Hardware recommendation needed

[jackydany]

Hello,

Since i was told my old xeon 5440 is too old i am looking for a New Server.

I was told i3 would be fine.
Its only for FreeNAS with NFS and cifs shares in 4x 1.5 TB + 1x 3tb disks with zfs
The four disks in z2 .

I need it for sharing photos and videos. Recording onto the large disk from several TV receivers.
But after all not much traffic at all or not many users.

I will buy 16 GB ECC RAM of course.

But the Problem is the board and cpu.

Would be a socket 1156 board be OK?
Or should it be 1155?
It should be cheap.

I think about INTEL S3420GP
ASRock E3C204E3C204
Intel S3420GPLC


I hope you would help me a little bit out .

Thank you very much.

Stefan

 

[BigDave]

This board (1155) is popular in this forum.
This CPU (Xeon)
or perhaps this one (i3)
Your choice of course, but I own the first two items
and I'm very happy with the use and performance.

 

[jackydany]

Hi,

Thank you. The board looks gold, found it in the sticky rscommodstions here.
The xeon is much too expensive. The i3 looks good.

I would like to get a kind of guideline which socket, board and type oft CPU in generel.

Is every i3 OK?
Is there a Problem with 1156 Sockets?

And so on :)

Thank you, good night

 

[Ericloewe]

Hi,

Thank you. The board looks gold, found it in the sticky rscommodstions here.
The xeon is much too expensive. The i3 looks good.

I would like to get a kind of guideline which socket, board and type oft CPU in generel.

Is every i3 OK?
Is there a Problem with 1156 Sockets?

And so on :)

Thank you, good night

LGA1156 processors are rather old by now. There's no real reason to buy them, since newer stuff is more or less the same price.

 

[jackydany]

But in general its OK with 1156?
Any CPU in 1155 + 1156 will work?
What aboiut ECC and i5 i7?
I read they have no ECC support.
Does Evers i3 have ECC support?

Thanks

 

[Ericloewe]

No i5 or i7 supports ECC.

All Ivy Bridge and Haswell Desktop i3s support ECC.

 

[jackydany]

Hi,

Bought a INTEL S3420GP /LC with a xeon x3430 2.4 GHz quad core
16gb ECC RAM.

This should do the job. Shouldnt it?

Thanks

 

[BigDave]

The CPU lacks this:
Advanced Encryption Standard New Instructions (AES-NI) are a set of instructions that enable fast and secure data encryption and decryption. AES-NI are valuable for a wide range of cryptographic applications, for example: applications that perform bulk encryption/decryption, authentication, random number generation, and authenticated encryption.
The answer to your question depends on what you intend to do with your machine, i.e. "The Job"

 

[jackydany]

Hi,

no encryption, just a home share.
Pictures, videos etc.
Streaming to various devices (receivers, xbmc) and vdr, so recording TO the FreeNAS device.
no plex, no jails so far.

Thanks

 

[BigDave]

Hi,

no encryption, just a home share.
Pictures, videos etc.
Streaming to various devices (receivers, xbmc) and vdr, so recording TO the freenas device.
no plex, no jails so far.

Thanks

With that circumstance it should be fine. When it comes time for wanting more bells
and whistles (and you will), it will THEN be time to upgrade.

 

[hertzsae]

Since you have lower cpu needs, you could also look at a motherboard with an integrated 4 or 8 core Atom chip.

 

[jackydany]

@BigDave
i have also a dual prozessor quad core xeon server for virtualisation with proxmox up and running. so this machine is only for NAS

@hertzsae
the new atom chip-boards with enough sata ports are much more expensive than my complete bundle with xeon cpu, board AND ram :D
board + ram + cpu cost me 155€ now. one of the recommended boards with atom were at this price themselves without ram. also i dont need octa core i think for samba shares ;)

thank you all, i am now waiting for the parts to arrive to assemble and then have a look if the GUI-loading-problem is gone for good :D

thanks

 

[Xlot]

Very late reply but this thread cropped up in a search I did.

jackydany - if you find you need AES-NI, the easy upgrade path for socket 1156 is an i5-650 or i5-660 etc. - the clarkdale i5 CPU's all support both ECC and AES-NI (they're the only 1156 cpu's which have AES-NI).

The catch is they're only dual-core with HT (so 4 threads total instead of 8 on your current Xeon) - but that's offset by them running at 3.2+ GHz versus your Xeon x3430 series cpu, and if you're doing disk encryption, you pretty much need AES-NI.

I've used both an i5-650 and a Xeon X3430 in my current home server, with a Supermicro X8-SIL-F motherboard.

From the i5-650, the only way forwards is pretty much Sandy/Ivy Bridge on an 1155 motherboard, or newer Haswell based.

 

[cyberjock]

Uhh, the clarkdale I5s do NOT support ECC. No clue where you got that info, but no i5s from any generation, nahelem (The first chip design that had a CPU with an i5 designation) or newer, support ECC.

This is also easily validated because a CPU can support ECC, but you MUST pair it with the Intel server chipsets for ECC to function. There is no such thing as an 1156 server chipset. ;)

 

[Xlot]

Uhh, the clarkdale I5s do NOT support ECC. No clue where you got that info, but no i5s from any generation, nahelem (The first chip design that had a CPU with an i5 designation) or newer, support ECC.

This is also easily validated because a CPU can support ECC, but you MUST pair it with the Intel server chipsets for ECC to function. There is no such thing as an 1156 server chipset. ;)

I got the info by doing it. Where did you get your info?

There were enough clues around various forums that I bought an i5-650 and installed it in an 1156 server motherboard (I also tested an i5-750 and a Xeon X3430). If you go look at the Intel Ark site, you'll notice that they don't say "no" to ECC support for the clarkdale i5's (which was one of several clues I found - other clues being people who posted on hardocp and the webhostingtalk forums as having ECC working with the i5-650).

Here's the output of DMI Decode whilst running an i5-650.

# dmidecode 2.11
SMBIOS 2.6 present.

Handle 0x0008, DMI type 5, 24 bytes
Memory Controller Information
Error Detecting Method: 64-bit ECC
Error Correcting Capabilities:
Single-bit Error Correcting
Supported Interleave: One-way Interleave
Current Interleave: One-way Interleave
Maximum Memory Module Size: 4096 MB
Maximum Total Memory Size: 16384 MB
Supported Speeds:
Other
Supported Memory Types:
DIMM
SDRAM
Memory Module Voltage: 3.3 V
Associated Memory Slots: 4
0x0009
0x000A
0x000B
0x000C
Enabled Error Correcting Capabilities:
Single-bit Error Correcting

The bottom two lines confirm its working - and only appear if both the CPU and the motherboard chipset support ECC. I ran the test using both registered ECC and unbuffered ECC (the motherboard supports both registered and unbuffered memory types, although its exceedingly fussy abour which registered will work dual rank (2rx8) only).

Also, there is an 1156 server chipset - the Supermicro X8SIL-F I used runs an Intel 3420 chipset. Here is the info on it:

http://www.supermicro.com/xeon_3400/Motherboard/X8SIL.cfm

edit: The nehalem i5-750 didn't work, just in case someone reads this and thinks I'm implying otherwise. Only clarkdale worked with ECC.

 

[cyberjock]

Sigh...

I'm sorry, I'm not going to argue over the whole ECC vs non-ECC again. I've probably discussed how ECC works, the requirements, etc a dozen (or more) times on this forum. Please read my other posts.

But I will tell you one thing. You are *not* using ECC, no matter what you think.

 

[lihan su]

Sigh...also from me for you "cyberjock".

I worked at Intel Germany at that time of the release of Clarkdale processors and got
trained by intel for business customer support.

The Intel i5-650, 660, 670 have all ECC support with 3420 chipset
- if the mainboard manufacturer did "integrate" the support in their bios.

Even Intel offered their own DQ52TML Board with special "ECC support" realized with Q55 Chipset - this is also stated in the Manual and press datasheets.

I gave support to hundreds of business SOHO customers which "bought & used" i5-6x0 with AES and ECC in business servers or storage servers. I worked at Intel at that time!

Many people like you claim the "ecc-but-not-ecc" myth but in this case its
really "real ecc" with i5 650 and 3420 chipset (only if manufacturer of mainboards integrated it! supermicro X8SIL does only support it with rev 1.02 plus bios update).

Intel use to state that i3-2100 supports ECC and later "hide" that fact not to harm xeon e3 sales. For socket 1156 the problem was AES was not available in xeon processor and so Intel needed i5 with AES also supporting ECC. It was just a "temporal bridge product" until the next generation socket for servers was ready.

Fact:
i5-650,660,670 does support EC with 3420 chipset LGA1156 Boards (if support is activated in bios by manufacturer).

Sigh...

I'm sorry, I'm not going to argue over the whole ECC vs non-ECC again. I've probably discussed how ECC works, the requirements, etc a dozen (or more) times on this forum. Please read my other posts.

But I will tell you one thing. You are *not* using ECC, no matter what you think.