BUILD Hardware review and RAM question before I build

[fracai]

I'm planning to build a NAS to replace my untrusted Drobo. From the guides (and a few others) that I've been reading through, and my own interests, I've narrowed down a few criteria that lead me to FreeNAS and ZFS.

I've put together the following list of parts:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Celeron G530 2.4GHz Dual-Core Processor ($43.90 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: Asus P8H77-I Mini ITX LGA1155 Motherboard ($99.98 @ NCIX US)
Memory: Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1333 Memory ($39.74 @ Amazon)
Case: Lian-Li PC-Q25B Mini ITX Tower Case ($129.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Antec 380W ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($38.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $352.59
(Prices include shipping and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-08-22 21:23 EDT-0400)

Originally, I was recommended a Pentiom G860, but for saving $40 the performance difference didn't seem worth it.
I'd love to save some on the motherboard, but it doesn't seem like there are many boards out there with 6 SATA ports.
And the case is expensive, but it looks like a nice compact layout for what I'm going for. I've seen a few other FreeNAS builds that used this and it looks like a good fit.

I'll also need a USB stick and internal USB cable.

My main quandary at this point is whether to double the RAM cost by getting sticks with ECC. I'm using ZFS because of the data integrity benefits, so ECC sounds good, but is it really necessary?

I'm also slightly unsure of what to do with my drives. I have 2x2TB and 4x1TB already. I think I'm leaning towards putting these together as RAID-Z2. I may get 2 additional 1TB drives (why couldn't I have been putting this together before the flooding drove up prices) and use the 2TBs for backups rather than the 500GBs that I have lying around. Would I be able to start with 2TBs and swap out for 1TBs later? I wouldn't think this would decrease the size of the vdev as only 1TB of each of the 2TB blocks would have been useable to begin with. I know I could also set up two Z1 vdevs and get the same amount of capacity, but I think I'd prefer the redundancy of a Z2 setup.

Am I forgetting anything? Is any part of my part list under or drastically over powered?

Thanks for your help.

 

[fracai]

Heh, first hiccup that I've discovered. The motherboard I selected uses a Realtek 8111F LAN Controller that isn't supported until FreeNAS 8.3. Ah well, guess I start with the beta or wait for the release.

And it looks like the motherboard requires non-ECC unbuffered.

Well, that clears that up.

 

[Joshua Parker Ruehlig]

I'd personally get 2x8gb sticks instead off going ECC. or do both =]

 

[fracai]

Sheesh, 16 GB seems like a lot. I guess I have heard that RAM does have a big impact with ZFS. Would 8 GB be restricting at all? Or would 16 GB just be good for future expansion?

Thanks.

 

[survive]

Hi fracai,

That board won't do ECC. You have RAM 2 slots, so you might as well bite the bullet now so you don't wind up with 2 4GB stick later. Keep in mind CIFS loves the MHz...

If you have a Microcenter nearby check them out as well, they have really good bundle deals....an i3-2120 will cost you $100 there, but in-store only.

-Will

 

[toddos]

For the NIC, why not throw in an Intel card? You've got the room and an open slot on the motherboard. Then you can disable the onboard NIC and use 8.2 without issue.

 

[fracai]

Yeah I just realized the non-ECC issue, so that solves that problem.

Getting 16 GB now is tempting, more so than the NIC as I know I'd be able to use the onboard in a few months; or now if I gamble with the BETA. It's something to consider though.

Would the G530 that I've selected be underpowered? If I'm going to spend extra anywhere I think it should go towards the RAM, but if the processor isn't going to cut it that tips the scale a bit.

Thanks.

 

[cyberjock]

I never buy or recommend Celerons. They suck even for just browsing the internet.

 

[hervon]

Take a look at my recently built FreeNAS server. I saved on the case. Total cost : 280 $

Coolermaster Elite 343 (cheap)
Intel Pentium G630 (more than enough CPU power, low power usage)
Kingston HyperX 2x4GB
Antec Basiq VP350
Intel DH77EB mATX (6 SATA ports and intel NIC)

The thing works perfectly so far. Put 3 2TB HDs in RAIDZ1. Love it.

 

[fracai]

Yeah the G630 was actually another that I was considering. That's not a bad case, though I was hoping to have it take up less space, though the price savings are nice and it'd make finding a 6 port motherboard easier.

 

[fracai]

I never buy or recommend Celerons. They suck even for just browsing the internet.

Really? That bad? The specs look fine, is it something to do with that series?

 

[cyberjock]

Really? That bad? The specs look fine, is it something to do with that series?

I don't know. While I stick to Intel CPUs I never do Celerons. I've seen a few and was always underwhelmed at doing even the most basic things as surfing the net.

 

[fracai]

Gotcha, thanks.

I don't think I want to spend 100 on the CPU, but maybe I'll bump up to the 630. It's only a ~$15 difference.

And that leaves me with selecting RAM. The cheapest 16 GB that I can find is a $65 special at Newegg.

Now if only 8.3 could progress through the BETAs.

 

[toddos]

I don't know. While I stick to Intel CPUs I never do Celerons. I've seen a few and was always underwhelmed at doing even the most basic things as surfing the net.

Modern Celeryonions are not bad. Original Celeryonions weren't bad either (the old 300a was an overclocking beast at the time -- you could easily take that from 300MHz to 500MHz or higher). As long as you're sticking to the desktop line of processors, they're not bad. The only real difference between the 520 and 630 is the amount of cache (2MB vs. 3MB). The other missing features are pretty much irrelevant for FreeNAS.

Speaking of things that are relevant, your biggest CPU hog will be Samba, and Samba doesn't use multiple cores so you want as high a clock frequency as possible. Whether or not the extra $15 is worth a .1GHz bump between the 520 and 630 is debatable.

IMHO, the best bang for your buck in terms of pure clock speed would be to go with AMD. I built an A8-3870K-based rig for my server and it's working quite well. If I were building a gaming PC I'd stick with Intel, but for FreeNAS I see no point.

 

[fracai]

I won't be needing Samba (just AFP and NFS), so it's down to whether the $15 is worth the 1MB of cache.

I took a look at the AMD choices and it looks like that would force me to use a SATA card to get the number of ports I'd need. In addition to already maintaining a hefty CPU and motherboard cost.

This has been really helpful, I think I'm really just down to $15 of cache. Is that cache difference significant?

 

[toddos]

Try this motherboard? 8 onboard SATA III ports should be enough :). And it definitely works with FreeNAS as that's exactly the board I'm using. I would recommend picking up a $30 Intel NIC to go with it and skip the onboard NIC. The only downside is that it's a full-ATX board and thus requires a bigger case than the mini ITX stuff you're looking at. AMD just doesn't really seem to be well represented in the mini ITX space. There are some boards in the micro ATX size that could work, though.

 

[toddos]

Try this motherboard? 8 onboard SATA III ports should be enough :). And it definitely works with FreeNAS as that's exactly the board I'm using. I would recommend picking up a $30 Intel NIC to go with it and skip the onboard NIC. The only downside is that it's a full-ATX board and thus requires a bigger case than the mini ITX stuff you're looking at. AMD just doesn't really seem to be well represented in the mini ITX space. There are some boards in the micro ATX size that could work, though.

As far as the Celeron cache goes, I suspect you probably won't even notice.

 

[cyberjock]

This has been really helpful, I think I'm really just down to $15 of cache. Is that cache difference significant?

It depends. Some workloads are significantly faster with a large L2 cache. Others just don't care. I'd just spend the $15 and get the bigger cache. It can't hurt. :P

 

[fracai]

At a certain point I suppose I have to realize that it's only $15.