My quest for an affordable ECC setup

[Ianm_ozzy]

Hi all
I posted a few days ago about using non ECC memory for truenas. It is now locked which is kind of annoying.
So I have various components and was looking to maybe get some non ECC memory to run as truenas.
The motherboard did not support it but had no choice. The black Friday memory sales were disappointing.
So I am still running truenas virtualised in proxmox. It is on an old machine. DDR3 (non ECC).
I went to a computer recycling place with little luck.
I got an old and cheap machine which I swapped out components and is a new proxmox node.
Some Virtual machines are now on the new node, and truenas is allocated more resources. Yay.

So they had a BIG room full of old donated machines, where I hoped the was some old server that was suitable, but no luck.
Also I have been checking ebay regularly, and what is available is way over priced and disappointing specs for close to decade old equipment.
I am in Australia, so are looking for pointers to find a decent 32GB+ ECC motherboard & CPU combo - with at least a few PCI express lanes.

Pointers are appreciated.

Also does anyone have any idea what is going on with DDR5. It has ECC on the memory, but is it between the memory & components.

I expect intel to do the di*k move and make you but super pricey motherboards for that.
What about the new AMD AM5 motherboards?
Useful info is appreciated.
I did find this useful:

Why DDR5 does NOT have ECC (by default)

DDR5, when it was announced, had a new feature called 'On-Die ECC'. Too many of the press, and even the DRAM company marketing materials misunderstood this i...

www.youtube.com

Thanks

 

[Ianm_ozzy]

OH well. So nothing then. I post a thread about maybe buying non ecc for a server with truenas. Many were appratenyly saying it could be a big problem.

Now trying to find a suitable setup and no help at all. This forum is of very limited use it seems. On the bright side it is much better than using the awful fpsense forums.

 

[MisterE2002]

bit snarky? I guess the lack of responses because your post contains a lot of unneeded stuff, but lacks the needed goals. Did you read the guides by iX and the community? Usual motherboard brands are Supermicro and Asrock Rack. On the cheap? Buy second hand stuff, like X9/X10 boards.

 

[danb35]

I am in Australia, so are looking for pointers to find a decent 32GB+ ECC motherboard & CPU combo - with at least a few PCI express lanes.

If 32 GB RAM is all you need, that isn't a very high bar; even the lower-end boards/chipsets support that. A good candidate would be the Supermicro X10SL7-F. It's a decent server-grade motherboard, supports Xeon E3 CPUs as well as the i3s that also support ECC, has adequate remote management capabilities, and has 14 SATA ports for your drives. Here's one for AU$190 shipped:

SUPERMICRO X10SL7-F LGA1150 H3 M-ATX MOTHERBOARD C222 CHIPSET DUAL GBIT PCIE SAS | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for SUPERMICRO X10SL7-F LGA1150 H3 M-ATX MOTHERBOARD C222 CHIPSET DUAL GBIT PCIE SAS at the best online prices at eBay!

www.ebay.com.au

...and here's one with a decent CPU, some RAM, and a couple of other accessories for a 1U chassis, for what looks like about AU$500 shipped:

Supermicro X10SL7-F REV 1.01 Intel Xeon E3-1225V3 16GB SSDR3 M391B1G73QH0-YK0 | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Supermicro X10SL7-F REV 1.01 Intel Xeon E3-1225V3 16GB SSDR3 M391B1G73QH0-YK0 at the best online prices at eBay!

www.ebay.com.au

 

[jgreco]

It is now locked which is kind of annoying.

Yes, I locked the thread because it had turned into an argumentative and unproductive rehash of the topic, after most of the common viewpoints on the topic had been presented within the thread. As noted in my note that closed the thread, this has all been said before, multiple times, and you are welcome to use the search feature to locate previous threads on the topic for your reading pleasure.

Also I have been checking ebay regularly, and what is available is way over priced and disappointing specs for close to decade old equipment.
I am in Australia, so are looking for pointers to find a decent 32GB+ ECC motherboard & CPU combo - with at least a few PCI express lanes.

PCIe has been around since 2003, and is basically now the only viable option for expansion on most systems. Everything that has expansion slots is likely to be PCIe.

I don't have any information on Australia specific eBay pricing. Here in the US, it is not unusual to find gear at 1/10th the original price. This typically happens because the companies who recycle gear from data centers have significant trouble finding buyers on the secondary market, which is saturated. The US has MANY data centers, and thus the law of supply and demand means that an oversupply of gear in the market causes prices to fall. My impression is that there aren't that many data centers in the Australia market, but I don't understand the dynamics behind why that is.

Also does anyone have any idea what is going on with DDR5. It has ECC on the memory, but is it between the memory & components.

Right. This is something like SSD's or HDD's having error correction onboard in order to be able to detect errors. It isn't ECC in the classic sense and is basically useless from the classic perspective, since its job is just to provide a mechanism to enhance integrity on the module. You still want ECC between the memory subsystem and the host.

This forum is of very limited use it seems.

That's pretty disrespectful, given the amount of effort the community put into your last thread.

bit snarky? I guess the lack of responses because your post contains a lot of unneeded stuff, but lacks the needed goals.

It could also be that a lot of regulars would have witnessed the closure of the previous thread and recognized that this was not an invitation to start a new thread.

Did you read the guides by iX and the community? Usual motherboard brands are Supermicro and Asrock Rack. On the cheap? Buy second hand stuff, like X9/X10 boards.

This is great advice, @Ianm_ozzy