Hardware Recommendations Guide Discussion Thread Rev 2a) 2021-01-24

[Rand]

Have not tested, but I'd guess not.
They don't officially do Skylake v1 either as far as I know (at least there are none on any SM boards compatibility list I have seen).

 

[silmor_senedlen]

You can get 64 GB RDIMMs, why would you go out and buy LR-DIMMs?

As far as I remember, at the time of building the system, there were no supported 64Gb RDIMM modules, so the choice fell on LRDIMM.
I probably fell behind the trends in RAM.

Okay, okay, I don't insist.
I was surprised by that statement in the guide and I just wanted to share some information.

 

[rmccullough]

Pull one of the PSU's and see if the part number is PWS-920P-SQ ("Super Quiet"). eBay sells lots of them, usually at a bit of a premium price.

And they're not "very noisy", but they aren't as quiet as the SQ's.

I finally got around to pulling one of the PSU's. It is not the "SQ" model. I think it was PWS-920P-R or something along those lines. How big of a difference does the SQ make over the R?

 

[ThreeDee]

Any addition of AM4 setups in the future?

 

[Ericloewe]

Unfortunately, they don't officially support ECC and experiences are mixed, from what I've seen.
AMD has pretty much ceded the entry-level server market to Intel.

 

[ThreeDee]

I can see hit and miss with regular desktop boards .. ASRock is pretty good about listing QVL ECC memory with different gen Ryzen CPU's (for the x570 Taichi and x570 Steel Legend anyways) .. and of course ASRock Rack's AM4 motherboards support ECC in their QVL lists.

old Anandtech post cliff noting an old AMD Marketing reddit post

Page 2 - AMD build with ECC support

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

forums.anandtech.com

..now that TrueNAS seems to be playing nice with Ryzen .. hopefully there will eventually be enough setups to prove/validate that AM4 is a viable TrueNAS platform and makes it to the "recommended" hardware list at some point.

...regardless ... I appreciate your extensive work on this.

 

[Ericloewe]

Thing is, people then show up with complaints like "there isn't actually any reporting of ECC errors" in that sort of platform. It's unfortunate, and I'd like to see AMD make a small effort in this space.

 

[aka-andy]

I think the CPU section needs updating, or the light and medium usage sections at least - none of the CPU models seem to be in stock anywhere (unsurprising, as they were mainly launched in 2019).

I was looked at https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark.html for newer pentium/i3 models that still have EEC compatiblity but could only find seemingly "special editions" like i3-1115GRE or i3-10100E that I couldn't find acutally sold anywhere.

I suspect Intel is pushing everyone wanting EEC to Xeon processors, but is that the only option these days? (some are super pricey!)

 

[Ericloewe]

I'm not sure there's anything newer for which there is a platform available (higher-end stuff like Xeon-D aside). I haven't heard of any Ice Lake server boards yet.
Unfortunately, I think you're just seeing a general shortage of hardware of all sorts. Things are pretty crazy at the moment even in the higher-margin segments.

 

[joncy92]

Does this apply to SCALE?

 

[hescominsoon]

Does this apply to SCALE?

Considering it's ZFS yes...and because it is also a virtualization host I would increase the base 25% and go up from there

 

[Etorix]

I'm not sure there's anything newer for which there is a platform available (higher-end stuff like Xeon-D aside). I haven't heard of any Ice Lake server boards yet.

Indeed there is not much new, but that's why it would be useful to add the Core i3-9x00(F) alongside the i8-8300 and, most significantly, point out that Core i3 of the newer 10th and 11th generation no longer support ECC (except for unobtainium "embedded" variants). Otherwise readers will think that this guide is obsolete and either disregard it or assume they can just substitute last generation CPU.

 

[Ericloewe]

They don't work in X11SCx motherboards, though, do they? If I'm not mistaken, they need whatever the new generation of boards will be, and that's only going to be released when the Xeon Es get updated.

In the meantime, I wouldn't be surprised to see ECC support added back to ark for those. We've seen this story before and it's always been deeply irritating.

 

[Ericloewe]

Does this apply to SCALE?

Let me put it this way: you can't go wrong sticking to the same recommendations. That's not to say that a Linux base OS won't be more forgiving about hardware choices, but doing it right makes still makes things smoother. All the recommended hardware is well supported on both FreeBSD and Linux.

 

[Etorix]

They don't work in X11SCx motherboards, though, do they? If I'm not mistaken, they need whatever the new generation of boards will be, and that's only going to be released when the Xeon Es get updated.

Not sure what "they" stands for… Xeon E have been updated, but the "Core+ECC" line is now labelled as W-1200 rather than E-2300 (and skipping W-1100, maybe in an attempt to match with the still current W-2200 and W-3200 lines).
Core i3-9xxx (LGA 1151v2) work in X11SCx motherboards with C242/C246 chipset.
Core i3-10xxx and 11xxx (LGA 1200) work in X12SCx motherboards with W480 chipset, which are released. I suppose that if LGA 1200 Core i3 silently supported ECC when used on W480 someone would have noticed.

 

[Ericloewe]

Ah, the workstation boards. I thought I'd seen something, now I realize it was the workstation boards.

 

[Etorix]

Oh, you're right! Intel may not have yet officially (re)launched W-1200 CPUs "for servers".
But would that prevent anyone from using the current "workstation" W-1200 CPUs in a NAS or a homelab server?

Supermicro may go strictly by the Intel playbook, and have only "workstation" boards at this stage (X12SCA, S12SAE, and even X12SAE-5 with W580), but at least AsRockRack has not noticed that the chips are "for workstations" (or just ignored Intel marketing…) and has a genuine W480 server board, the W480D4U. 2*PCIe x8 from CPU, 8 SATA, 2*M.2, 2*i210 LAN, Aspeed 2500 BMC, no sound… This sounds like the spec sheet for a yet-unreleased X12SCH-F.

 

[Ericloewe]

But would that prevent anyone from using the current "workstation" W-1200 CPUs in a NAS or a homelab server?

Nothing if they really wanted to, but the form factor may be less optimal. I don't know if the IPMI models are the widely-available version, when it comes to those, either.

Supermicro may go strictly by the Intel playbook, and have only "workstation" boards at this stage (X12SCA, S12SAE, and even X12SAE-5 with W580), but at least AsRockRack has not noticed that the chips are "for workstations" (or just ignored Intel marketing…) and has a genuine W480 server board, the W480D4U. 2*PCIe x8 from CPU, 8 SATA, 2*M.2, 2*i210 LAN, Aspeed 2500 BMC, no sound… This sounds like the spec sheet for a yet-unreleased X12SCH-F.

Good find, it even has conspicuously unpopulated footprints for two Ethernet ports and a large-ish NIC which would definitely be 10 GbE.

 

[Etorix]

So, a W480D4U-2L2T may be in the works—although the 10 GbE NIC may cost PCIe lanes elsewhere.

The W480D4U and the IPMI-enabled X12SCA-F appear to be readily available in the Netherlands and Germany. And while checking that on geizahls.at I found the W480 server boards from Supermicro after all: X12SCZ-F and X12SCZ-TLN4F. (I first though the Z was for Z490, but no, and there are Q470 variants for Core.) Quite expensive, but available. The W-1200 Xeons also command a higher entry price than the earlier Core i3 allowed (that was the point for Intel, after all) and its gets even worse with the upcoming W-1300 Xeons.
So LGA1200 CPUs may not be the most advisable CPUs from an economical viewpoint but the server boards are there. It would be helpful to update the guide to, at least, acknowledge this possibility—and warn prospective buyers against the LGA1200 Core i3.

 

[Davvo]

May I suggest to add a few lines of warning about SMR drives?