Need Mobo/cpu combo for quality but entry level TrueNAS core build.

[jackdinn]

I Have been tinkering around with scraps from old (and i mean old) junk systems. Iv got a file server working.

I'm kinda at the stage where i would like to build something proper(ish). I want the foundations (mobo & uPro) to be designed for the job of being on 24/7 & that will be long-lasting.

I dont need much really,
4+ sata + something for boot
16GB ram
1Gb/s Network
I dont want fans that sound like rocket motors.

As it is im looking at all the mobo's and there are just so many.

Im prepared to spend £500 ish on a board.

I could maybe even buy a new pre-built system designed for TrueNAS if It's not too much money.

I just wondered is there a good solid entry level "go-to" mobo that you chaps might have to suggest?

Thx.

 

[awasb]

If I were you, I'd buy a Dell T20 or (even better IMHO) HP Z420 (version 2 preferably with BIOS boot block from 2013, since it can handle XEON E5-16xx/26xx v2). Good cases, enough SATA, ECC-RAM (registered, too - the Z420, that is). They sell _very_ cheap on eBay (100-200 EUR, depends on CPU, amount of RAM and graphics adapter). A friend of mine sold his graphics board, that came with his z420, for more than he paid for the whole workstation.

Main advantages: good cases, (almost) tool free servicing, plenty of space inside, sufficient cooling, almost silent/easy to tweak (my Proxmox-Z420 sits right under my desk), 6-10 SATA, enough PCI lanes, XEONs.

Disadvantages: no IPMI. (But I would not care.)

Alternative: Something like this ...

32GB Intel Xeon E3-1230v3 Supermicro LGA 1150 micro-ATX Server Board Bundle Kit | eBay

Power Supplies / Netzteile. Cables & Adapters / Kabel. Keine Haftung für techn. Daten / no liability for technical information. HDDs / Hard Disk Drives. Attraktives Server-Bundle im Micro-ATX-Format.

www.ebay.de

But beware: It's unregistered ECC only (and therefore "comparably" expensive)

 

[Davvo]

@awasb suggestions are very valid.

The alternative is a new or used Supermicro board. You might need a bit of work to make the fans as quiet as you want, but it's nothing major.
You might want to read the following resources.

Hardware Recommendations Guide

This is the latest edition of the FreeNAS Community hardware recommendations guide. The current major version is R2, dated January 2021, with the last minor update on 2021-01-24. The format has moved away from the forum post form factor, to...

www.truenas.com

Supermicro X10 and X11 motherboard FAQ

Despite being the default choice for most of us, Supermicro X10 and X11 motherboards have certain quirks. These range from poorly documented solutions to relatively common issues to deliberate choices by Supermicro that may raise questions. This...

www.truenas.com

Also, ECC is the way.

 

[jackdinn]

Thx @awasb I am checking your suggestions now.

New or used Supermicro board

Hmm, yea i have been looking at supermicro's I must admit i am intimidated by them. I shall read up on what you have posted.

I was just looking at a new mobo, I dont see how it has 10 X sata (i cant see more than 2) but its been a long time since i built a comp, however what do you think of such boards to build on?

 

[Davvo]

Hmm, yea i have been looking at supermicro's I must admit i am intimidated by them.

Yeah, I was too at the start.

I was just looking at a new mobo, I dont see how it has 10 X sata (i cant see more than 2) but its been a long time since i built a comp, however what do you think of such boards to build on?

Looks good. Has ECC and Intel NIC, plenty of SATA and PCIE expansion slots.
Also has NVME slots (although the second might disabile a few SATA ports).

If you look again, over the two orange SATA (DOM) ports there are 2x4 SATA ports in a 90° angle.

Doesn't look to have IPMI though, which might or not be a relevant thing for you.

 

[jackdinn]

If you look again, over the two Yellow SATA ports there are 2x4 SATA ports in a 90° angle.

Aha, you're right :)

Answer this one then, why does it say under "Technical Details" "Maximum Memory Supported ‎4 GB" ? It surly must be a mistake?

Anyhow, I am looking at some supermicros and HP Z420 (just as these seem the easiest to get sorted) but i suspect i will go for a new board, ram, uPro, & storage ^^ ekk (expensive).

I shall spend a few days thinking on it & reading.

 

[Davvo]

why does it say under "Technical Details" "Maximum Memory Supported ‎4 GB" ?

Where did you read that? It supports up to 128 GB (altough it might require a BIOS flash).

I will go for a new board, ram, uPro, & storage ^^ ekk (expensive).

You want a new PSU, that's for sure.

I shall spend a few days thinking on it & reading.

Wise choice.

 

[jackdinn]

Where did you read that? It supports up to 128 GB (altough it might require a BIOS flash).

About halfway down the page.

Product information
Technical Details
Maximum Memory Supported ‎4 GB

Also say this in the info next to the pic's

Memory storage capacity	128 GB
RAM memory maximum size	4 GB

Im sure it's just me misunderstanding something, but even if it means max individual ram stick size, it still would not make sense.

 

[Davvo]

About halfway down the page.

Also say this in the info next to the pic's

Memory storage capacity	128 GB
RAM memory maximum size	4 GB

Im sure it's just me misunderstanding something, but even if it means max individual ram stick size, it still would not make sense.

Never trust retailers' specs, especially Amazon's.
Always go to the site of the manufacturer and search for the model. In this case, here.

 

[awasb]

Just to get this straight - with a budget of 500 quid:

I dont need much really,
4+ sata + something for boot
16GB ram
1Gb/s Network
I dont want fans that sound like rocket motors.

Why build something new, when You can easily get a solution that used to cost 2.500,- EUR 10 years ago and still perfectly fits Your needs (as far as described) and even _far_ more, if You need it someday, for 100-200 EUR? The above mentioned workstations are quite energy efficient as well. You can tweak down a running T20 or Z420 (with a 4core XEON and 16GB and some passively cooled 2W VGA graphics board) to 15-20 Watts (w/o disks). Those metrics are usually expected from a smaller Synology. But a XEON-equipped Z420 e.g. will take up to 768GB of RAM, if You need it some day. In a "desktop" case. Sufficiently cooled. Almost silent. If you start building new with CPU, mobo, RAM, please consider: A _good_ case, _good_ fans, cabling, trays/cages, an efficient but silent power unit etc. etc. etc.

I don't want to argue or take away the fun factor. If You have money to burn or just enjoy building up something new far beyond Your needs just for fun, go ahead

 

[Etorix]

Hmm, yea i have been looking at supermicro's I must admit i am intimidated by them.

There's no reason to be afraid. These are just motherboards, build for no-nonsense 24/7 operation just as the doctor ordered.

I was just looking at a new mobo, I dont see how it has 10 X sata (i cant see more than 2) but its been a long time since i built a comp, however what do you think of such boards to build on?

I have nothing wrong to say about the motherboard for its intended use as a desktop. As a server tough you'd be paying for unnecessary components (sound, and likely more expansion than will ever be needed) and not getting the benefits of a proper server board (BMC for remote, headless, management).

 

[Redcoat]

Hmm, yea i have been looking at supermicro's I must admit i am intimidated by them.

There's no reason to be afraid. These are just motherboards, build for no-nonsense 24/7 operation just as the doctor ordered.

No reason whatsoever! And you can get lots of informed help on current (and past) Supermicro boards here as there are so many users in the community.

 

[jackdinn]

Hi, so I'm still looking ^^, Nearly brought a Dell PowerEdge T620 but just could not get to the bottom of the incompatibility problem of the Dell PERC H710 RAID Controller Card and TrueNAS, what I was supposed to do about it, or what I should replace it with. Then I realized just how loud these systems can be. The fans might have been adjustable/fixable I just don't know, so I gave up on all the proper servers.

So I'm back here to try again.

Regarding the HP Z420 V2:-

Main advantages: good cases, (almost) tool free servicing, plenty of space inside, sufficient cooling, almost silent/easy to tweak (my Proxmox-Z420 sits right under my desk), 6-10 SATA, enough PCI lanes, XEONs.

6-10 SATA

How do you provision for 10 sata on this system? The board could have a pcie to sata card to add some extra sata plugs, which might bring it up to 10. What about the case though, do you think you can get 10X3.5" spinners & 2X2.5" physically in there? Also could the raid outputs that I believe are built into the board be used in any way? Like, can I switch the raid to HBA (or pass through) and then use it to connect sata/sas? (thumbnail at bottom).

The Spec im now looking at. Is this ok for truenas? Iv tried my best to get it right and max'ed out. I just need the drives separately, just wondering how to fit all this together.

• 1 x HP Z420 V2 600W (Grade A)
• 1 x Intel Xeon E5-2697 V2 - 12-Core 24-Threads 2.70GHz (3.50GHz Boost, 30MB Cache, 130W TDP)
• 1 x HP CPU1 Heatsink & Fan
• 8 x 16GB - DDR3L 1600MHz (PC3L-12800R, 2Rx4)
• 2 x 128GB - SATA-3 (6Gb/s) SSD - Major Brand - New
• 2 x HP 3.5" HDD Caddy
• 1 x nVidia Quadro 600 Silver - 1GB DDR3 (DVI, DisplayPort)
• 1 x DVI (Male) to VGA (Female) Adapter

 

[ChrisRJ]

I shall spend a few days thinking on it & reading.

I can understand the urge to pull the trigger as quickly as possible. But from personal experience I can tell that spending more than a week on information on this, is time well spent. Not necessarily in terms of saving a ton of money. But the peace of mind that you have more or less the ideal solution and no buyer's remorse in 6 months, was a very compelling reason for me.

For additional information, you can check the "recommended readings" in my signature.

 

[jackdinn]

I can understand the urge to pull the trigger as quickly as possible. But from personal experience I can tell that spending more than a week on information on this, is time well spent. Not necessarily in terms of saving a ton of money. But the peace of mind that you have more or less the ideal solution and no buyer's remorse in 6 months, was a very compelling reason for me.

For additional information, you can check the "recommended readings" in my signature.

Its been 4 months since i started this post and long time spent on reading/searching before that.

I just wanted @awasb to explain how/if he can get 10 sata drives into that case, if it is ok to fit them in then this HP Z420 will do for me as iv been reading and searching for a very long time now & I'm exhausted. I just want a respectable TrueNAS system. I never guessed I'd still be trying to figure it all out nearly a year later.

OFC i shall take a look at your sig although i seem to think i already might have. Thx :)

 

[awasb]

10x 2.5" is no problem here. I'm running the above mentioned proxmox server on a Z420 with three 3.5" to dual 2.5" conversion frames/mounting brackets and two 5.25" to dual 2.5"/single 3.5". The 3.5" slots are empty though, to keep the power consumption (a bit) down. HP even officially advertised special conversion caddies, but they were rather expensive. I'm using deleycon or icybox brackets/frames for a fraction of the HP price. No need for hot swap.

The same applies to my even smaller home backup box (TrueNAS Core — it's in my sig): It's 10x 2.5" (pool) drives within 5x 3.5" slots of a rather small Lion Li Q25B. It may seem a bit cramped, but it works like a charm with those frames/brackets. (But keep an eye on the airflow/cooling. I did test some cases, that had enough space/cages to mount the drives, but were far from being "easy to cool down".)

Drive temps hover @ the low 30ies and actually rise to mid 30ies under load.

 

[jackdinn]

10x 2.5" is no problem here. I'm running one of my proxmox servers on a Z420 with three 3.5" to dual 2.5" brackets and two 5.25" to dual 2.5"/single 3.5". The 3.5" slots are empty though. HP even officially advertised special conversion caddies, but they were rather expensive. I'm using deleycon or icybox brackets for a fraction of the HP price.

The same applies to my even smaller home backup box: It's 10x 2.5" drives within 5x 3.5" slots of a rather small Lion Li Q25B. Works like a charm with those brackets. (But keep an eye on the airflow/cooling. I did test some cases, that had enough space/cages to mount the drives, but were far from being "easy to cool down".)

Thx. I was thinking it was going to be a case of either an outright new case (which i believe is not quite as straight forward with some of the pugs/connectors on the z420 ) Or new caddies.

I tell you one thing i have been thinking more about that never even crossed my mind before, and thats using ssd's for a nas. Iv always just assumed that i would be using hdd's but im not even sure why not use ssd'd nowadays. i assume there is no sas ssd's but i was not planning on using sas anyhow.
Im sure there must be a reason why i dont see ssd's used but im not 100% sure.

 

[awasb]

Depends on your specific load and purpose (and money of course); "all flash" setups exist. But they serve special needs, where high io and low latency is mandatory (and the significant higher price per TB is well accepted). Most "affordable" SSDs are not built/targeted with continuous write loads in mind. So most of them (even some server type models) have an insufficient write endurance.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

What about a Supermicro A2SDi-4C-HLN4F (8x SATA) or A2SDi-8C-HLN4F (12x SATA)?

A2SDi-4C-HLN4F | Motherboards | Products | Supermicro

A2SDi-8C-HLN4F | Motherboards | Products | Supermicro

480€ or 700€ retail.

HTH,
Patrick

 

[jackdinn]

What about a Supermicro A2SDi-4C-HLN4F

I dont really want to order form china or the US, i dont usually see the recommended supermicros in the UK. Also, id really not want to build from the ground up unless i absolutely have to.

@awasb
I was just thinking about the z420, and the sata ports. It only has 2 6Gb ports so do you just use the 3Gb ones as it really does not matter for a storage system? Or do you use the built in SAS connections, but they are raid (i believe), can the z420 turn the raid off and make these just HBA's with sas to sata breakout cables?
Else, would you buy a pcie hba card that is specifically non-raid (i think thats called an HBA card)?

(sorry for the terminology, I'm confused how to describe things ^^)