Lenovo S30 Workstation Motherboard

[Bo Doe]

I've been feverishly searching for an acceptably priced motherboard for an E5-2660 (socket LGA 2011) I recently purchased. I intend to replace my current FreeNAS build's CPU and motherboard I pulled from a Lenovo TS140 (i3-4150 I believe). I came across two potential motherboards that seemed acceptable, but I was wondering if you have any thoughts on them or any alternative motherboard suggestions. To put my build into perspective, it's mainly for hosting media and files at home, as well as tinkering. My main thought behind updating the CPU was to get one with more cores to handle VMs, which I'll hopefully be dealing with more with school shortly

First up is the Lenovo S30 Workstation motherboard. I do have to say I'm far from impressed with Lenovo's documentation. Finding out whether or not the CPU would be compatible took way too many hours. I do like the number of SATA ports, RAM slots, and the Intel NIC it comes with.

Second option is the HP Z420 Workstation motherboard. The only minor things I dislike about this board is the color and also it will need an adapter for the main power connector.

There are many other used motherboards out there, however the pricing is just flat out ridiculous for a used motherboard. If I have to pay more for an acceptable board, then I will do it. However, I figured these would be a much safer alternative to the X79 Chinese no-brand motherboards I see all over ebay. Thanks for any input you can provide!

 

[Chris Moore]

This is pretty much the ideal board for the purpose:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Supermicro...602-DDR3-SATA3-V-2GbE-ATX-Server/322248789528

For a socket 2011, server grade board, this is not an unreasonable price. The reason the price is still that high is because they are out of production, and still very much in demand because they are just great functionally. Think of it as an investment.

 

[Bo Doe]

Of all the boards I found while digging around, the Supermicro is probably the one I'd be most confident in purchasing. As far as the server grade motherboards, I don't find those to be so rediculous in price. What's nonsense is the used gaming motherboards starting at $300.

I read through the current FreeNAS guide, and it had a small section regarding workstation motherboards. Granted they would not be ideal for a enterprise-level server, but would you think they would be an acceptable alternative to the Supermicro for my uses? I'm not trying to disregard your suggestion. I am trying to understand if there are problems I would encounter with the workstation motherboards that could be avoided with the Supermicro, or something I'm entirely not aware of. Thanks again for the input!

 

[Chris Moore]

The hardware support on the server board is going to be better. Not calling technical support, but the hardware that is properly recognized by the board. For example, if you are interested in passing a device through to a virtual machine, the server is more likely to be able to do this.
When I built my first FreeNAS, I used an old workstation, and it was fine but when I wanted to do more, it couldn't.
If you want to do virtualization, then this is a better solution. If I were buying, this is what I would want.
Just my opinion.

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[Chris Moore]

Do a search and see if you can find the build that @Stux did on a node 304. He use VMware to virtualize the FreeNAS install and passed the storage controller through to the VM so FreeNAS could directly access the disks to create the storage.
He tells it better than I can. It's a good read if you have time.

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[Bo Doe]

Thanks for the info. I'll definitely look that up, although it'll likely be after I finish some school finals haha.

 

[Chris Moore]

Thanks for the info. I'll definitely look that up, although it'll likely be after I finish some school finals haha.

This is the build log I was talking about:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...node-304-x10sdv-tln4f-esxi-freenas-aio.57116/

Some really great info in here.