BUILD Avoton build + a question

[nopoe]

Here's what I'm planning on using:

SUPERMICRO MBD-A1SRi-2758F-O mini-ITX Avoton board
2x 8gb Kingston KVR16LSE11/8 ECC SO-DIMM
Seasonic SSR-450RM 450w PSU
Rosewill Legacy V6-S
A few 2tb WD Red drives

Note for posterity: This part combination is dubious. I had to move the 140mm fan to the outside of the case in order to mount the power supply. Proceed with caution.

I saw cyberjock's review on the C2750 inside the FreeNAS mini so I'm thinking the C2758 should be fine for my purposes as well but I thought I'd drop by to ask some questions before making the investment. I could still switch to a 1150 server board+i3 since I've only bought the case and PSU so far.

The main question I have is whether I'm burning any bridges by going with an Avoton as compared to an i3. I know it's BGA vs socketed, so I'm losing the ability to upgrade, but beside that, what FreeNAS features am I locked out from using effectively (besides dedup--I don't care about that)? Maybe encryption? These chips have AES-NI support and somebody on youtube claims to get 100mb/s with encryption on a C2750, so I'm thinking even that might work fine.

I'm going to be hosting some web servers and probably a few game servers as well, but nothing crazy. My friend currently hosts a Xonotic server on a Pentium dual core (one of the old ones!). So if it can run on that, it can probably run on this.

I think all my use cases are covered. Am I missing anything?

 

[Ericloewe]

It should be fine. In fact, with avoton you can use 64GB of RAM (SO-DIMMs will be crazy expensive, but it's a nice option to have), unlike Xeon E3 v3s which are limited to 32GB.

Of course, it depends on what you do with the game servers, they might be a bit heavy...

 

[nopoe]

It should be fine. In fact, with avoton you can use 64GB of RAM (SO-DIMMs will be crazy expensive, but it's a nice option to have), unlike Xeon E3 v3s which are limited to 32GB.

Of course, it depends on what you do with the game servers, they might be a bit heavy...

I was surprised at the price. Right now, 8gb ECC SO-DIMMs are only like 4% more expensive than equivalent "regular" server memory on newegg

 

[Max Performance]

16GB ECC SO-DIMMs will have an end-user sales price below $400 each. Not cheap....64GB -> $1600
Supermicro has successfully tested the 16GB modules from Intelligent Memory and I assume they will be offered directly by Supermicro soon.

 

[nopoe]

I didn't know those even existed. At any rate, I have no need for more than 32gb. Probably no need for more than 16gb so I think I'll start with 2 of those 8gb modules.

 

[Ericloewe]

I didn't know those even existed. At any rate, I have no need for more than 32gb. Probably no need for more than 16gb so I think I'll start with 2 of those 8gb modules.

They were announced early this year and should be available soon. They don't work on Intel chips older than the Avotons, either, due to some design quirk (Haswell refresh included).

 

[ryanallan]

Guys,
I believe the C2750D4I uses standard DIMM modules.

I'm running a C2550D4I and am enjoying it.
Super low power, thus low noise and heat.
I can get 100MB/s writes to my ZFS-2 array.
Plus IPMI is nice :)

 

[Ericloewe]

Guys,
I believe the C2750D4I uses standard DIMM modules.

I'm running a C2550D4I and am enjoying it.
Super low power, thus low noise and heat.
I can get 100MB/s writes to my ZFS-2 array.
Plus IPMI is nice :)

Yes, but Supermicro's alternative uses SO-DIMMs, making things more complicated.

 

[ryanallan]

Ah, yes you are correct.

I know how much Supermicro's are praised, but should the ASRock be considered due to the fact it dosnt use SO-DIMM modules? You'll get tons more selection and in the case of failure it will be easier to find a replacement.

 

[Ericloewe]

Ah, yes you are correct.

I know how much Supermicro's are praised, but should the ASRock be considered due to the fact it dosnt use SO-DIMM modules? You'll get tons more selection and in the case of failure it will be easier to find a replacement.

Indeed, it's the motherboard used in the new FreeNAS mini from iX Systems. For small servers where much expansion isn't needed or physically small footprint is desired, it deserves very serious consideration. The only thing that concerns me is the long-term stability of the Marvell controllers employed to get the additional SATA ports.

 

[nopoe]

It's significantly more expensive and has that Marvell controller that will be useless for FreeNAS (as far as I can tell). I can spend 10 dollars more for RAM and save like 70 on the board and go with a manufacturer that is better regarded. Easy decision IMO.

If I wanted to populate it with 64gb of RAM, the ASRock would be the obvious choice, but for 32gb I think the Supermicro makes more sense.

 

[cyberjock]

The FreeNAS Mini comes with a C2750d4i. My setup is using some of those ports and I've had no problems so far...

 

[nopoe]

Interesting, I've heard the drivers were problematic. Maybe those were just old posts. At any rate, I can't afford more than 6 drives at the moment so that probably won't factor into my decision too much. Thanks for the feedback, everybody!

 

[Ericloewe]

Interesting, I've heard the drivers were problematic. Maybe those were just old posts. At any rate, I can't afford more than 6 drives at the moment so that probably won't factor into my decision too much. Thanks for the feedback, everybody!

You're not the only one, but there don't seem to be any new reports of issues.

 

[cyberjock]

Yeah.. I'm confused. Some reports of problems, some reports of no problems. I'm having zero problems. So all I can really say is "works for me".

 

[ryanallan]

From what I've read, the threads that started all this Marvell hate focused on the bug with hot plugging HDD's.

 

[Rosso Corsa]

Hi, I am thinking of build a NAS based on the C2550-processor. My transfers are at 99% CIFS, and seldom some FTP transfers. Do I have any use of the more expensive octa core C2750 processor, given Samba is single threaded? I am not doing any transcoding but i want however to saturate my 1 Gb network.
I'm understand thats NFS is multi threaded. Are there any other use of lots of cores in FreeNAS?

 

[Ericloewe]

Hi, I am thinking of build a NAS based on the C2550-processor. My transfers are at 99% CIFS, and seldom some FTP transfers. Do I have any use of the more expensive octa core C2750 processor, given Samba is single threaded? I am not doing any transcoding but i want however to saturate my 1 Gb network.
I'm understand thats NFS is multi threaded. Are there any other use of lots of cores in FreeNAS?

If you're planning on running jails, more cores will help.

 

[Rosso Corsa]

Ok, got it. Thanks for reply :)