Another ASRock C2550D4I Bites The Dust - Recommendations for Replacement?

[Dave Speed]

Built a FreeNAS with the ASRock C2440D4I in November for the house based on general good vibes on the net. This is a home unit and sees only occasional service at present. The watchdog timer was addressed and it was cooled by a fan from Day 1. It was fed by a UPS.

There were problems from early on, but I felt that they could have been operator error. The box would just 'go away'. Inability to reset the BIOS except by pulling the battery and waiting 4+ hours was an error.

Looks like I'll end up using the warranty unit for a "lab" machine to play with Corral unless somebody wants to make me an offer.

What will boot off USB and support 8 fast SATA drives ((ideally 10) at a rational price, use Corsair ECC ram and 'just run'. The Atom derivative was sufficient processing power for me in this application. Low power and fanless is nice, but not a requirement.

Thanks in advance! (And yes, I am searching the archives, but I am looking for today's answer, not the 2016 answer; stuff changes so darned fast...)

Dave

 

[Benjamin Bryan]

I bought one of those ASrock C2750D4I boards and had trouble with FreeNAS crashing whenever disks on the Marvell SATA controller was under heavy load. I had to RMA it twice... I had already wasted so much time I eventually gave up and used only the Intel ports... and then it finally just died. Needless to say I'm done buying ASrock for server boards. I've been using Supermicro for quite some time and really like their reliability. The Xeon-D boards offer a range of power/prices. If you don't need a lot of power the X10SDV-2C is inexpensive ($330, which is great considering it has a CPU+Motherboard) and would probably be enough if you survived on an Atom. I have the X10SDV-4C+-TLN4F and a X10SDV-F (4 core and 8 core model respectively) and have been very happy with them. The Supermicro mini-itx boards only have 6 SATA ports so you would need an HBA to get to 8 or 10 disks, I use the IBM M1015s. Or if you can go to Flex ATX you can get them with 4 SATA + 16 SAS ports.

 

[Dave Speed]

Thanks!

Having heard about the Marvell problems, I avoided using them in the initial configuration. The fan was another hedge there as I heard that cooking was the issue for heavy use. The Marvel controllers have worked OK for me, FWIW.

The X10SDV-4C+ looks good, but it looks like this forces a memory change to DDR4 (another $250+ - I didn't see the Hynex brand on NewEgg).

There appears to be a family of IBM N1015s. Some seem to be physically long cards, limiting in the miniITX world. Which one are you using?

Dave

BTW, I have a bunch of old IT friends in Idaho Falls. Need to get back there. Great place / Good people.

 

[Benjamin Bryan]

I've been running mine with Crucial DDR4 ECC, use Crucial's compatibility checker to find modules compatible with the X10SDV.

I am using the LSI 9210-8i, which is easy to find on Ebay pre-flashed to IT mode, and also have an old IBM M1015 / LSI SAS9220-8i which I had to flash to IT mode. Both of them fit in the CSE-721TQ-250B.

I noticed you weren't that far, I've been out in your area a couple of times...mostly to change planes. |

 

[Dave Speed]

Again, thank you for the clearly stated info.

I was running 32 gb (4x8gb) in the ASRock, but had not ramped up into the add-ons in FreeNAS. How much do you run in your systems. I was looking at 2x16gb for the rebuild.

I'm heading out to the Palouse in a month or so to catch things greening up (photography). Might stray over to Silver City.

 

[Dave Speed]

BTW, more of the story on the ASRock board's root problem (actually in the processor) can be found here:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/11110/semi-critical-intel-atom-c2000-flaw-discovered

It would be nice if the mfg would identify the problem and communicate a plan to move forward.