Budget FreeNAS build, struggling to find correct RAM

[Mr Splat]

Hello there,

I recently decided that I would like to build myself a FreeNAS box, I am only a mere student at this moment in time and therefore do not have exceptionally deep pockets. I recently finished a year's placement and I saved a bit of money up to invest in a proper NAS designed to house all the media on my main PC (which is now struggling with capacity) and for me to place all my course work on with the view of using the owncloud plugin to make it accessible wherever I happen to be. On top of this I have two second hand servers to mess about with with the view of creating a web server, or a game server to tinker with, and rather than investing in a number of hard drives, I intend to use my NAS to hold all of their data.

So now you have a rough idea of my intentions with my FreeNAS box I would like to get down to the problem at hand. My current build consists of:

Motherboard: SuperMicro X9SCM
CPU: Intel Pentium G2020
HDDs: 3 x 3tb WD RED's in RAIDz1
PSU: Seagate 80+ gold 350W
Case: Ace Ecco 250

I have found myself struggling to find the requisite RAM for my motherboard which is ECC Unbuffered. I have looked through ebay and amazon and practically all the RAM (Registered and Unbuffered) is in the united states, I then limited my searches to within the EU, and I have found a seller in Germany offering these: View: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2x-4GB-8GB-ECC-Unbuffered-RAM-Arbeitsspeicher-DDR3-1333-Mhz-UDIMM-PC3-10600E-/351038228809?pt=DE_Technik_Computerzubeh%C3%B6r_Arbeitsspeicher&hash=item51bb824949


Elpida are the chip manufacturers for the kingston RAM listed on the compatibility list of this board.
http://www.supermicro.com/support/r...D650E3EC19339&prid=0&type=0&ecc=0&reg=0&fbd=0

Before I go after these, would anyone here more knowledgeable than myself please let me know if there are any sellers in the UK that I should look at that I have missed. I know of the likes of Amazon, Ebay, Scan, overclockers, ebuyer and newegg but they all seem to have very limited offerings of unbuffered ECC RAM, though they have plenty of Registered ECC. Lastly would the price given in the link be a reasonable price to expect to be paying for 8gb of unbuffered ECC ram?

 

[Yatti420]

See my signature for my build.. It's very similiar.. Any ECC unbuffered (ungregistered) should work.. You may want to use four drives in a raidz2 versus raidz1.. I use the KVR1333D3E9S/8G Kingston 8gb ECC unbuffered sticks..

 

[Mr Splat]

OK, any unbuffered ECC should be pretty much 90% guaranteed to work.

However, as I said in my first post my pockets are not bottomless pits owing to being a student and so I will just be making do with 8gb of RAM and 3 3tb disks until I'm (hopefully) out of uni and in work.

Having looked at the ebay advert a little bit more closely I've noticed that the elpida RAM has timings of CL13, which to my mind is incredibly sluggish at 1333MHz. Do these sorts of specs make much of a difference when it comes to use in a NAS, or should I be wanting timings of CL11 or less?

Finally, are there any UK users out there, or Irish ones for that matter who know of any suppliers of unbuffered ecc ram, particularly any suppliers who sell the stuff for roughly £70 or less, as from my experience paying £80+ for 2 x 4GB sticks is steep.

 

[Ericloewe]

How about this:

http://uk.crucial.com/gbr/en/x10slm--f/CT4486347

I recommend against Kingston, due to their recent shady practices. Crucial works perfectly with my X10 motherboard (they're validated for it under the Micron brand, but not for the X9).

 

[Mr Splat]

Looks good to me Eric, I've looked around a bit more and found a 16gb kit of Kingston value ram for £120, which seems decent for value, though now I'd like to finds out a bit more about the questionable practices you speak of. Though I still don't like the idea of forking out that amount on RAM. Do the supermicro boards like operating on a single channel of memory? If I can make do with a single stick of 8gb of memory that'd probably be my best case scenario, allowing me to get another 8gb further down the line.

The only issue I have with the single stick of 8gb would be having read around the internet, which is ever a reliable source of information, there are conflicting reports on whether my supermicro board will work with a single stick of memory.

Anybody here use a supermicro board with a single stick of memory?

 

[Yatti420]

Kingston shouldn't have any issues with regards to x9 series.. It's the x10 series that have issues with Kingston..

 

[Mr Splat]

Would a stick of this stuff be fine? http://www.kingston.com/us/memory/search/?partid=KVR13LE9/8 or would it be one to avoid, the model number isn't quite the same as what I've been seeing around these forums e.g. http://www.kingston.com/en/memory/search/?partid=kvr1333d3e9s/8g. From the specs all I can't see a lot of difference between them, except the LE9/8's are between £6-10 cheaper

Though I am still unsure whether it is absolutely required to have at least two sticks of RAM in the X9SCM.

 

[danb35]

Though I am still unsure whether it is absolutely required to have at least two sticks of RAM in the X9SCM.

It is not.

 

[Mr Splat]

Just an update, I noticed the difference between the kingston KVR13LE9/8 and the KVR1333D3E9S/8g, the LE9/8 runs on 1.35v and the 9S/8g runs on 1.5v. So I've plumped for a single stick of the 9S/8g with a view that if I have any spare cash further down the line I'll bump my build up to 2x8g's

 

[SwampRabbit]

I am probably using the same memory or similar as Ericloewe, I am using two pairs of CT2KIT102472BD160B, I recommend them as I used them in other builds too.

Believe it was priced fairly well, was cheaper than the Kingston modules.

 

[Mr Splat]

Thanks for the input guys, was helpful in finding good, reasonably priced unbuffered ECC RAM. I've got my FreeNAS box up and running, and I am looking forward to getting the most out of it. I don't know if mods routinely come around looking to lock threads or if they're allowed to disappear into the ether over time but I will no longer be inputting anything more into this thread. So if mods do look to lock threads, feel free.

 

[pschatz100]

The X9SCM boards are not as fussy about memory as the X10 series. I use Crucial in my system. PC 1600 versus PC 1333 will make no real difference in performance. 1.35v memory can also run as 1.5v so worries there, either. A single stick of memory will have very slightly lower performance than two sticks running in dual channel mode - but again, it is not likely to be much of an issue. If you think you might eventually want to upgrade the system to 32Gb memory, then start with a single 8Gb stick now (the X9SCM has four mem slots.) If you don't see yourself going above 16Gb memory, then buy whatever is cheaper: one 8Gb stick or two matched 4Gb stick. The issue with memory is that 1) you need at least 8Gb memory, and 2) it should be ECC.

The Pentium G2020 requires Firmware version 2.0 or newer on the X9SCM. If the system posts, then you probably already have at least that version, however I would make it a point to verify that you are running the latest version.