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[ECC]

Moderator Note: [Please do not engage in argumentative and insulting behavior. Your message has been altered to follow our rules. Thanks!]

Please click my link to better understand my concerns on why I doubt the ECC support for the i3-7100!
ECC is one of the most critical features of FreeNAS. My concern is that if ECC Support is not certain, I'm cautious to spend the huge extra effort and money going with server HW when I can use consumer HW instead. Maybe reliability, ok, but failing & problems can appear on both sides.
So please don't get me wrong: I want to use ECC, but if other users report problems with ECC Support for the i3-7100T, I do take that seriously.

I think you are over-inflating the power-consumption issue of the old hardware. The old hardware is not going to run at peak TDP all the time. If you actually look at the difference between a X9 based CPU and the X11 CPU, the TDP difference will not be huge and it will take you years to cover up the additional upfront cost that you would pay for the X11 based hardware.
But anyway... you have already purchased the hardware -- so we are past that point.

Well, sorry that I had this concerns. As I'm honest, I don't have any experience with building servers until now. Because I only had TDP information concerning power consumption, the difference between old HW (~2010) and today is very huge. Maybe you see that I'm dependend on users experience for all this issues.
Nevertheless, other users warned me about old HW with high power consumption:

Be warned, the Nehalem and earlier generation Xeons typically run very hot and power-hungry, compared to more recent stuff, Sandy Bridge and newer.

A LSI based HBA would have been better !

Would this be appropriate ?

 

[jgreco]

First, I wanted to say, come on, guys, let's be a little more civil. Don't make me dig up my moderator hat, please.

I think you are over-inflating the power-consumption issue of the old hardware. The old hardware is not going to run at peak TDP all the time. If you actually look at the difference between a X9 based CPU and the X11 CPU, the TDP difference will not be huge and it will take you years to cover up the additional upfront cost that you would pay for the X11 based hardware.

I would, however, pull apart this point.

Older gear before Sandy Bridge was awful for power. A Dell R510 with dual E5620 (80W TDP, Westmere) and 32GB of RAM and just five hard drives idles away at 228W. By comparison, one of my hot dual E5-2643v2 (130W TDP, Ivy Bridge) with 256GB RAM, 12 HDD, quad 10GbE, etc., idles at 182W.

If you think about that, it doesn't make much sense unless the Westmere and related platform bits really sucked. (And there you have your answer.)

Once we got into Sandy Bridge, there was a much more gradual evolution of power efficiency.

 

[Inxsible]

Once we got into Sandy Bridge, there was a much more gradual evolution of power efficiency.

I don't see you disagreeing with me here !

The boards that I was comparing Supermicro X9 based with X11 based --- are Sandy Bridge and above, AFAIK. I haven't posted about going past the X9 gen when I said older hardware.

I don't claim to know the configuration of each and every X9 gen boards, so if there is a board under X9 gen here and there which supports a generation older than Sandy Bridge, then ok, I guess I shouldn't have said X9 and instead should have said "X9SCM-F and such"

 

[Inxsible]

If you fire up your brain cells, you may have just spend time clicking my link and understand my concerns, why I doubt the ECC support for the i3-7100! Unfortunately, you didn't read it,

I read that link to a Reddit post. Have you? The OP in that thread posts 2 Intel Ark links to the i3-7100 & i3-7300 processor -- which is not even the processor that you were talking about in the first place. So I am not even sure how "your link" is in anyway relevant to the i3-7100T processor that you were considering.

The reddit OP has not provided any information about how he/she thinks that the listed processors don't support ECC -- all he has is 2 links back to Intel Ark.

Secondly, I went to both of those links that he posted -- and I still see ECC Support as Yes on it.

Product Specifications

quick reference guide including specifications, features, pricing, compatibility, design documentation, ordering codes, spec codes and more.

ark.intel.com

Product Specifications

quick reference guide including specifications, features, pricing, compatibility, design documentation, ordering codes, spec codes and more.

ark.intel.com

Now it could have been that when the reddit OP posted about it 3 years ago -- there might have been a mistake in Intel Ark which Intel might have rectified since. So given that at this point -- all 3 of the processors (2 from reddit post -- and the 1 that you were considering) list ECC support, I am not sure what you are basing your theory on that those processors don't support ECC except for that unsubstantiated Reddit post from 3 years ago.

Unfortunately, you didn't read it, so you are just saying "all users that reported this issue are dumb, I only believe what Intel says".

When did I say all ?

And again, I also said, if you have doubts about a particular processor -- choose a different one and move on and get to building the system.

 

[ChrisRJ]

Related to @jgreco 's last post, here is some more data for power consumption. I have a Supermicro X9SRi-F board with an E5 2670 (8C, 2.6 GHz), 128 GB (8x16 GB) of DDR3 ECC RDIMMs and a 1 TB SSD. It is in fact a Supermicro 1 U server CSE-813M. This runs XCP-ng and not FreeNAS and sits "idle" (with 8 VMs using 60 GBs of RAM) at around 50 watts.

 

[ECC]

Thank you all for providing additional information. As mentioned, I already bought my components and I hope that it will fullfill my NAS requirements. As other users reminded me of some issues, I changed my setup to the following:

• Supermicro X11SSM
• Intel i3-7100T
• Xilence I402 CPU Cooler
• 2x Kingston Server Premier DIMM 16GB, DDR4-2666, CL19-19-19, ECC (KSM26ED8/16ME)
• Storage: Pool 1: 65x8TB RaidZ2, Pool 2: 3x5TB RaidZ1
• PSU AC BEL R88POWER 700W ATX12V 80PLUS SILVERbe quiet! Pure Power 11 CM 600W
• MZHOU PCIe 2.0 x 1 to SATA III 4-Port- Marvell-Chipset (boot drives)LSI 9211-8i

Changes:

• Upgraded from 5 to 6 HDDs for RAIDZ2 config (even amount off hdds recommend for raidz2)
• changed the PSU, because AC Bel R88 Power is a noname brand (maybe dangerous)
• LSI HBA due to reliability issues

Due to long shipping, I'll have to wait for 3 weeks for the PSU. Maybe I'll post a review for the build

 

[Inxsible]

Thank you all for providing additional information. As mentioned, I already bought my components and I hope that it will fullfill my NAS requirements. As other users reminded me of some issues, I changed my setup to the following:

Due to long shipping, I'll have to wait for 3 weeks for the PSU. Maybe I'll post a review for the build

With all the changes, I don't recall if you are buying new or used components. But either way, make sure you stress test them all out before committing to them to your NAS. Good Luck !

 

[ECC]

With all the changes, I don't recall if you are buying new or used components

• Supermicro X11SSM used
• Intel i3-7100T used
• Xilence I402 CPU Cooler new
• 2x Kingston Server Premier DIMM 16GB, DDR4-2666, CL19-19-19, ECC (KSM26ED8/16ME) new
• Storage: Pool 1: 6x8TB RaidZ2, Pool 2: 3x5TB RaidZ1 new/already existent
• be quiet! Pure Power 11 CM 600W new
• LSI 9211-8i used