Hardware Compatibility Check

[zeebee]

Thanks to everyone that's given me advice on my first FreeNAS build. I've managed to find a place down here where I can buy a Supermicro board, so things are looking up!

Would you mind taking a look at these components and seeing if they look compatible to you?

Intel® Xeon® E-2136 Processor
Supermicro X11SCL-F Server Board
Crucial 16GB DDR4-2666 ECC UDIMM CT16G4WFD8266 (x2 - 32GB)
Western Digital Red 4 TB 3.5" 5400RPM (x4 - RaidZ2)
WD Green 120GB 3D NAND 2.5" SSD (x2 - Mirrored Boot)
Seasonic 650W Focus Plus
Fractal Design Define R6

Does the CPU work with this mobo? (I'm pretty confident on this one)?
Does the RAM work with this mobo? (Supermicro only seem to list a couple of sticks on their compatibility list)
The SSDs are super cheap (and I assume crappy) but will they be ok for this purpose?
Is the power supply appropriate for this build? (I read this advice thread but I'm not super confident on this)

Thanks again for any help you can give me.

 

[Dice]

1) Looks by the specs at SM: "Single socket H4 (LGA 1151) supports Intel® Xeon® processor E-2100, Intel® 8th Gen. Core i3 series,"
2) I wouldn't stress too much over the RAM not being listed at the QVL. You found DDR4 ECC UDIMM, that should be sufficient.
3) I can not see any reason why they would not.
4) 4 drives? 650w is beyond sufficient.

 

[zeebee]

Thanks @Dice. Just to be 100% sure - when they say "supports E-2100", they mean "supports E-21xx processors", which includes my E-2136, right?

Also, the place I'm looking at getting the CPU from says "tray only". I assume this means it doesn't come with a cooler. Any recommendations for a reasonable cooler for this system? I was looking at the 212 EVO, but it seems enormous - is it overkill?

 

[anmnz]

I would avoid the WD Green SSDs. See this bug report and the forum threads linked from it.

https://jira.ixsystems.com/browse/NAS-100276

Just to be 100% sure - when they say "supports E-2100", they mean "supports E-21xx processors", which includes my E-2136, right?

That's what it means.

Any recommendations for a reasonable cooler for this system? I was looking at the 212 EVO, but it seems enormous - is it overkill?

There's lots of love for Noctua fans around here if you're interested in high quality low noise alternatives. But regarding size -- don't think of it as overkill. A bigger fan is a slower fan is a quieter fan, for the same amount of air moved. Nothing wrong with a big fan if you've got the space.

 

[zeebee]

Thanks for pointing that out @anmnz, much appreciated. After doing some more reading, I'm actually going to ditch the idea of doing a mirrored boot and instead add another 4TB HDD. With RaidZ2 it just seems like better bang for buck to have 5 drives, and I don't mind the hassle of a reinstall if the boot dies (it's just a home server, so uptime isn't really an issue).

I need to do some more reading about how you setup a daily configuration backup. However, am I right in understanding that your pool can be brought back online under a new FreeNAS install (after a boot drive failure) even if you have no backup of the configuration?

 

[zeebee]

There's lots of love for Noctua fans around here if you're interested in high quality low noise alternatives. But regarding size -- don't think of it as overkill. A bigger fan is a slower fan is a quieter fan, for the same amount of air moved. Nothing wrong with a big fan if you've got the space.

Thanks, I've ordered a Noctua NH-D9L, looks great, hopefully compatible!