Hardware for a Asrock C2750D4I replacement system

[Nimrod_EE]

Hello everyone,

the short story is that my Asrock C2750D4I motherboard died on me.

Show : The long(er) story, for whoever's interested...

I thought I jumped the bullet because I didn't have the time to assemble my C2750D4I based FreeNAS system for a whole year.
When I was able to build it I read of the BMC bug and made the required BMC and BIOS updates right from the start.

But the joke is on me, I think the C2000 bug now caught up with me...
(IPMI works but VGA out is dead, as is the virtual console in the IPMI.
The power LED and the BMC "alive" LED lights up and the BMC LED starts flashing after 30 seconds or so,
but it can't boot and I hear no POST beeps.
CMOS reset didn't work. I had the "CPU overtemperature" and the nonsensical "OEM Timestamped" error messages in the IPMI log.
As this was in the middle of very cold temperatures in my region I can almost guarantee it wasn't a thermal problem.)

The whole thing is very similar to the problems described in this forum thread.

As the hardware is now 5 years old I don't think it's worth investing any time in this bug riddled platform,
but to be honest I don't know what you can expect in service years of server hardware.

I don't want to solder the voltage divider in place and then it dies again after a few months.

So I'm looking for a successor system, this time staying clear from Asrock.
I'm unsure if the Atom platform itself should be avoided as well.

The components of my currently dead system are (selected according to cyberjocks hardware recommendations in the FreeNAS Forum at the time of building it):

Show : Current (old) hardware

1x ASRock C2750D4I motherboard
2x Crucial DIMM 8GB, DDR3L-1600, CL11, ECC (CT102472BD160B)
5x Western Digital WD Red 4TB, 3.5", SATA 6Gb/s (WD40EFRX)
1x Fractal Design Define R5 Titanium, schallgedämmt (FD-CA-DEF-R5-TI)
2x SanDisk Cruzer Fit 16GB, USB 2.0 (SDCZ33-016G-B35)
1x Seasonic X-Series Fanless X-400FL 400W ATX 2.3 (SS-400FL)
1x APC Back-UPS ES 700VA Steckdosenleiste, USB (BE700G-GR)

I took some time to search for recommended drop-ins to replace the ASRock C2750D4I, but found nothing in the FreeNAS forums or here
(also those threads are all relatively old, when people first got hit with the bugs.)

Is there a "recommended" alternative to just replace the dead motherboard and keep all the old components?

I'm a little sad to throw away the ECC DDR3 Ram modules, but the current recommended hardware seems to only take DDR4.
On the other hand I have zero experience with server hardware, so I'm trying to avoid just to shop for something with enough SATA ports myself.

I'm currently unsure how to proceed further. I'm perfectly fine with the processing power my old system had, I never did any transcoding and
I think the most taxing workload it had to deliver was running the syncthing plugin for a couple of devices in my household.
On the other hand it operates in a rather small drywall compartment, so don't having it dissipate too much heat is definitely a plus.

My approach for a new system would have been to follow the current TrueNAS hardware guide, and get something along the lines of:
Supermicro X11SCH-F motherboard
Intel Core i3-8300
Supermicro (Hynix) 16GB 288-Pin DDR4 2666 (PC4-21300) Server Memory (MEM-DR416LD-EU26)

The rest I would take from the old system (power supply, enclosure, harddisks).
Availability of components seems rather bad in general at this time, and I find it a little strange that Supermicros list of tested memory only contains their own memory.

Thank you very much for any assistance in advance!

 

[jgreco]

So I'm looking for a successor system, this time staying clear from Asrock.

Just to be clear, this was not an AsRock issue, it was an Intel issue. Everybody in the industry who used these was affected.

 

[ChrisRJ]

For DDR3 you could go for a Supermicro X9 SRi-F board. In October 2020 I got this for about 120 Euros from Ebay in Germany. The IPMI is Java-based, which sucks. But other than that it is was (and still is) a great choice for me. It is more than sufficient from a CPU perspective, although certainly needs more power. My overall power consumption is about 100 Watts with 8 Seagate Exos 16 TB drives, a Xeon E5-1620 (4 cores) and 64 GB of ECC DDR3 RAM.

 

[Etorix]

There is no reason to stay away from the current Atom C3000 platform, which would be the natural replacement—except for RAM.
Your pick of a X11SCH, with DDR4 RAM, would certainly be fine.
Or a second-hand X9 platform, as suggested by @ChrisRJ if you prefer to keep the DDR3 RAM.

Your drives, case, PSU and UPS are fine. RAM depends on the new motherboard. The USB boot drive would best be replaced by any small and cheap SSD.

 

[cafenfrek]

I'm shopping for a new MB as well...I was running on a C2550D4I and it failed this week with the same issue...since it is just mainly for entertainment and backup of our individual laptops at home...I am like you and not looking to spend a ton of money to get back up and running.

 

[Arwen]

I too needed to replace my old FreeNAS Mini, (with Asrock C2750D4I motherboard). It has not died, but I consider it "The Walking Dead". Since it was hard to find a reasonable choice in Mini-ITX, I went with Micro-ATX. (So new case, and some other changes, plus some improvements.) I also don't hold ASRock Rack responsible for Intel Atom C2000 problems, so they were still on my hardware browsing list.

In the end, not being able to find what I wanted, (ECC memory, 10 or so SATA, plus 10Gbps Ethernet over copper with 2.5/5Gbps support), I ended up with a full AMD Epyc. It's a ASRock Rack ROMED6U-2L2T with an 8 core / 16 thread Epyc 7262.

Some of the ASRock Rack embedded Epyc boards seem nice, but not enough growth potential for me. Though they may work out for others just fine.

 

[bfarnam]

I have been thinking about upgrading. . . but my C0 stepping C2750 (Also a C2750D4I) is still chugging away. The intel hardware bugs only effected the B0 CPUs. Almost all the newer boards in the past 5 years plus are the C0 stepping which are not effected. Easy enough to check by popping off the CPU heatsink and reading the CPU code on the CPU itself: if it is SR3GR you have the C0, if it is SR1CS then you have the B0 CPU and your days are numbered. Make sure to reapply your thermal paste, I prefer Artic Silver, and your on your way.

My only reason to upgrade would be to use on board 10GB so I can move from SATA to SAS. Currently I have a Chelsio in the only PCIe slot so no SAS for me.