMD FX Processors

[DrKK]

Let me clarify - I have a few Intel boards with processors around and the P8z68V-Pro is one of the Intel's I have. I would like to know - although this board is not server class - if it will still support the ECC. The biggest thing I want to get right is the ECC. This particular application doesn't need nor warrant a server class motherboard in my opinion. I would just like to know if the P8z68V-Pro will support the ECC. If not, then I will go with the ASUS M5A78L-M LX PLUS.

So my question is does ECC work with the P8Z68V-Pro or do I have to go with the ASUS M5A78? I have both Intel and AMD procs I can use.

Thanks.

Apparently Scott you're not following.

ECC RAM is a matter of *BOTH* a CPU, ***AND*** the associated chipset supporting ECC. A board with Z68, by definition, has no ability to run ECC RAM.

 

[marbus90]

If you want to get that part right, buy a Supermicro server.

I mean, what else do you mean by enterprise storage servers? Did you really build such boxes, blatantly ignoring the hardware guides and expect something reliable?

 

[joeschmuck]

Did you really build such boxes, blatantly ignoring the hardware guides and expect something reliable?

Don't go hating on someone now.

The hardware guides are a bit skewed due to personal preferences. And I believe the hardware guides to point to use the FreeBSD site for hardware compatibility. The only real addition we add for FreeNAS is 8GB ECC RAM minimum for version 9.3 and a boot device with at least 4GB (I think I got that correct).

Also, I wouldn't say that my AMD build is an enterprise solution, it's far from it however I'm certain that if I could push a full 32GB of RAM into it and then a few of those nice Intel 750 SSD cards, oh how sweat it could be , but still not something where you could put 64GB ECC RAM. Mine is great for a home or small office system, not something I'd use in a large office environment.

 

[cyberjock]

Joeschmuck,

The reason that AMD isn't recommended in the guide is because there is no guarantee of a few things:

1. There is no guarantee that AMD platforms will work on future versions of FreeNAS.
2. There is no guarantee of certain features that a user may expect to work (such as ECC, VT-d, etc.) will actually work as designed, be stable, etc on AMD platforms.
3. The CTO of iXsystems has publicly admonished AMD builds.

Yes, they may work. They may work tomorrow, and they may work next week. But because of the lack of support from AMD on FreeBSD, it's the kind of thing that is hard to expect to work. So for those reasons AMD isn't recommended. So when I put all of that info together I feel that it would be in bad taste torecommend users buy hardware that may or may not work in the very next release. Intel works pretty hard to make Intel hardware work on FreeBSD. AMD puts almost no effort to make it work at all. Frankly, if I were a newbie user to the forum, didn't have any experience with FreeBSD/FreeNAS I'd want to know what stuff will work now, and has a very high degree of working for future reasonable builds. I want to know that when I spend money on some hardware that I can expect it to last more than a year. Nobody, and I mean nobody, can make that kind of assumption (and really, it is an assumption as we have no validation or committment from AMD of keeping things working in future builds).

So the most responsible thing is to point people to hardware that we know works now and we know has a very high degree of working in the future. If they are FreeBSD/FreeNAS experts, they won't be looking at my guide for advice anyway, and if they want to take the risk with AMD, that's totally cool with me. They should know what they are getting themselves into and be ready for those consequences, for better or worse.

But as long as people are using my recommendations to decide what to spend money on, I'm going to recommend people spend money on hardware that is likely to keep them happy for as long as possible while not being outrageously expensive. People are entrusting you, me, and other high posters with a lot of control on where they are spending their hard-earned cash. They shouldn't be having to question whether I have secret motives, whether this may blow up in their face when FreeNAS 10.x comes out, or whether their hardware will even be able to perform to their expectations. They should have faith that I'm trying to provide them with the best advice for a system they will likely use for 3-5 years. Who the heck knows if FreeBSD 11, 12, or 13 will even work with AMD platforms? But we know Intel has spent (and will continue to spend) massive money on keeping FreeBSD working with Intel platforms, so that's where the smart money should go.

 

[DrKK]

I mean, there's no doubt in some sense you can get a lot of bang-per-dollar from AMD. It's really hard to convince people that they don't want to go that route. Let's take for example my main desktop machine. It's an AMD A10-6800K. It was like $100. The top-of-the-line motherboard was like $100. Brand new, retail. You can't even *dream* about equivalent performance on an Intel-based system for anything approaching that price. (CPU + mobo + graphics, of similar power, would set you back close to double that on an Intel). But, this is a Windows desktop machine. Not a server.

So it is certainly understandable that many people out there--especially price conscious ones that look for bang-per-dollar--might be AMD fans, and to boot, being AMD fans, will have some AMD hardware laying around that they might like to repurpose on FreeNAS.

But the truth is that when you're running FreeNAS, and the ZFS filesystem, and FreeBSD, and whatnot that comes along with this product, we want you to use Intel. We want you to use specific motherboards, specific RAM. And so on. Not because we're douchebags, or arrogant nerds, or uninformed morons, or are in the pay of SuperMicro or Intel, but rather, because THIS IS WHAT WE DO. People like Cyberjock, like me, like the other ubiquitous community support people---this is our thing. We get to see, and respond to, the thousands (literally) of questions and problems people have. We are the ones reading the manuals, tech specs, FreeBSD mailing lists.

What we want is very simple: We want you to have the most positive experience of your life with our network attached storage product. We want you to say: this is the most awesome thing I've built for myself, this software is awesome, this performance is great, I love all the things I can now do with my own servers, I love FreeBSD, I love the FreeNAS support community, and I love being a part of this.

The question you should ask yourself: If you take our recommendations, you can build yourself a nice 5TB server for under $1000. No problem. 100%, right up the middle, FreeNAS community recommended hardware. Go ahead and price out what a quality appliance like this ACTUALLY COSTS if you buy it from one of the usual commercial vendors. Go ahead. I'll wait. *THAT* is who we compete against. I mean, this god damn thing is almost $1000, and doesn't even have any drives in it---and even if it did, it still can't do half the things a FreeNAS could. Compared to what you would pay out there for this level of quality, capability, and performance, you can plainly see that our recommended hardware *IS* the economical solution! We are not competing against J. Random Linux hack-job NAS, which you can certainly build from second-hand, deprecated, hardware and software, and AMD out the ass if you so choose. And it might even work, and you might enjoy it.

But the fact that we, as a group anyway, strongly discourage the AMD platform for FreeNAS is a legitimate calculation that we have made on your behalf. If you insist on doing that, you are probably better served by using something else. And that's fine. Other things out there do what they do (which is generally less than FreeNAS does) just fine on AMD without ECC RAM or with 2GB of RAM. That's cool. Some of those products are pretty decent, and we gladly send you to them.

We just don't want you to use this product if you won't get the most out of it, if you won't enjoy it. If you are building a new FreeNAS from new parts, it's going to cost you $750 for a modest one, or you're going to have to get creative sourcing a Thinkserver and upgrading some of its parts. That's just how it is. We have no ulterior motive other than a good experience for you. If we don't think you're likely to have a good experience with the hardware you have, we'll tell you so. These are very, very, very well thought out guidances, and based upon tens of thousands of use cases. It's not just nerd arrogance or elitism.

 

[Scott McCarthy]

OK so I want to thank everyone for their help and replies. You guys all provided excellent information and as a result, we decided to go with the Sabertooth 990FX which did support the ECC memory. I actually can't believe how nice the Sabertooth motherboard is and we are going to test them further for use in other systems as they seem to be incredibly well built. We finally got the FreeNAS server built and running and mirrored the boot drive with 2 SSD drives and built out the data drive array with high quality drives. We also had the time and opportunity to test everything including pulling one boot drive to make sure the drive redundancy worked along with doing the same on the data drive set.

I can't believe how impressed I am with how resilient FreeNAS is in terms of dealing with drive failures and bringing drives back online when they are put back in place. This software works better than some of the commercial SAN offerings I have seen and is very stable and solid from our testing. Thanks again for all your help and we were able to get a proper server built per everyone's feedback and suggestions!

 

[joeschmuck]

So many AMD haters :(, but I can handle it.

I can't pull out a crystal ball and predict the future on how long or well AMD CPUs will be supported by FreeBSD but I'll hang on to my AMD system for as long as it serves it's purpose, but from what I've read a few months ago, FreeBSD 10 supports AMD so that means I have at least FreeNAS 10 which should run on my platform. And I have never once had a single issue with my AMD FreeNAS machine having anything to do with the hardware except the NIC being a RealTek so I added an Intel NIC. If I ever have to upgrade, well I've already said in other forum threads that I'll be getting a nice shiny new Intel and Supermicro setup, I want IPMI. Heck, I almost wish my power cord popped out of the wall outlet just so I could tell my wife that I've experienced a problem and then she would let me spend the money for the repair parts (CPU & MB).

Please keep in mind that I'm not promoting or shooting down AMD nor Intel without some provable basis. I almost wish I could get on the band wagon with promoting only Intel but for a home NAS setup, I can't, not yet at least. I have yet to hear of a single AMD FX CPU system with an issue running FreeNAS that was related to the CPU/Hardware where the person built it with proper ECC hardware. When I hear of this type of problem, I'll change my tune.

Here is my Intel promotion... If you want to do your best to future proof your system, by Intel. This is based off of nothing published that I'm aware of but it's the trend in this forum. There seems to be a lot of non-factual facts being tossed around at times. Not trying to start an argument but opinions are not always facts, but they may be good educated guesses.

At the OP (Scott),
Which CPU do you have in your Sabertooth 990FX system? Also, I highly recommend that you install an Intel NIC (typically $30) into your system and disable your onboard NIC which is a RealTek 8111. You are likely to experience throughput errors using that onboard NIC.

 

[malcolmputer]

Here is my Intel promotion... If you want to do your best to future proof your system, by Intel. This is based off of nothing published that I'm aware of but it's the trend in this forum. There seems to be a lot of non-factual facts being tossed around at times. Not trying to start an argument but opinions are not always facts, but they may be good educated guesses.

joeschmuck, I agree, my AMD system has been great since I built it (a year ago) , but since 99% of the vocal users seem to be using intel and writing guides for intel and filing bugs for intel etc. I have actually just bought an intel system. I really just wanted to have BIOS level proof that ECC was working as well as IPMI.

 

[joeschmuck]

joeschmuck, I agree, my AMD system has been great since I built it (a year ago) , but since 99% of the vocal users seem to be using intel and writing guides for intel and filing bugs for intel etc. I have actually just bought an intel system. I really just wanted to have BIOS level proof that ECC was working as well as IPMI.

Bug filings are mainly against the application but on occasion we will see something hardware related where there is a device driver issue, most of the time lack of a device driver. And I agree, most of the user base is Intel but not all. I must be that 1% AMD vocal user :).

I'm not sure how my AMD board will tell me if I have an ECC RAM error, hopefully it will do something crazy like start beeping at me. And thanks for running my nose in it, IPMI. I wish I had it since my NAS is in my basement.

 

[marbus90]

You can get IPMI, ECC and Intel onboard NICs for AMD as well... but what's the point when it is the same price point as an Intel system.

 

[joeschmuck]

I think the AMD without all those goodies is cheaper which is why some folks go that AMD route. When I purchased my system I was not familiar with IPMI nor the poor support of the RealTek NIC in FreeBSD. If I could do it over again...

 

[marcevan]

Just chiming in now, +3 years... my AMD A4-6300 CPU has been going strong for years now. I know I have non-ECC memory in there and only now is the PSU going, going...[Amazon please deliver new PSU before GONE].

So I'm moving to a 4U and keeping the board and CPU and drives.

When I put this server together, it was under a desk, able to vent the HD heat out the sides, and reliably run 24x7 without a hiccup for many years.

Now I'm in a new house, welcome to the era of home automation, so I have a full height rack, UPS, firewall, KVM and this was on a shelf with no ability to vent properly. Probably caused the 80 Plus fan to keep kicking in and wear out on a PSU not meant to last > 3 years anyway.

I think a new 4U chassis, venting from front (fans blowing in) to back (fans blowing out) and a new Noctua CPU cooler will do wonders with a new SeaSonic 10 year 80-Plus Gold PSU.

I'm also going to relieve the motherboard of it's SATA port load but flashing an LSI Logic SAS controller (haven't received it yet, but have the USB stick prepped) and possibly just use an IBM SSD for the boot drive on one motherboard SATA.

Yes, the realtek onboard NIC is garbage, but I moved to a simple single gigabit PCI-E Intel card a couple years ago.

All in all, we can get by on AMD just fine until we cannot. So I'll take the risk by hedging on the LSI HBA, Intel NIC side, as those will port over to an Intel board just fine one day.

 

[DrKK]

"Relieve the motherboard of its SATA port load".

Why?

 

[marcevan]

Because for 10 Watts, the LSI HBA SAS controller is more efficient and a much better processor than the onboard system would do. Similarly to why I relieved the mobo of using its onboard NIC (realtek) in favor of an Intel PCI-e Gigabit card.

 

[DrKK]

Can't say I understand your logic...but, good luck sir.