mini itx build recommendation in 2021 (X10SDV-4C-TLN2F )

[dreamerns]

Hi there TrueNAS community. My ASRock C2750D4I had its final death (no more RMA) and it is time to be replaced. I am looking for recommendations for mini-itx server board. These are some of my requirements and needs:
* IPMI port and serial is a must
* Additional 2 NIC (I'm ok with 1Gbit for now, however, I'm ok with bumping the spec for future-proofing (and potentially improving my transfer speed for large files).
* At least 6 SATA ports + something to attach boot device (m.2 nvme or additional sata, something other than USB. I have bad experience booting from USB drives).
* I don't have many users, it is a home server. However, I do transfer large files, have a bunch of jails, maybe 1-2 VM from time to time, but most importantly I do run Plex server. It should be able to transcode multiple 1080p streams. I don't own too many 4k streams, but I will in future, so it should handle those as well.

Intel Avoton on C2750 worked fine for most things (except maybe transcoding and 4k streams), so I do need something a little bit beefier than that (and it is 2021). A friend recommended https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/X10SDV-TLN4F. It seems it has the same price in 2021 as it did in 2015 (~$950), so I'm not sure if this is normal. Would this be a little bit of an overkill for my usage? Would https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/X10SDV-4C-TLN2F suffice my needs? I really don't know much about the Xeon family of processors (I am totally out of the loop in the last 5 years). Open to suggestions. Thank you.

 

[dreamerns]

Maybe if I simplify the question I might get better results

Does anyone have experience running Plex on X10SDV-4C-TLN2F? I'm sure this board would suffice all my other needs in terms of jails and file share, but not sure how well it performs when it needs to transcode multiple 1080p streams (attach subtitles). I occasionally to have 4k streams, however at least for now I didn't had a need to transcode them. Just looking if I need to step up to 8 core or 4 core will suffice

 

[Etorix]

If you were satisfied with the C2750, 4 cores should suffice. The unchanged price is normal for new X10SDV boards because they are still very appropriate for what they do and are on long support cycles; the newer X11SDV boards are more powerful and more expensive, so there is still a market for the X10SDV generation. But you may be able to find X10SDV second-hand.
An alternative would be the A2SDi boards (Atom C3000, the Avoton successor).

 

[dreamerns]

Thank you!

 

[dreamerns]

I'm writing this in case of someone in the future stumbles upon this thread. I ended up buying X10SDV and being highly disappointed. Supermicro advertises this board to have 6 SATA slots + 1 m.2. I thought I can have my 6 HD using SATA and have an additional nvme drive for booting, however, that m.2 slot is sharing 1 SATA slot so it is either-or. This is really cheap move for such an expensive board. I tried PCI-E m.2 slot card, but it is not recognized by the board or truenas. The second problem is IPMI that far far inferior to ASRock. It doesn't have a web page, but you have to use some java software that is only designed to work with windows and linux (no mac osx support in 2021). You can make it run, but certain features like KVM redirection don't work (which makes IPMI almost useless IMHO). Anyway, there is a good reason iXSystems went with ASRock and not Supermicro for their mini server, I'll probably do the same once this chip shortage is over.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

I'm writing this in case of someone in the future stumbles upon this thread. I ended up buying X10SDV and being highly disappointed. Supermicro advertises this board to have 6 SATA slots + 1 m.2. I thought I can have my 6 HD using SATA and have an additional nvme drive for booting, however, that m.2 slot is sharing 1 SATA slot so it is either-or. This is really cheap move for such an expensive board.

The onboard M.2 slot does support SATA and NVME. I run an Intel Optane in mine and have all SATA ports available. The shared port only comes into play when you use a SATA M.2 SSD.

I tried PCI-E m.2 slot card, but it is not recognized by the board or truenas.

The AOC-SLG3-2M works fine. You need to set the PCIe slot to 4x4x4x4 bifurcation in the BIOS.

The second problem is IPMI that far far inferior to ASRock. It doesn't have a web page, but you have to use some java software that is only designed to work with windows and linux (no mac osx support in 2021).

Sorry but this is plain wrong. I run the X10SDV-8C-TLN4F and you see attached a screen shot of the IPMI web page which supports virtual devices (floppy and CD-ROM) via SMB, HTML5 based iKVM, power management and all the regular stuff. No special application needed. The IPMIview Java thingy sucks - I agree on that part.

Check the "Main Private NAS" in my signature for an overview of what you can jam into this tiny system.

Kind regards,
Patrick

P.S. you might consider getting the SC721TQ-250B case which will allow you to connect the same number of devices as shown in my signature. 4x 3.5" HDD hot-plug, 2x 2.5" SSD/HDD internal, 1 NVME M.2 on the mainboard and if desired 2 NVME M.2 on that add-on card. That's a friggin' 9 disk devices in a small cube case.

 

[dreamerns]

The onboard M.2 slot does support SATA and NVME. I run an Intel Optane in mine and have all SATA ports available. The shared port only comes into play when you use a SATA M.2 SSD.


The AOC-SLG3-2M works fine. You need to set the PCIe slot to 4x4x4x4 bifurcation in the BIOS.

Thank you for the recommendation. I tried some other one from Amazon with 4x4x4x4 and it was not recognized. I didn't know supermicro branded one exists, it is a little bit pricey but if it works it is worth the investment. I hate booting from USB sticks, really bad experience.

Sorry but this is plain wrong. I run the X10SDV-8C-TLN4F and you see attached a screen shot of the IPMI web page which supports virtual devices (floppy and CD-ROM) via SMB, HTML5 based iKVM, power management and all the regular stuff. No special application needed. The IPMIview Java thingy sucks - I agree on that part.

Check the "Main Private NAS" in my signature for an overview of what you can jam into this tiny system.

Kind regards,
Patrick

P.S. you might consider getting the SC721TQ-250B case which will allow you to connect the same number of devices as shown in my signature. 4x 3.5" HDD hot-plug, 2x 2.5" SSD/HDD internal, 1 NVME M.2 on the mainboard and if desired 2 NVME M.2 on that add-on card. That's a friggin' 9 disk devices in a small cube case.

View attachment 49928

You are right, it works. Nice! I don't know what happened in my case, I tried initially if it has web interface and it did not work. Since then I did full reset with ipmiconfig and forgot to check again. Everywhere in manual and forum people are mentioning IPMIView so I thought that is the only way. web interface is actually quite good

I have Node 304 case and I'm super happy with it. Before that I used to have SilverStone DS380B and it was hard to work with + it was an oven. Since 2015 I switched 1 case (tried to mod it first to increase the airflow but it didn't really work), had motherboard RMA'd 4x, had 4 out of 6 disk died (luckily 3 were RMA becaue Seagate NAS series was just bad, iron wolf is much better). I must say my NAS is the most unreliable computer I ever had so far, really hoping I have everything sorted out now. Thanks for the tips they are super helpful.

 

[Etorix]

Forget riser cards, just get a small NVMe M.2 drive to boot. I have a 128 GB Intel 600p as boot drive for my own X10SDV in Node 304 case.
The Java console from the Aspeed 2400 is indeed a pain (HTML console from the newer 2500 is MUCH better), but now that you've passed the initial setup, your X10SDV NAS should just work for years while requiring very little attention.

 

[dreamerns]

Forget riser cards, just get a small NVMe M.2 drive to boot. I have a 128 GB Intel 600p as boot drive for my own X10SDV in Node 304 case.
The Java console from the Aspeed 2400 is indeed a pain (HTML console from the newer 2500 is MUCH better), but now that you've passed the initial setup, your X10SDV NAS should just work for years while requiring very little attention.

Yeah but that is a problem if you have 6 drives as I do :-( If you use m.2 slot it takes sata0 port. You can only have 6 drives total, not 6 SATA + 1 nvme.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

If you use m.2 slot it takes sata0 port. You can only have 6 drives total, not 6 SATA + 1 nvme.

As I already stated, you can. The shared SATA port restriction only applies if you put an M.2 SATA drive in the mainboard slot. If you use an M.2 NVME drive, you will still have all 6 SATA ports available.

Code:

root@freenas[~]# nvmecontrol devlist
 nvme0: INTEL MEMPEK1J032GA
    nvme0ns1 (27905MB)
 nvme1: Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 1TB
    nvme1ns1 (953869MB)
 nvme2: Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 1TB
    nvme2ns1 (953869MB)
root@freenas[~]# camcontrol devlist
<WDC WD40EFRX-68N32N0 82.00A82>    at scbus0 target 0 lun 0 (pass0,ada0)
<WDC WD40EFRX-68N32N0 82.00A82>    at scbus1 target 0 lun 0 (pass1,ada1)
<WDC WD40EFRX-68N32N0 82.00A82>    at scbus2 target 0 lun 0 (pass2,ada2)
<WDC WD40EFRX-68N32N0 82.00A82>    at scbus3 target 0 lun 0 (pass3,ada3)
<TS32GSSD370S S0903D>              at scbus4 target 0 lun 0 (pass4,ada4)
<TS32GSSD370S S0903D>              at scbus5 target 0 lun 0 (pass5,ada5)
<AHCI SGPIO Enclosure 2.00 0001>   at scbus6 target 0 lun 0 (pass6,ses0)

nvme0 is the one on the mainboard, nvme1 and nvme2 are on that add-on card.

HTH,
Patrick

 

[dreamerns]

As I already stated, you can. The shared SATA port restriction only applies if you put an M.2 SATA drive in the mainboard slot. If you use an M.2 NVME drive, you will still have all 6 SATA ports available.

HTH,
Patrick

Ahh got it, I guess that was confusion on my side (I bought the wrong drive, to be honest I didn't really know there is difference). I can see on supermicro site Kioxia and samsung are supported, will this work shorturl.at/vEFGS ? thanks

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

If you intend to use that for booting and it's only ~15€/$ I'd just give it a try. I use my NVME slots for "serious" stuff that benefits from the NVME performance and sacrifice two SATA connectors for boot drives. But yes, why shouldn't that work?

If you can find a TBW figure for that device, that would be interesting.

 

[Etorix]

Any NVMe drive should be supported for boot… but you need to fit it in the slot and there is no hole to secure a 2230 drive. Look for a 2280 NVMe drive.
@Patrick M. Hausen Like the OP, I need all six SATA ports for the "serious" stuff, i.e. storage, so I happily dedicate the M.2 slot for boot. Don't care about performance—but a 16 GB Optane M10 would make a fine boot drive .

 

[dreamerns]

Ended up finding EVO PLUS 256Gbyte for $35. It is definitely an overkill, but hey

 

[Etorix]

Technically, it's "overkill" for boot. Financially, "overkill" would be to get a HBA for the PCIe slot to have a seventh SATA port, plus the SATA boot SSD itself; a total of $35 to solve the boot issue while keeping the six SATA slots for HDDs is a bargain.

 

[dreamerns]

I meant 256Gb being overkill for boot. But yeah, it is definitely a bargain for that drive. Finger crossed it'll work.

 

[path]

Hi, did you end up checking if your new build is able to transcode streams? I'm in the same boat as you (migrating from the same hardware even) and I have a Plex server and want to occasionally be able to support streaming to clients that require transcoding.

 

[dreamerns]

So far I must say XeonD in X10SDV-4C-TLN2F is much faster than my previous C2750D4I. 1080p works without problem, I haven't tried 4k yet. Even file copy between 2 different datasets is noticeably faster.

 

[dreamerns]

The only issue I had transferring settings from the old motherboard to the new one is network interfaces. They have different name (instead of igb0 it is ix0 or something like that because it is 10gb interface). So I needed to reconfigure jails and network interface. Other than that, everything works

 

[B0Besh]

Did you guys had an issue with network drivers? Or working fine? I've seen couple threads that there is an issue with 10g network drivers for this board. Planning to migrate to this board as well. Currently on intel lga775 very old board with one ram module dying on me planning to switch.