Intel c2358 Build

[b88]

Hi, this is my first post, so be nice.

I have been planning a minimal freenas build with good data integrity and low power consumption, mostly for AFP, NFS and SMB (plex and owncloud would be nice but not necessary). I have found a supermicro mobo based on intel c2358 with 4 sata, 7W TDP, 4 x Gbit ethernet and ECC RAM capable, which sounds perfect.

Setup:
- Supermicro A1SRM-LN4F-2358
- 16 GB ECC RAM
- 4 x 4TB sata HDDs

The question is: Is the supermicro c2358 chip powerful enough to handle shares up to Gbit/s speeds or faster (though link aggregation for example)?

Most posts i have found use this mobo for pfsense, but nothing is mentioned about AFP or SMB performance. For SMB to perform well maybe c2550 or c2558 are more appropriate. These seem to be the preferred choice in most DIY builds i have come across. The reason i prefer the c2358 is the low power consumption and the lower price.

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/atom/x10/a1srm-ln5f-2358.cfm

 

[Ericloewe]

That's a poor choice indeed.

C23xx is rather slow. To make matters worse, C2x58 is designed for networking. They doesn't have turbo boost, but add the useless (for FreeNAS) network acceleration thingy.

You'll want to look at C2550 boards, but steer clear of ASRock's.

 

[b88]

That's a poor choice indeed.

C23xx is rather slow. To make matters worse, C2x58 is designed for networking. They doesn't have turbo boost, but add the useless (for FreeNAS) network acceleration thingy.

You'll want to look at C2550 boards, but steer clear of ASRock's.

Thanks for your input. I understand that it seems to be aimed rather towards networking and in some comments i have seen people, complain about the asrock boards, so i have ruled them out already.

As for the intel c2358, it does have turbo boost and all the other technologies fitted to the c2550 like aes ni etc. Since the mobo has 4 sata ports, it should be able to handle some io transfers at higer speeds, otherwise why have the sata ports at all?

http://ark.intel.com/m/products/779...358-1M-Cache-1_70-GHz#@product/specifications

As far as i can understand the difference is mainly in the number of cores. And since i am not interested in plex transcodings, wouldnt 2 cores do the job? (Afp, smb etc at Gbit speed)

Comparing this with for instance synology hardware, most smaller nas models have only 2 cores and they promise Gbit speeds.

It would also be interesting to see some c2x30 based mobo. The processors seem to exist, but i havent found any motherboards. These use less power and the c2530 would fit perfect to what i have in mind.

 

[Jailer]

That is a horrible choice for FreeNAS. A gateway device, yes. A NAS server, no. Listen to what @Ericloewe has said or not, it's your choice. But he's truly is trying to guide you in the correct direction.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Atom+C2358+@+1.74GHz

 

[Ericloewe]

it does have turbo boost

So it seems, but it's still going to be painfully slow. C2550 is a bit on the marginal side already, so two fewer cores won't help the case.

 

[Jailer]

C2550 is a bit on the marginal side already, so two fewer cores at half the clock speed won't help the case.

In case your point wasn't getting across. ;)

 

[b88]

In case your point wasn't getting across. ;)

Ok to sum up then, the c2550 should be the bottom line with a score of 2,329 on passmark. That rules everything else below that score out.
My current setup uses a dual core i3-3220T with 4 threads and non of that fancy server tech. That got a score of 3,695 and is ridiculously overpowered.
Basically only plex uses the cpu to optimize movies.

The c2358 got, as near as makes no difference, the same score as amd athlon 64 x2 3800+ (which i have lying around at home), does that make it unsuitable as well? Does freenas really require that much power to serve about 5 clients with afp, smb and nfs?

For a business setup i would never choose something like a 2 core board, but in this case it would server no more than 5 clients at a time with backup and storage.

 

[b88]

Update: I went for a c3558 denverton based board and must say that it is overpowered. Two cores are definitely enough if one wants a home server with ECC for afp, cifs and nfs.

When it comes to plex it seems to vary a lot. For most h264 coded movies the power is more than sufficient, especially if you choose to play a version that has already been optimized and is playable by your device. However sometimes plex still chooses to transcode (my guess is that the audio is not supported). 4k and h265 seem to work fine if the device supports it. Else you can forget it, transcoding h265 with no hardware codec is painful.

To wrap it up, if you want a nas for the home with a couple of shares and maybe some home automation running on it, go for the 2 core model. It is powerful enough and uses a lot less power.

If you want plex go for one of the new 16 core models, or some xeon. The more cores the better. With my 4 core model i do transcoding over night and then play the optimized versions (or originals if the format is supported), but for that use case I believe the 2 core model would suffice as well, since mine barely uses the cpu when playing supported or optimized media, obviously.