Motherboard Choices for 10 Gen Intel for TrueNAS

[rlentz2022]

Hopefully I'm in the right place. I've building and playing with computers all my life, but in the 2 years I have started to play with TrueNAS for my server choices. It's mostly a Plex server with one drive for data backup of pictures, documents, etc, but mostly a PLEX server. When I upgrade my main computer for the first time in the last 7 years, I decided to try out TrueNAS with my old system before I would go better.

Old System (My get to know TrueNAS)
GIGABYTE GA-F2A88X-UP4
AMD A10-7890K
CORSAIR Vengeance Pro 16GB x2
Intel EXPI9404PT Ethernet PRO/1000 PCI-E PT Quad Port Server Adapter
Rivo PCIe SATA Card, 8 Port with 8 SATA Cable, SATA Controller Expansion Card
(I don’t think I need to list the hard drives, but I did figure out I needed more than a 650 watt power supply for the amount of drives I had.)



Current System (The one I having trouble with)
MSI - Z590 PRO WIFI (Socket LGA1200) Intel Motherboard
Intel - Core i7-10700K
CORSAIR - VENGEANCE LPX 32GB (2 x 16GB) 3.2 GHz DDR4 C16 x2
Intel EXPI9404PT Ethernet PRO/1000 PCI-E PT Quad Port Server Adapter (From old setup)
Rivo PCIe SATA Card, 8 Port with 8 SATA Cable, SATA Controller Expansion Card (From old setup)


Right away I started to have issue with the onboard LAN not working with TrueNAS (may need to get drivers and install them, but I do not know how to do that with TrueNAS (Still a BIG newbie) and the Intel EXPI9404PT is also not being seen. I happen to have a Intel Gigabit CT PCI-E Network Adapter (EXPI9301CTBLK) lying around and that work enough to get access to my server via the network, but I believe the big issue is the motherboard. I think that is causing a lot of compatibility issues especially with the network portion. I’m currently looking at replacing the motherboard with possibly the SUPERMICRO MBD-X12SAE-5 ATX Server Motherboard LGA 1200 Intel W580 and also getting a LSI LSI00244 9201-16i PCI-Express 2.0 x8 SATA / SAS Host Bus Adapter Card to run the hard drives on, but I hate to put out $400 a motherboard that I can’t confirm will be any better or if there is any other Z590 motherboards that would work better. Any suggestions or advice is greatly appreciated.

Thanks in Advance.

​

 

[Ericloewe]

Take your pick: https://www.supermicro.com/en/produ...et H5)&formfactor=Micro-ATX,microATX,Mini-ITX

Skip the X12STH-SYS from that list, it's designed for cheap 1U servers and is inconvenient in anything else.

SUPERMICRO MBD-X12SAE-5 ATX Server Motherboard LGA 1200 Intel W580

That's a workstation board, not the best of choices.

(I don’t think I need to list the hard drives

It would be rather helpful to know how many disks you want to attach... 8 disks? Skip the extra controller and use a PCIe M.2 SSD for boot. More disks? You'll definitely need an LSI SAS HBA.

You will also need ECC RAM and a Xeon CPU.

the Intel EXPI9404PT is also not being seen.

That's unusual. Could be the motherboard, but that'd be somewhat unusual. Could also be the card that's faulty. Does it still work in the old board?

 

[pschatz100]

On the MSI motherboard, go into the bios and disable ALL features not being used by TrueNAS, including audio, onboard NIC and WiFi, advanced power saving options, etc. See if that helps.

Some quick searching on the internet turned up comments that the onboard NIC on that motherboard is not yet supported by FreeBSD.

 

[ChrisRJ]

@rlentz2022 , have you considered buying some used enterprise gear? You get stuff that is known to work, still has quite a few years of life in it, and is relatively cheap.

 

[rlentz2022]

Take your pick: https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboards/server-boards?pro=category=Server Board&cpu=UP&gen=X12&socket=LGA-1200 (Socket H5)&formfactor=Micro-ATX,microATX,Mini-ITX

Skip the X12STH-SYS from that list, it's designed for cheap 1U servers and is inconvenient in anything else.


That's a workstation board, not the best of choices.

It would be rather helpful to know how many disks you want to attach... 8 disks? Skip the extra controller and use a PCIe M.2 SSD for boot. More disks? You'll definitely need an LSI SAS HBA.

You will also need ECC RAM and a Xeon CPU.

That's unusual. Could be the motherboard, but that'd be somewhat unusual. Could also be the card that's faulty. Does it still work in the old board?

Thanks the link for other SUPERMICRO choices... I would like to stick with the i7 and the ram I already have (for now). I missed that the SUPERMICRO I was looking @ was a workstation board. When I saved it on NewEgg, I chose the wrong one.. The correct model I was looking @ is MBD-X12SCZ-TLN4F-O. Once I get more familiar with TrueNAS to where it's second nature to me like Windows is then I explore more. Do you have any more motherboard you might recommend. What is you opinion on the Biostar TZ590-BTC DUO? I saw the part of the mining, but I'm not looking for that... I'm also looking @ Z490 & Z590 motherboards too.

 

[rlentz2022]

To the part of the Quad LAN card. Yes it worked on the old motherboard right up to the time I shut it down for the upgrade to the new system. Since the upgrade, I have been extremely busy and I just finally got time to work on the system again. Hopefully this week I can test it on the old MB and in my Windows computer to make sure if its the MSI motherboard or if its the card itself. That way when I order the LSI LSI00244 card, I can get another one of those too. :)

 

[rlentz2022]

@rlentz2022 , have you considered buying some used enterprise gear? You get stuff that is known to work, still has quite a few years of life in it, and is relatively cheap.

Thanks for the suggestion. I was looking into that, but with the room I have here, I don't really have the right set up for that at the moment.

 

[rlentz2022]

It would be rather helpful to know how many disks you want to attach... 8 disks? Skip the extra controller and use a PCIe M.2 SSD for boot. More disks? You'll definitely need an LSI SAS HBA.

Currently the hard drives I have are:

1x WD 500GB SSD (Boot)
3x NVME WD 500 GB (1 is the jail and the other 2 are being used as cache)
1x WD 18 TB (SHUCKED)
4x WD 14 TB (SHUCKED) [RAIDZ1]
3x WD 10 TB (SHUCKED) [RAIDZ1]
1x WD 3TB NAS

 

[Etorix]

Do you have any more motherboard you might recommend. What is you opinion on the Biostar TZ590-BTC DUO? I saw the part of the mining, but I'm not looking for that... I'm also looking @ Z490 & Z590 motherboards too.

The thing is, you should rather avoid "consumer", and especially "gamer", style stuff: That will come with fancy, unsupported, controllers such as 2.5 GbE NICs, unnecessary components (audio, RGB LEDs, useless PCIe x1 slots,…) and not what you'd want for a server (remote/headless administration, optimisation for stability and 24/7 operation).
I suppose you noticed the high number of SATA ports and NVMe slots in the mining board, but the quality of this kind of board is a complete unknown, and the PCIe x1 slots are totally useless for expansion so that would be a terrible choice. The manufacturer's page does not even provide a complete technical specification, which is a definitive "NO GO".

In previous generations, Core i3 could use ECC and made for nice home servers, but Intel has now closed that path, and even bifurcated the Xeon-for-small-servers from the Xeon-for-small-workstations, so recommendations based on consumer-socket-plus-ECC are getting complicated. Beside Supermicro, AsRockRack also has a pair of server motherboards which would be suitable for your LGA1200 Core i7:

ASRock Rack > Z490D4U-2L2T

www.asrockrack.com

ASRock Rack > W480D4U

www.asrockrack.com

(no onboard 10 GbE, but the opportunity to later change to a Xeon W-1200 and ECC UDIMM).

Currently the hard drives I have are:

1x WD 500GB SSD (Boot)
3x NVME WD 500 GB (1 is the jail and the other 2 are being used as cache)
1x WD 18 TB (SHUCKED)
4x WD 14 TB (SHUCKED) [RAIDZ1]
3x WD 10 TB (SHUCKED) [RAIDZ1]
1x WD 3TB NAS

That's a weird mix…
You don't need a SLOG and do not have enough RAM for a L2ARC, which would be of dubious utility for a media server. So, whatever "cache" means, it's not doing you any good.

 

[NugentS]

"Rivo PCIe SATA Card, 8 Port with 8 SATA Cable, SATA Controller Expansion Card"
Avoid this card like the plague it is.
PCIeX1 on 8 SATA ports just doesn't work properly. Use SATA ports on the motherboard OR a proper LSI SAS Card (flashed to IT Mode)

 

[jgreco]

Skip the X12STH-SYS from that list, it's designed for cheap 1U servers and is inconvenient in anything else.

Eh? Do you have something more solid in terms of objections to this board? Or is it just that it is effectively a "proprietary" board intended for a specific set of Supermicro 1U chassis? It's marked as such ("-SYS"/"For SuperServer Only") and comes in the normal X12STH-F variant.

As noted over in this post, I've been considering this as a potential option for a QuickSync enabled hypervisor platform. It's also available in the SYS-510T-MR chassis, which looks like a nearly perfect fileservice platform for small four drive needs.

 

[Ericloewe]

Nothing against the X12STH-(LN4)F, I just didn’t want people to accidentally buy the SYS variant if they were to stumble upon it and then blame me for the odd PCIe slot at the bottom.

looks like a nearly perfect fileservice platform for small four drive needs.

With how large HDDs get these days, 4 bays get you surprisingly far. For a local cache sort of thing, with on-site hands and spares, RAIDZ1 and 20 TB disks would allow for upwards of 40 TiB usable, for stuff like video. More with careful management of free space and fragmentation.

 

[jgreco]

With how large HDDs get these days, 4 bays get you surprisingly far. For a local cache sort of thing, with on-site hands and spares, RAIDZ1 and 20 TB disks would allow for upwards of 40 TiB usable, for stuff like video. More with careful management of free space and fragmentation.

Yeah. I got rid of several of our 1U filers in the last few years, AIC chassis with X9SCi-LN4F, which were really great boxes because you could put 32GB in them, strip out the "upper deck", and fit up to 8 x 2.5" devices up there if you were vaguely clever about it, in addition to the 4x 3.5. The only reason I got rid of them was that the 32GB was so damn limiting. Oh, and they didn't have redundant power.

Nothing against the X12STH-(LN4)F, I just didn’t want people to accidentally buy the SYS variant if they were to stumble upon it and then blame me for the odd PCIe slot at the bottom.

Fair enough. Have you actually laid hands on one of these? I haven't gotten serious enough about it to grill Supermicro support about what exactly "dedicated internal HBA" means. My suspicion is that they just wanted the microATX 9.6"^2 form factor to allow a shorter chassis (20" depth) than the WIO (13" deep board requires something more like a 24" depth chassis). It looks to me like it's just a sideways PCIe slot with
some sort of predrilled faux-bracket in the chassis. This seems to imply that it could accept a RAID card in place of the "HBA".

I suppose I should break down and ask Supermicro about all this. It might be more practical just to get the WIO version, except that one makes no mention of iGPU support.

 

[ChrisRJ]

Thanks for the suggestion. I was looking into that, but with the room I have here, I don't really have the right set up for that at the moment.

Enterprise gear does not necessarily mean a rackmount case. I am running a server board in normal tower as an example.

 

[Ericloewe]

Have you actually laid hands on one of these?

No, I've looked occasionally since I'm looking to add another NAS "soon", but stock seems to be close to non-existent at distributors.

It looks to me like it's just a sideways PCIe slot with
some sort of predrilled faux-bracket in the chassis. This seems to imply that it could accept a RAID card in place of the "HBA".

Pretty sure that's what it is. I think just checked that STH did review this not too long ago: https://www.servethehome.com/supermicro-sys-510t-mr-review-1u-intel-xeon-e-2300-server/
The bays are even pre-wired with an SFF-8643 connector that looks long enough for SAS controllers with the ports at the front (SAS 9300-style).

 

[jgreco]

serious enough about it to grill Supermicro support about what exactly "dedicated internal HBA" means.

So I got off my lazy green butt and asked. Per Supermicro,

"The SYS-110T-M chassis can support a AOC-S3108L-H8iR-16DD. Only Supermicro cards are supported."

Which isn't the most absolutely clearest possible answer, but is good enough that I could envision a SYS-110T-M as viable for my purposes.

get the WIO version, except that one makes no mention of iGPU support.

Supermicro replied,

"X12STW-F can support usage of quicksync or internal CPU graphics for transcoding/decoding. If you're planning to use some advance functions then it might not."

So that's also kinda interesting.

 

[Ericloewe]

Sounds like marketing speak for "we didn't test it but also didn't disable it specifically".

"The SYS-110T-M chassis can support a AOC-S3108L-H8iR-16DD. Only Supermicro cards are supported."

I'm sort of curious whether it's actually enforced, Dell/HPE style, or if it's just a matter of physical attachment points.

 

[rlentz2022]

The thing is, you should rather avoid "consumer", and especially "gamer", style stuff: That will come with fancy, unsupported, controllers such as 2.5 GbE NICs, unnecessary components (audio, RGB LEDs, useless PCIe x1 slots,…) and not what you'd want for a server (remote/headless administration, optimisation for stability and 24/7 operation).
I suppose you noticed the high number of SATA ports and NVMe slots in the mining board, but the quality of this kind of board is a complete unknown, and the PCIe x1 slots are totally useless for expansion so that would be a terrible choice. The manufacturer's page does not even provide a complete technical specification, which is a definitive "NO GO".

In previous generations, Core i3 could use ECC and made for nice home servers, but Intel has now closed that path, and even bifurcated the Xeon-for-small-servers from the Xeon-for-small-workstations, so recommendations based on consumer-socket-plus-ECC are getting complicated. Beside Supermicro, AsRockRack also has a pair of server motherboards which would be suitable for your LGA1200 Core i7:

ASRock Rack > Z490D4U-2L2T

www.asrockrack.com

ASRock Rack > W480D4U

www.asrockrack.com

(no onboard 10 GbE, but the opportunity to later change to a Xeon W-1200 and ECC UDIMM).


That's a weird mix…
You don't need a SLOG and do not have enough RAM for a L2ARC, which would be of dubious utility for a media server. So, whatever "cache" means, it's not doing you any good.

I admit that it's a weird mix... When I first started to building up media library, I just keep just buying another hard drive when the current one got full. I did external for the most cause I wanted the option to just plug them in to another if the main one went on the fritz or I wanted to take the drive with me on a trip. That was before I learn better. Than I would look for deals and would buy in bulk (I guess is the word I'm thinking of). Money has been tight so I did what I could. I would rather have like 10x 14TB drives, but then COVID hit and the prices exploded and made it hard. Then NVMEs that I used for cache are to allow the data to be access faster when its used cause it will go to NVME before being access by the media player like it being loaded to the RAM (Well from what I read and understand). It's helped with my larger 4K videos (from what I can tell). But if it's not really doing me any good, I rather used them in my main computer. (Can you recommend a card that will support more than one NVME lol?

 

[jgreco]

Sounds like marketing speak for "we didn't test it but also didn't disable it specifically".

I'm sort of curious whether it's actually enforced, Dell/HPE style, or if it's just a matter of physical attachment points.

The thing to be concerned about here is that the RAID BIOS configuration for more recent cards has been integrated into the host BIOS, so I believe there is no longer a BIOS config utility held on the PCIe card itself. I don't know about this specific system, not having seen it firsthand. I do know that this is an "issue" for newer Dell kit such as the PERC H740p (LSI 35xx fifth gen, PCIe 3.1, cousin of the 9460-8i), which is a pants-wettingly-fast RAID controller -- often makes SATA SSD feel like NVMe with its massive 8GB cache. Adding one of these to a Supermicro system means you cannot configure the RAID without some sort of toolset. I figure that's what PXE booting is for. It is more convenient than a ROM BIOS from the point of view that the ROM BIOS stuff doesn't script easily/well, whereas a PXE booted utility can be running on FreeBSD/Linux and can have scripts or NFS mounts to a library of configuration templates. Six of one, half a dozen of the other...

Supermicro does have the AOC-S3908L-H8iR-16DD, which is a 3908-based card (seventh gen, PCIe 4.0, cousin of the 9560-8i) which is listed as compatible with the chassis-integrated SYS-110T-M but not listed as compatible on the mainboard page. I'm guessing that the host BIOS would support this.

I think I'm just going to wait around for Dell's H740p's to start getting retired out of data centers in the next few years.

 

[rlentz2022]

Enterprise gear does not necessarily mean a rackmount case. I am running a server board in normal tower as an example.

Any suggestions? The case I currently use for my server is:

Fractal Design Define 7 Black Brushed Aluminum / Steel E-ATX Silent Modular Dark Tinted Tempered Glass Window Mid Tower Computer Case​

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I wanted the Full tower, but it out of stock for a long time..