New Build: Intel Atom no real advantages for home file server with ~100 TB?

[Mariska]

Hi!

I'm working on my first build and totally new to the world of DIY builds...

The idea is to build a file server with 128 GB of memory (I read 64 should be enough for now, but I'd like to have the option to scale up) and around 100 TB of raw storage (movies, photo's, large data sets). At this point I'm not planning to use the server for anything else than file sharing. I read the (great!!!) hard ware guide and a lot of posts, in order to eliminate CPU/ motherboard combinations. First, I eliminated the intel core i3 (incompatible with 128GB ECC memory). And I don't want to use used components (hard to get in the Netherlands).

The second CPU on my list was the intel atom (c3xxx). But I did some comparing with other CPU's and now to me it seems the only advantage of the atoms is their power usage? While they offer little computational power, relative to their costs and less flexibility because they are soc? I'm inclined to scratch the atoms of my list as well and move on to pentium/ xeon/ ryzen. Could you tell me if I'm missing some other advantage of the Atom?

thank you for your answer!!!

 

[Samuel Tai]

For just family file sharing, Atoms are more than enough CPU. If you were serving iSCSI to a large VM farm, or hosting many VMs within TrueNAS, both of which would need more horsepower than an Atom has, a Xeon would be more appropriate in those use cases.

 

[blanchet]

You may be interested by Xeon-D processors

Supermicro X10SDV-F Build; Datacenter in a Box

I don’t have room for a couple of rackmount servers anymore so I was thinking of ways to reduce the footprint and noise from my servers. I’ve been very happy with Supermicro hardware so here’s my Supermicro Mini-ITX Datacenter in a box build. Motherboard: Supermicro X10SDV-F CPU/Motherboard...

b3n.org

 

[Mariska]

For just family file sharing, Atoms are more than enough CPU. If you were serving iSCSI to a large VM farm, or hosting many VMs within TrueNAS, both of which would need more horsepower than an Atom has, a Xeon would be more appropriate in those use cases.

Thank you for your answer! I was wondering: at least in the Netherlands atoms seem to be relatively expensive (relative to their performance). Is this just because they have a low energy usage? Or am I missing another advantage of the atom? If the low enery usage is all there is, I might go for the modest xeon just to have some flexibility in the future (perhaps than I would like to start hosting VM's...)

 

[Mariska]

You may be interested by Xeon-D processors

Supermicro X10SDV-F Build; Datacenter in a Box

I don’t have room for a couple of rackmount servers anymore so I was thinking of ways to reduce the footprint and noise from my servers. I’ve been very happy with Supermicro hardware so here’s my Supermicro Mini-ITX Datacenter in a box build. Motherboard: Supermicro X10SDV-F CPU/Motherboard...

b3n.org

thank you! With this motherboard I should use RDIMMs. I'm not really familiar with them: is there any disadvantage for my use case? I already looked up the prices, they seem to be in the same ballpark as the UDIMMs...

 

[Mariska]

thank you both for you good advice! I'm going to keep the A2SDi-8C-HLN4F supermicro/ atom SoC on the list for now (unless anyone knows of any reasons not to?) and I'm going to explore the Xeon-D processors. I already noticed quite a list just from Supermico :)

 

[Etorix]

Atom C3000 are expensive because they come as new motherboards. You do find second-hand server hardware; there are plenty of Supermicro X9 boards from Germany on eBay, and a few X10SDV as well (there is a French seller with two boards right now, unfortunately he sells both as one lot; a UK shop regularly has Datto-rebranded ASRockRack D1541D4U-2T8R boards in 1U servers, but with customs duties these are less attractive now than before Brexit).
RDIMM is actually what you want: It allows higher RAM amounts, and comes cheaper (second-hand DDR3 RDIMM for X9 sells for small change) than UDIMM.

But just for sharing files 64 GB should be enough. So Core i3-9xxx/Xeon E-2xxx may not be completely out of the picture if the price comes right.
If you go for a new A2SDi, consider a little extra for on-board 10G—unless you're absolutely certain that you will never need 10GbE, or conversely that you want it SFP+, as AIC in the x4 slot because the C3000 boards with on-board SFP+ are either insanely expensive (16C) or unsuitable for NAS use (A2SDi-12C-TP8F: SO-DIMM and only 4 SATA).

 

[Evertb1]

(hard to get in the Netherlands)

It's not that bad you just need to be a little patient. I am from the Netherlands myself and the main components from my lab server (CPU, motherboard and memory) are second hand hardware. maninly bought trough Tweakers and ebay. See my signature. I know it's older stuff but it's doing a great job. The only setback is that the system uses a bit more power then a newer system.

Some good sources for second hand server grade hardware are sometimes Tweakers and the German sellers on ebay. I have had some nice buys there over the last couple of years. The USA sellers are the most cheap when it comes to the components but the shipping costs are killing. And let's not talk about the Chinese sellers .

Then of course you have the webshops of the resellers that are specialized in second hand and refurbished server hardware (like Creo server, serverhome or serverzaak to name a few). But generally they are a bit more expensive then ebay sellers. But you still can score a good deal there. Not all of those companies are willing to sell to consumers.