Many of you here at the FreeNAS forums are familiar with the popular Asus E35M1-I motherboard. I have 2 of them. To me they're just about the perfect low-power mini-ITX NAS board as they suport 16GB of RAM, have an on-board gigabit NIC, and 6 SATA ports. There's also one PCIe slot but it's finicky and limited. Some people have used the slot to insert an Intel gigabit NIC for more stable/faster network performance.
I settled on this board for the following reasons:
- It fits quite nicely into the Lian-Li PC-Q08 case
- 6 SATA drives is a nice RAID-Z2 pool. ALL the SATA ports are SATA3 (6 gb/s)
- for 6x2TB drives in a RAID-Z2, 8GB (officially supported) is about right. For 6x3TB drives in a RAID-Z2, 16GB (reportedly supported) is nice.
- Gigabit, of course
- On-board CPU! In theory, no worrying about applying thermal paste and such (in theory... I've seen reports that taking out the chip, cleaning it, applying artic silver, and reinserting it brings down the temps on the chip noticeably).
It also doesn't hurt that it supports USB2 and USB3, though I don't personally use USB3 (yet?).
Alas, when I went to newegg and Amazon to purchase my next E35M1-I, I was greeted with a shocker -- it's no longer sold. You might see alternative versions such as the Deluxe or the Pro, but these aren't the same. For one thing, they don't have 6 SATA ports, which is critical for my needs (and one of the features that made the E35M1-I so popular with mini-ITX NAS builders).
I've done a bit of googling and done reading at SmallNetBuilder, SilentPCReview, AnandTech, HardForum, SuperUser, TomsHardware, and more. Many of the threads are old and conclude with recommending the E35M1-I (which is how I found it to begin with). But I haven't found any currently available (U.S.) motherboard that hits the key features.
SuperMicro offers the X7SPA-H, which I may end up settling on. But here's where it falls short.
- It says it only supports 4GB RAM. Even if it supports 8GB, I'd bet it certainloy doesn't suport 16GB (my next build is a 6x3TB RAIDZ2).
- According to AnandTech, the on-board D510 chip is bested by the AMD E-350 chip in terms of performance. Another comparison. How that translates real-world, I couldn't say. Benchmarks are benchmarks and they're testing a lot of things a NAS doesn't really need to do. Yet another comparison shows the Intel D510 winning the power consumption (TDP) battle. PassMark has the E-350 besting even some low end Core2Duo processors.
- It only supports USB2. I can live with this, but it isn't much in the way of futureproof.
- The SATA ports aren SATA2, not SATA3. Current drives are capable of SATA3. It may not matter much, but for data cached by the HDD, it will matter in bursts.
- It's more expensive (~$185-200) than the Asus E35M1-I (~$130... clearance prices?) has been.
On the other hand, the X7SPA-H comes with on-board dual Intel Gigabit (the gold standard) NIC's. No need to purchase one and try to get it working with the E35M1-I's finicky slot. This also leaves the slot open.
Building hardware is all about choices, but has anyone seen any other low-power Mini-ITX motherboards out there that hit the spot? I could see maybe an Intel board that's short on SATA ports but maybe adding ports via a well-supported add-in card. Or maybe Asus or AMD have a replacement I'm missing.
I settled on this board for the following reasons:
- It fits quite nicely into the Lian-Li PC-Q08 case
- 6 SATA drives is a nice RAID-Z2 pool. ALL the SATA ports are SATA3 (6 gb/s)
- for 6x2TB drives in a RAID-Z2, 8GB (officially supported) is about right. For 6x3TB drives in a RAID-Z2, 16GB (reportedly supported) is nice.
- Gigabit, of course
- On-board CPU! In theory, no worrying about applying thermal paste and such (in theory... I've seen reports that taking out the chip, cleaning it, applying artic silver, and reinserting it brings down the temps on the chip noticeably).
It also doesn't hurt that it supports USB2 and USB3, though I don't personally use USB3 (yet?).
Alas, when I went to newegg and Amazon to purchase my next E35M1-I, I was greeted with a shocker -- it's no longer sold. You might see alternative versions such as the Deluxe or the Pro, but these aren't the same. For one thing, they don't have 6 SATA ports, which is critical for my needs (and one of the features that made the E35M1-I so popular with mini-ITX NAS builders).
I've done a bit of googling and done reading at SmallNetBuilder, SilentPCReview, AnandTech, HardForum, SuperUser, TomsHardware, and more. Many of the threads are old and conclude with recommending the E35M1-I (which is how I found it to begin with). But I haven't found any currently available (U.S.) motherboard that hits the key features.
SuperMicro offers the X7SPA-H, which I may end up settling on. But here's where it falls short.
- It says it only supports 4GB RAM. Even if it supports 8GB, I'd bet it certainloy doesn't suport 16GB (my next build is a 6x3TB RAIDZ2).
- According to AnandTech, the on-board D510 chip is bested by the AMD E-350 chip in terms of performance. Another comparison. How that translates real-world, I couldn't say. Benchmarks are benchmarks and they're testing a lot of things a NAS doesn't really need to do. Yet another comparison shows the Intel D510 winning the power consumption (TDP) battle. PassMark has the E-350 besting even some low end Core2Duo processors.
- It only supports USB2. I can live with this, but it isn't much in the way of futureproof.
- The SATA ports aren SATA2, not SATA3. Current drives are capable of SATA3. It may not matter much, but for data cached by the HDD, it will matter in bursts.
- It's more expensive (~$185-200) than the Asus E35M1-I (~$130... clearance prices?) has been.
On the other hand, the X7SPA-H comes with on-board dual Intel Gigabit (the gold standard) NIC's. No need to purchase one and try to get it working with the E35M1-I's finicky slot. This also leaves the slot open.
Building hardware is all about choices, but has anyone seen any other low-power Mini-ITX motherboards out there that hit the spot? I could see maybe an Intel board that's short on SATA ports but maybe adding ports via a well-supported add-in card. Or maybe Asus or AMD have a replacement I'm missing.
