New build after C2000 crash

[LaserAllan]

So, 7 days ago, my C2000 motherboard gave.
It was most likely due to the C2000 problem so I am now dealing with ASRock to get a new board. Did they actually fix it or did Intel not bother?

Anyway, my new build is going to be based on something like this:
https://www.supermicro.nl/products/motherboard/atom/A2SDi-12C-HLN4F.cfm
Or this:
https://www.supermicro.nl/products/motherboard/atom/A2SDi-8C-HLN4F.cfm
64 gigabyte of ECC ram of course. The reason for that muh ram is that I will at a not too distant future upgrade to 10TB disks and having x8 10TB disks will require more ram.

The chassis is a Silverstone DS380 (I heard someone on the forums saying the cooling was absurdly bad on this one so I will willingly take suggestions for other alternatives.

Let me know what you guys think.
https://www.supermicro.nl/products/motherboard/atom/A2SDi-8C-HLN4F.cfm

 

[kdragon75]

I'm sorry to hear your board died.

Did they actually fix it or did Intel not bother?

Intel would barely say there was an issue... From what I heard, there was a software workaround that came out as a bios update for many boards.

The reason for that muh ram is that I will at a not too distant future upgrade to 10TB disks and having x8 10TB disks will require more ram.

This is true to some extent but that extent depends on your working data size. If its just a NAS for less than 15 clients save the cash and start with 32GB. If your doing anything else, more is nice to have.

As for the CPU on the board, again it depends on what your doing. SMB is single threaded (per session if I recall) so a high core count with a handful of users makes little sense. On the other hand if your running Plex and transcoding, other jails, VMs, etc.. It may be nice to have.

If you build this out I would love to see full specs and power consumption numbers!

 

[Chris Moore]

It was most likely due to the C2000 problem so I am now dealing with ASRock to get a new board. Did they actually fix it or did Intel not bother?

As it was explained to me, the problem was in the firmware, nothing to do with the CPU exactly, but it is supposed to be fixed. The person that explained it to me could have been misinformed and I don't have direct knowledge of it.

The chassis is a Silverstone DS380 (I heard someone on the forums saying the cooling was absurdly bad on this one so I will willingly take suggestions for other alternatives.

Is this what you already have or what you were thinking of getting?

I guess that living in the Antarctic, space is at a premium inside the igloo and all, but I would go with something a little roomier for a case, like the Fractal Design Define R5
https://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?p=CA-R5-BKO&c=fr
Which would allow use of a full ATX size board.
For about the same price that your MiniITX board is listed on NewEgg, you can have a Xeon E5 processor and system board that would allow you to use the much less expensive DDR3 Registered memory that is plentiful on eBay right now and the board would be able to go up to 128GB or 256GB of memory if you really needed it for virtualization or some other reason.
The 10 core Xeon at 2.8GHz was running about $140 last I looked and I use one in my ESXi system. It has plenty of power to run VMs and there are a lot more slots to put expansion cards in.
If you are interested in that, here is a list of parts I picked out for another user on the forum:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/new-freenas-build.64095/#post-459293

 

[Inxsible]

Anyway, my new build is going to be based on something like this:
https://www.supermicro.nl/products/motherboard/atom/A2SDi-12C-HLN4F.cfm
Or this:
https://www.supermicro.nl/products/motherboard/atom/A2SDi-8C-HLN4F.cfm
64 gigabyte of ECC ram of course. The reason for that muh ram is that I will at a not too distant future upgrade to 10TB disks and having x8 10TB disks will require more ram.

Any reason for a mini-ITX board? It leaves you with practically no option of upgrades. Plus they tend to be much costlier than uATX boards.

are you only looking to buy new? Used parts off of Ebay will suffice for your use case and you might end up with a much powerful sysem than an Atom based SoC.

 

[LaserAllan]

Any reason for a mini-ITX board? It leaves you with practically no option of upgrades. Plus they tend to be much costlier than uATX boards.

are you only looking to buy new? Used parts off of Ebay will suffice for your use case and you might end up with a much powerful sysem than an Atom based SoC.

Currently I have a Silverstone DS380 as the case and that is meant for mini itx boards. So i don't really wanna spend money on a new case unless I really have to. I wanna get into production again as fast as I can. I have talked to ASRock to RMA the baord but I guess that is going to take at least 8-12 weeks if not more.

As it was explained to me, the problem was in the firmware, nothing to do with the CPU exactly, but it is supposed to be fixed. The person that explained it to me could have been misinformed and I don't have direct knowledge of it.

Is this what you already have or what you were thinking of getting?

I guess that living in the Antarctic, space is at a premium inside the igloo and all, but I would go with something a little roomier for a case, like the Fractal Design Define R5
https://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?p=CA-R5-BKO&c=fr
Which would allow use of a full ATX size board.
For about the same price that your MiniITX board is listed on NewEgg, you can have a Xeon E5 processor and system board that would allow you to use the much less expensive DDR3 Registered memory that is plentiful on eBay right now and the board would be able to go up to 128GB or 256GB of memory if you really needed it for virtualization or some other reason.
The 10 core Xeon at 2.8GHz was running about $140 last I looked and I use one in my ESXi system. It has plenty of power to run VMs and there are a lot more slots to put expansion cards in.
If you are interested in that, here is a list of parts I picked out for another user on the forum:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/new-freenas-build.64095/#post-459293

I have the Silverstone DS380 allready, since a new Fractal Design R5 is at least 120 dollars here plus the motherboard, cpu and ram....that is the reason i'd like to cut on costs as much as I can.
It's faily difficult to get your hands on used hardware up here.
I am open suggestions if someone have something to recommend. I currently have some Xeon E5-2650 laying around so those could be used but then i'd have to live with the JAVA versions of Supermicro IPMI which has been a pain to say the least. The other reason for beeing rather smal when it comes to the case is because it is currently sitting inside a datacenter on top of a wallmount so if flooding were to happen, my hardware will not be affected, that is safer than having it on the ground where this is much more likely to occur if you can call it that.

I did take a look at what the difference in cost would be and here is the calculation of sorts:
90 for the case (Fractal Design R5)
600 for the motherboard (Supermicro X9)
100 for ram (64-128 gigs of DDR3 ECC ram)
100 for CPU cooler (Noctua NH-D15)
100 for PSU

So the difference isn't that big to be honest. Then I need to find those CPUs that I have laying around.
The difference would be that i'd have to buy the Supermicro board for 3758 plus 32 gigs of ram. Which would amount to around 1200. The difference is around 250-300 dollars. But this will also mean I will have to do a significant amount of restructuring in the datacenter rack to get this to work nicely due to the size increase of the case. (the reason I initially went witht he DS380 was for the hotswap capability and that it could fit 12 drives in total (8 3.5 inch drives in the front) then again who needs hotswap, all my Dell vmware machine sare hotswap and I rarely change drives these unless you really have to and then you have labels setup for that so that the process will be easy enough anyway.

Opinions?
Specific boards i didn't look at just what the X9 series had in stock at the moment.

 

[Chris Moore]

since a new Fractal Design R5 is at least 120 dollars here plus the motherboard, cpu and ram....that is the reason i'd like to cut on costs as much as I can.
It's fairly difficult to get your hands on used hardware up here.

I don't have any idea where "up here" is since you say in your profile that you are in the Antarctic, which would be down by most reckoning...
It is difficult to make suggestions that are relevant when you don't know what is available in the region and can't check because you don't know where to check...

600 for the motherboard (Supermicro X9)

900 what? That price sounds insanely high, but I don't have a frame of reference.

But this will also mean I will have to do a significant amount of restructuring in the datacenter rack to get this to work nicely due to the size increase of the case.

I could suggest a rack-mount chassis, but you were not using a rack-mount before, so I didn't think that was where you were at.
You want a 3U or 4U chassis? A rack moun't chassis will be more costly though.

This vendor on eBay has 3 of the X9SRL-F system boards:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/SuperMicro-X9SRL-F-Motherboard/173356574208

 

[LaserAllan]

I don't have any idea where "up here" is since you say in your profile that you are in the Antarctic, which would be down by most reckoning...
It is difficult to make suggestions that are relevant when you don't know what is available in the region and can't check because you don't know where to check...

900 what? That price sounds insanely high, but I don't have a frame of reference.

I could suggest a rack-mount chassis, but you were not using a rack-mount before, so I didn't think that was where you were at.
You want a 3U or 4U chassis? A rack moun't chassis will be more costly though.

This vendor on eBay has 3 of the X9SRL-F system boards:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/SuperMicro-X9SRL-F-Motherboard/173356574208

900 euros sir.

That is actually a mistype from my side, i live abit aboe the arctic circle, not antarctica. More specificially, scandinavia.
Nah, a rackmount here costs like 2000 euros new. I don't know what they will cost used from ebay. I am open to suggesitosn if you can find a 2U, that would be enough, the only donwisde is tha t iwill have ot share the SAS speed between the drives, but a 2U shouldn't have more than 10-12 drives anyway. I initially started with the stuff in my basement but then I move dit all to the datacenter and all my stuff is now rackmounted except for the freenas machine. That price wasn't too high to be honest.

I haven't bought used SM boards though. Never done that before. It'd be preffered if the machine can handle upto 128-256 gigs of ram also.
If you can find a decently price 3U SM chassis i am open ot that. But the budget is as low as possible since I really don't wanna overspend now that the machine died due to the bug. (I am working on getting it replaced)

I did look at this board along with 64-128 gigs of ram, so it's either 16 or 32 gig sticks which starts getting quite expneisve very fast.
https://www.supermicro.nl/products/motherboard/atom/A2SDi-8C_-HLN4F.cfm

Keeping down the costs should however be the mai focus so I won't have to shredout cash on something that shouldn't be expcted to just die. (Ah well any servr can die anytime for any reason but this paticular reason is osmething we all know happens with C2000 anyway.)

Oh, before I forget, if you do find a 2 or 3U chassis tha isnt insanely priced that fits with the X9 board i am fine to buy that as well :)