BUILD First Build

[radian23]

Tell me about it. Sigh... The board had some bent pins which is why I got it for $35. I went ahead and bent them back into shape but figured while it was there they could do a QC check on the board. I spoke with the RMA department and they said they would be happy to inspect everything.

 

[Ericloewe]

The shipping alone has to cost more than the 20 or so bucks they charge for the key.

 

[radian23]

I learned it will also take about a week to get the key. Calling supermicro didn't help either. Was hoping to purchase it directly from them over the phone.

 

[radian23]

Decided to put the cpu in and memory. Powered up the board and didn't get any beep codes. Is this normal? I was planning to get some beeps for unsupported cpu but it was silent. IPMI doesn't show any read outs from any of the sensors.

 

[Ericloewe]

Unsupported CPU doesn't beep. You do need a CPU for beeps to happen, since the speaker is a normal system device.

 

[pschatz100]

Agreed that the 1500 UPS is overkill for FreeNAS is alone, but I'll be doing a bit of repurposing because my existing UPS (CyberPower PP1500T) is not supported.

I would be surprised if your CyberPower UPS didn't work. FreeNAS supports both usbhid-ups and Power panel drivers. Did you actually try?

 

[radian23]

Well. I updated the firmware and the bios. Starting up the board gives 6 beeps. 5 short beeps and then 1 long beep. Any idea what it means? Seems like it could be a bad bios flash, memory or CPU.

Edit:
Found the following in my manual:
5 short beeps + 1 long beep = Memory error.

I have one stick of ram and it is in the slot closest to the CPU. I have another computer that has non ECC ram. Will the board boot with non ECC RAM?

 

[Rilo Ravestein]

To answer that, you need more info on the other ram stick.

 

[radian23]

I have the following in my home theater PC that I was going to pull to test this motherboard.

G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9Q-16GBRL

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231315

 

[Ericloewe]

It might be that the repaired pins weren't really repaired.

 

[radian23]

It might be that the repaired pins weren't really repaired.

That's what I'm also thinking. I felt I did a pretty good job straightening everything. If the new ram doesn't seem to fix the issue I'll send it off to supermicro.

 

[diedrichg]

That's a lot of messing around for a board that is most likely toast. $35 for the board, $20 to ship it only to find out that you'll need a new board - should have just gone with a new board in the first place and only spent $85 rather than $130. That was a really expensive $35 deal.

 

[Ericloewe]

That's a lot of messing around for a board that is most likely toast. $35 for the board, $20 to ship it only to find out that you'll need a new board - should have just gone with a new board in the first place and only spent $85 rather than $130. That was a really expensive $35 deal.

Where can I find X10SLH-Fs at 85$ a piece? I'll take a dozen.

 

[marbus90]

nonECC will not work in these boards. Also Supermicro states using at least 2 DIMMs minimum.

 

[radian23]

So... Found out it was the ram. Tried non ECC ram and it booted no problem. Looks like the ram is going back.

 

[cyberjock]

nonECC will not work in these boards. Also Supermicro states using at least 2 DIMMs minimum.

Most hardware I've tried (Intel based) will take non-ECC RAM, even if it isn't claimed to be supported. Just don't expect the ECC chips the memory sticks don't have to magically provide ECC protection. ;)

 

[marbus90]

Tell that this nasty X10SLL-F which decides it didn't like nonECC DIMMs. ;)

 

[cyberjock]

Ok. Mail it to me and I will. :D

 

[radian23]

Received another stick of Samsung 8GB DDR3-1600 MHz PC3-12800 240-pin ECC Server Memory - M391B1G73QH0-YK0 and everything appears to be working well.

Reached out to Samsung support to do an RMA on the other stick of RAM and was told that it does not have a warranty as it is OEM ram. The ebay seller I received it from said to keep the RAM and he went ahead and refunded me.

I'm planning to purchase 4 x 4TB Western Digital Red drives when they come back in at the WD store. Was planning to run them as a raidz2. If I decide to get 2 more drives to have a total of 6 drives can I simply add them to gain extra storage space or do I need to reformat all of them? I'm pretty new to this.

I'm running a stress test on my system at this time. Using stressslinux and memtest86. Any other recommendations on stress tests I should be conducting. So far my $35 X10SLH-F is running like a champ :)

 

[Fraoch]

If I decide to get 2 more drives to have a total of 6 drives can I simply add them to gain extra storage space or do I need to reformat all of them?

You'll have to take down the existing pool and make a new one, recreating the data from backups.

I'm running a stress test on my system at this time. Using stressslinux and memtest86. Any other recommendations on stress tests I should be conducting.

Once you have your hard drives, try these:

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/how-to-hard-drive-burn-in-testing.21451/

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/checking-new-hdds-in-raid.12082/#post-98457

and don't trust your drives until you have 1000 hours on them - those last iozone tests will account for about 400 hours of that 1000.;)