Is it worth it.. Build new vs keep what I have.. Is it an upgrade?

[exeter_acres]

So... Have Truenas 13 running for a couple years.. built it on a basic Dell home PC...
Honestly has been working just fine.
Current is an Intel i7-4770 on a basic Dell PC motherboard (don't remember what model)
Running Z2 with 5, 4Tb drives

Pretty much it is data storage,, I am a photog so just need lots of storage... I also run Plex but that is used few and far between.

Had the bug to build a new box.. was thinking something a bit more "robust" than an old PC....

Had settled on
MoBo Supermicro MBD X11SSM-F-O (All the SATA ports I need)
CPU: Intel i3-7320
Ram 4x Kingston 8GB DDR4 ECC DIMM
Boot drive Samsung 870 EVO 500Gb SSD SATA
Case: Antec P101

Mainly for the ECC

But now wondering if for my needs is that a step down or a step up? Going from i7 to i3 just for ECC

Thoughts on this?

 

[Morris]

RAID Z2 requires a lot of CPU for fast write and is tough for a 10-GB link yet you will have one or two 1-GB links so probably OK. Nice quiet case.

While ECC provides an extra level of protection from a RAM failure, they have become very uncommon and even without ECC, you system will detect a RAM issue as a disk issue due to CRC so you are still protected.

 

[exeter_acres]

Think I may upgrade my switch and home PC to 2.5g and put a 2.5g card into this instead of the onboard 1g

 

[Etorix]

Skip 2.5 GbE and go for 10 GbE. Solarflare or Chelsio T520 go for $50 on eBay.
And, to avoid a "downgrade", look for a Xeon E3 v5/6.

 

[ChrisRJ]

RAID Z2 requires a lot of CPU for fast write and is tough for a 10-GB link yet you will have one or two 1-GB links so probably OK. Nice quiet case.

With the drives and their setup 10 Gbps will be difficult to saturate. One has to be aware that HDD speeds for random I/O are way slower than for sequential. So for many workloads even 1 Gbps is more than enough for spinning disks.

While ECC provides an extra level of protection from a RAM failure, they have become very uncommon

No, ECC is effectively the only thing you get for server hardware. Without additional details what part of the overall IT market you are referring to, this statement is at least misleading.

and even without ECC, you system will detect a RAM issue as a disk issue due to CRC so you are still protected.

Could you provide a reference for this?

 

[MrGuvernment]

As noted, skip 2.5, it is a money grab.

Get a used Brocade 6450-24p even and use the 10Gbps links there into your TrueNAS.(pending on where you live, they can be had for cheaper than most 2.5Gbps switches)

And if your truenas is close to your switch, you just buy a DAC cable and be done with it.

 

[exeter_acres]

Ok.... so final list of compenents

MoBo Supermicro MBD X11SSM-F-O (All the SATA ports I need)
CPU: Xeon E3-1270 V6 (been burned buying used before, but thought I would give this a shot!)
Ram: 2x Kingston Server Premier DDR4 16GB UDIMM
Boot Drive: PNY SSD 240GB (hard to actually find small ones!)
will have a second PNY 240gb ssd that I was going to Mirror the boot, but will set up as its own pool for a few apps, etc
Case: Antec P101
PSU Corsair RMx 850w Gold rated

Should have it built next week and will transfer existing pool over..
Will report back!