Looking for CPU/MOBO that will support PC3L-12800R

[luckyal]

Currently running TrueNAS-12.0-U8.1 on an Supermicro X8SIL-F with a x3470 Xeon. After several hours of frustration in not being able to get a VM to start, I researched and discovered that my X3470 series processor doesn't support TrueNAS vms. The CPU supports EPT but not UG. I'd like to find a fairly efficient Motherboard/CPU common that would accommodate my existing RAM and support VMs. It would also be good if the new combo would support AES-NI as well, since my current pool is unencrypted. BTW, is it possible to enable encryption without rebuilding the Pool?

I use it for general file storage with SMB shares going out to multiple computers on the network, as well as for Time Machine backups from several macs that I have on the network. I also have the following deployed.

JAILS (running on an SSD for faster IO)

UniFi
Plex (no transcoding)
Nextcloud

8x8TB WD Reds in RAID-Z2 config, which store all of my data.
120GB ZIL Write Cache

With the exception of the VM Bhyve problem my system has worked well for me since 2017. I'd like to keep the costs as low as possible.

 

[jgreco]

Supermicro X10 is the beginning of DDR4 support, so basically you need to look at Supermicro X9 solutions. The "r" in your memory is for registered, and unfortunately the Xeon E3 parts do not support registered. These run on X9SC* etc. boards, and are the more efficient but lower-end boards. You can probably acquire something along the lines of an X9SR* board like the X9SRL along with an E5-2637v2 CPU; that's my best off-the-top-of-my-head guess. The E5's all tend to run a little hot and power-hungry so you could go with a slower part; the 2637 is high clock speed but low core count, which works good for basic NAS duties. Lots of this is now cheap on the used market as it is approximately a decade old.

120GB ZIL Write Cache

Whatever that is, it's not a "ZIL" and it's not a write cache.

Some insights into SLOG/ZIL with ZFS on FreeNAS

What is the ZIL? POSIX provides a facility for the system or an application to make sure that data requested to be written is actually committed to stable storage: a synchronous write request. Upon completion of a sync write request, the underlying filesystem is supposed to guarantee that a...

www.truenas.com

The ZIL is the ZFS Intent Log. You might have moved it to a SLOG, which is a dedicated external device. But even that is not a write cache.

 

[luckyal]

You can probably acquire something along the lines of an X9SR* board like the X9SRL along with an E5-2637v2 CPU; that's my best off-the-top-of-my-head guess. The E5's all tend to run a little hot and power-hungry so you could go with a slower part; the 2637 is high clock speed but low core count, which works good for basic NAS duties. Lots of this is now cheap on the used market as it is approximately a decade old.

I've been looking for an LGA 2011 single socket board and pretty much everything I see on eBay is $200+. Plus the cost of CPU. And going from 32GB of ram (max allowed by my current X8SIL-F), I'd likely expand to 64GB so I'd be north of $350. I see chassis like these on eBay. What's the downside of picking one up and taking the guts out? I am trying to keep the Fractal Define R4, so I don't think that a dual-socket is an option as the chassis can't accommodate anything larger than ATX.

P.S. I get your point about ZIL/SLOG. Despite the amount of reading I do on the subject, I still struggle grasping it completely.

 

[jgreco]

The main problem with the X9SRi is that it is a 1U-optimized board, which means they've removed some slots in order to make it friendlier to cards mounted on a riser. They basically have the slot count limitations of a microATX board. If you feel you can live within the slot budget, bearing in mind that you can eat a slot for an HBA, a slot for a 10G card, and a slot for a NVMe card very easily, then great. I guess your X8SIL really only has three usable slots as well.

The single socket systems are harder to come by than the dualies, but the dualies are somewhat more power hungry. Partially assembled systems do tend to run somewhat less expensive than individual parts, especially for the single socket options. Be careful that you are paying attention to the form factor of the board. Certain boards such as UIO or WIO are unusable outside of their specialized chassis. The X8SIL and X9SRi are both standard ATX-style boards.