Motherboard Choices for 10 Gen Intel for TrueNAS

[rlentz2022]

Are you saying that you want to place the NAS onto a desk, at which you will be sitting and working? If so, you should consider vibrations. Personally, I would be afraid to put unnecessary stress on the disks. And what when (not if) you hit your desk hard by accident?

My brain did space on that concern. The last time I had it desk height level, it was on top of 2 drawer file cabinet (that was BARELY used and now is gone) with a piece of wood under the tower for stability. Since my new desk is going to be build using butcher block, I didn't think it would still hurt it.

 

[rlentz2022]

There are 9300-16i cards, though prices may not be palatable. But 16 (HBA) + 6 (onboard) is more drives than the case can accommodate and would bring additional issues with power supply. 8+6 should be enough.

True... The goal is to upgrade to the full tower or a server rack case in the future. For some reason, my brain is telling to avoid the SATA on the motherboard unless absolutely necessary. Granted I found the LSI LSI00244 9201-16i Ebay (New) for about $170. Not a bad price especially since I'm still learning on some of this and would hate to put out more if I don't decide its not for me. Still have some time to think on this. :)

 

[rlentz2022]

That may be because the boards do not support S3 power state and do not sleep (even the workstation boards). But a NAS does not sleep, it idles.

Thanks. I didn't think about that (Gibbs smack myself) :)

 

[ChrisRJ]

For some reason, my brain is telling to avoid the SATA on the motherboard unless absolutely necessary.

What is the perceived problem with them?

 

[Etorix]

For some reason, my brain is telling to avoid the SATA on the motherboard unless absolutely necessary.

SATA controllers in Intel chipsets are absolutely fine and well supported—if it wasn't the case, many here would be in trouble.
There's also no issue mixing motherboard ports and HBA ports to make a single pool.

 

[rlentz2022]

I just probably found a good deal to get me started until I can get the money up for a better set up. And was wondering what you guys think.

• EVGA 151-HE-E999-KR MOBO
• Intel Xeon E5-1650 CPU
• Noctua NH-U14S CPU Cooler (included, but will come uninstalled for ease of shipping)

$250

If I reading this correctly, my RAM should work with it and I can also upgrade the CPU to Xeon® E5-2637 V3

 

[rlentz2022]

What is the perceived problem with them?

Just had a couple motherboards where when the MB shorted it happened to take out a couple hard drives, but not the ones attached to the card... Happen on 2 different motherboards.

 

[ChrisRJ]

Just had a couple motherboards where when the MB shorted it happened to take out a couple hard drives, but not the ones attached to the card... Happen on 2 different motherboards.

That is indeed an interesting case. I can see why you try to avoid on-board ports with that history. It reminds me of a bad SCSI CD-ROM drive in 1997 that corrupted the bus and managed to effectively destroy the SYS volume of my Novell NetWare 3.12 server. After that I added a second SCSI adapter and had the mirror drive connected there. Of course, there never again was a case like this ;-)

 

[Alchete]

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

Hi, a follow-up to the original recommendation of the Supermicro X12Sth-F -- was this board ever sold at Newegg? It's out of stock and has zero reviews. It doesn't exist on Amazon either. Isn't that unusual or did Supermicro pull back from retailers? Any idea where these can be purchased reputably, and not on eBay? :)

Supermicro X12Sth-F Motherboard - Intel Xeon-E 2300 (Rocket Lake- E)/Pentiumcpu - Newegg.com

Buy Supermicro X12Sth-F Motherboard - Intel Xeon-E 2300 (Rocket Lake- E)/Pentiumcpu with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

 

[NugentS]

Try a supermicro dealer in your area

 

[Ericloewe]

was this board ever sold at Newegg?

No idea.

Try a supermicro dealer in your area

^ Try this first, especially in the current market. They're usually niche, but that doesn't translate to "universally more expensive" (some are, some are not). At least they'll have more useful info for you than Newegg or Amazon.

I suspect that the lower-margin small server market has been deprioritized to make room for the high-margin stuff.

 

[jgreco]

Are you sure this isn't just a UEFI thing? Legacy BIOS didn't have an option to "extend" system setup menus from PCI expansion ROMs, but UEFI does. E.g. LSI SAS2/3 cards still take the legacy extension ROM and the UEFI extension ROM. The legacy extension ROM is, I guess, an independent real mode application like the firmware setup utility itself is. But the UEFI extension ROM adds its own menus to those present in the system setup utility (no doubt describing the menu structure and callback addresses in some byzantine UEFI way), and they end up looking a lot like standard menus from the system ROM.
If the configuration menus you're referring to are similar to this (shown here for a Dell HBA330 Mini, but the structure is identical to what I have at home with a Supermicro motherboard and an HBA with a SAS2008 - with AMI's look and feel instead of Dell's), then I suspect you've simply encountered UEFI option ROMs:

Entrypoint from the setup application into the device settings (notice the tip at the bottom, the HBA and NICs have expansion ROMs and the SSDs are probably being handled by a driver included in the system firmware):

Well, here I am doing a terrible necropost. You may recall that I had tried the H740p in X9 based systems but had no joy. Shortly after I wrote the messages in this thread, I nevertheless ordered a Supermicro SYS-510T-WTR with E-2388G CPU and 128GB RAM. Ordering it as a BTO via Supermicro allowed me to get parts that were otherwise unobtainium at the time. Some people might remember I was hospitalized for about two months soon after that, and then a month after I got home, the server showed up. But I was really not in any shape to be doing shopwork on servers. So it sat.

I can now report that @Ericloewe is correct, there's an EFI configuration ROM of some sort in there that integrates into the X12's AMI/Aptio setup utility. However, you have to go into PCIe/PCI/PnP Configuration and toggle the option ROM for the installed slot from Legacy to EFI. Then it seems to work charmingly well, showing up in the Advanced menu as PERC H740P Configuration. My next steps will need to be to find a tap point where I can get power for a pair of 2.5" SATA SSD's, and then hook it all up.

 

[Ericloewe]

Wait, X12 still has Legacy as an option? I thought they'd gotten rid of CSM after Skylake.

 

[Etorix]

Zombie tech never dies…

 

[jgreco]

Wait, X12 still has Legacy as an option? I thought they'd gotten rid of CSM after Skylake.

Can't comment on X11; don't have any, at least not that I can recall. This is for an X12STW-TF:



You can see the PERC show up in the Advanced menu



But only after setting the PCIe slot that the PERC is in to EFI



And there's the pesky CSM option

 

[Ericloewe]

X11 still has CSM, both on Skylake and Skylake-SP, but there was some talk about Intel removing it from their firmware package after that.