New low powered home build. Got several options, need help to choose

[strato]

Hello

I've been using FreeNas for a couple of years on a low powered AMD A4 CPU.
The purpose of the build has been SAB, Transmission and just general back-end for Kodi.
This build has not been powerful enough to transcode with Plex which I now want to accomplish with my new build.

Here are my goals for the new build, from most important to least important:

• It needs to be powerful enough to transcode a minimum of 3 streams with Plex and still have headroom to run other easy tasks smoothly.
• It needs to draw low power. I don't have a dedicated or cooled server room. Heat output and noise needs to be low. Im thinking that 150w at load is very much the maximum, but I'd like to stay way lower than this.
• It needs to be able to run at least 6 HDD's in software raid. I don't care if all the plugs are on the board, or if I need an expansion card.
• It needs to be compatible with FreeNAS. By that I mean temperature sensors and such, less important features. If this is going to cost me a huge buck, then it can be sacrificed.
• I'd like to have small form factor. ITX would be great, but I could also go for a smaller mid-tower type of case. I don't really have anywhere to put a rack mounted case.
• 10gbs LAN is cool, but I honestly don't need it at this point of time. My home network is naturally 1gbs, so the only use for a 10gb port would be direct link to another computer.

Here is my list of options. The options are based on available deals at my location, hardware I have laying around and available deals on the second hand marked in my area.


X6 1090t, 8GB of consumer ram, high end mobo:
This is some hardware I have laying around from an old build. My server has been running on this since my A4 went busted.
Pros: Runs 2 streams with ease. (Passmark: 5620) and will cost me 0.
Cons: Way too hot (TDP 125w). ATX and a bit too noisy.


Ryzen 1500x, any amount of ECC DDR4 ram and a mobo with ECC support:
I mention this because I got one of these CPU's on sale for only 100$. I have not used it yet. My options are to use it in this build or just resell it second hand for a slight profit.
Pros: Incredible power for the price. Will probably run 5 transcodes with ease (Passmark: 10500). The TDP is also only 65w, so it should run both cool and quiet.
Cons: Hard to find mobo with proper ECC support. Even harder to find a ITX board with said support. And impossible to find ITX board with more than 4 SATA ports. (You need the free slot for a graphics card so not possible with expansion card).

I both like this option and don't like it at the same time. I love the bang for the buck performance at such a low TDP. I love that I paid so little for it.
I don't like the ECC dilemma. In this case it seems pointless to buy the more expensive ECC ram, as I don't even know if it's going to work.
I don't like that temperature sensors wont work in FreeNAS, but this is something that I can live with.

The price for mobo + cpu will come at around 200$ for this build.


The new Atom C3958 (Gigabyte edition), any amount of ECC DDR4 ram (https://tinyurl.com/ybttglkh)
I have followed news around Denverton the last couple of months and must say that I'm very tempted, but the price almost seems unreasonable.
Pros: 16 cores with unknown passmark score (I guess around 8000+?) at a really low TDP of 31w. The best performance/watt of anything I've seen in my price range. Probably has good FreeNAS support.
Cons: So expensive... I have to pay about 900$ for the Gigabyte board with C3958 which is the only one on sale in my country so far. With ram and case this sets me at a total build cost of about 1500$ excluding disks.

I just love that I can get 16 HDD onboard support on an ITX board. The power is probably going to be well enough for 4 streams and the card offers lots of networking and even built in 32gb eMMC for the OS.
In an ITX case this would be a really powerful, quiet and cool unit.
I am concerned about the limited tests of this board. How will it perform when transcoding? Is the abscence of AVX going to screw me in any way?

What do you think about the cost? Is there any way to justify spending 700$ more than on the more powerful 1500x build?


Intel Xeon 1541 ITX (mobo with integrated cpu), any amount of ECC DDR4 ram (https://tinyurl.com/ycjmxuhb)
It seems to me that this combo will offer much of the same as the Atom performance wise, but probably has some more features as it's in the Xeon line-up.
The downside is that the board has far less connectivity and I will be needing an expansion card to do any meaningful software raid at all.
This combo will put me back about 1100$, so it's even more expensive than the Atom.
The TDP of 45w is a bit over the Atom, but still very acceptable.


Intel Xeon E3-1515M v5 ITX (mobo with integrated cpu), any amount of ECC DDR4 ram (https://tinyurl.com/y9nahoo4)
This one feels very similar to the 1541. Can anyone tell me why this is better/worse than the 1541?
The board seems to have 2 extra sata ports (4 in total) so I would still need an expansion card.
Also, this card seems to use small DIMMS for ram and only supports 32gb which is an disadvantage over the other builds.
Cost is at 1300$ for the mobo + cpu combo which makes it the most expensive option.


Buying used:
I have searched the used marked for a long time. Here is what I've found.

• It's really easy to find incredible deals for Dual socketed mobos with 2x Xeons rocking 8/16 cores/threads. The hardware is only a couple of years old and would only set me back 600 to 7000$ for mobo, 2x cpu, 64gb ram, a rack mounted case, a couple of "throw away" HDD's and sometimes even redundant PSU's.
• The downside is of course that these servers are far from silent of cool. They are also very inconvenient because of the size. I don't have anywhere to put something with this much heat generation and noise pollution.
• The used market don't offer any ITX solutions similar to what I've listed above. Not even the C2000 Atoms which I've learned I should stay away from because of some HW issues.

I understand that this would give me incredible performance for the buck, but I just don't think I can live with such a solution at this time. If I only had a basement or someplace remote where I could stash away such hardware, but space is currently scarce.


Sorry for this wall of text. If anyone has some advice I would be greatful!


Edit 1:
Based on some advice regarding the C2000 series I'll add this to the original post as an alternative.

Intel C2750, any amount of ECC DDR3 ram (https://tinyurl.com/ojc2avq)
I've been assured that any new batches of this chip should be fixed for all the known hardware failures.
This alternative is similar to the C3958. It rocks 12 onboard SATA (opposed to 16), supports 64gb ram (opposed to 128gb) and has dual intel NICs. This combo is about 500$ where I live. That means that I save 400$ compared to the C3958 (+ cheaper ram. DDR3).
The price premium would give me a beefier CPU, more connections and the 32gb of onboard OS flash storage.

 

[rogerh]

I should think that any C2000 board you can buy new from a reputable source will have the hardware problems fixed. But I don't know if it will do all you want.

 

[strato]

I should think that any C2000 board you can buy new from a reputable source will have the hardware problems fixed. But I don't know if it will do all you want.

I think the c2000 will be too weak to achieve my goals. It can only do one transcode at a time from what I understand.

 

[Ericloewe]

I'm pretty sure that C2750 can do 2-3 transcodes at once.

 

[Redcoat]

I'm pretty sure that C2750 can do 2-3 transcodes at once.

@cyberjock reported 3 simultaneous transcodes in Part 2 of his review of the FreeNAS Mini.

 

[Stux]

It needs to be able to run at least 6 HDD's in software raid. I don't care if all the plugs are on the board, or if I need an expansion card.

XeonD is relatively expensive, but if you value 10gbe connectivity, it does meet all your requirements, when you look at Supermicro not Asrock.

(Relative though, its cheap compared to an 8 core e5 system with a separate x550-t2 card!)

Here's my build:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...node-304-x10sdv-tln4f-esxi-freenas-aio.57116/

 

[strato]

@cyberjock reported 3 simultaneous transcodes in Part 2 of his review of the FreeNAS Mini.

All right. 3 transcodes definitely should be enough. More is always better, but I've added the board to the original post as I think it might do the job.

 

[strato]

XeonD is relatively expensive, but if you value 10gbe connectivity, it does meet all your requirements, when you look at Supermicro not Asrock.

(Relative though, its cheap compared to an 8 core e5 system with a separate x550-t2 card!)

Here's my build:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...node-304-x10sdv-tln4f-esxi-freenas-aio.57116/

First of all; I love your build. That is very neat.

I think that you have accomplished most of my goals only with power consumpion (and probably noise) close to the acceptable limit.

The Supermicro board would set me back 1300$ which is really on the high side of what I'm comfortable with.

I could, for instance, buy a Am4 micro ATX board for my 1500x and place it into a Node 804 (even though I would prefer the Node 304 which is only ITX)
This would give me 6 SATA ports and save me 1100$.
Doesn't it seem that 1100$ is a huge premium to pay for the D1541?


Also, a different question. For the atom boards; is it a huge downside that I'm not getting AVX?

 

[Stux]

Also, a different question. For the atom boards; is it a huge downside that I'm not getting AVX?

No idea, i haven't seen comparative transcoding benchmarks. With non-avx work-loads the C3000 16 core Atom seems to perform the same as the 8 core XeonD. I can only guess, but its possible they may perform 50% worse on AVX work-loads. But who knows?

The Denverton's weren't an option when I started my build, and I wanted 10gbe, m.2 and a full PCI slot.

http://www.wiredzone.com/supermicro-components-motherboards-embedded-processor-x10sdv-tln4f-10024451

883USD for a motherboard with an 8 core Xeon D, 128GB of ram capacity and 4 NIC ports, 2 at 10gbe, was worth it to me, considering a good Intel 10gbe dual port nic goes for nearly half of that.

 

[strato]

No idea, i haven't seen comparative transcoding benchmarks. With non-avx work-loads the C3000 16 core Atom seems to perform the same as the 8 core XeonD. I can only guess, but its possible they may perform 50% worse on AVX work-loads. But who knows?

The Denverton's weren't an option when I started my build, and I wanted 10gbe, m.2 and a full PCI slot.

http://www.wiredzone.com/supermicro-components-motherboards-embedded-processor-x10sdv-tln4f-10024451

883USD for a motherboard with an 8 core Xeon D, 128GB of ram capacity and 4 NIC ports, 2 at 10gbe, was worth it to me, considering a good Intel 10gbe dual port nic goes for nearly half of that.

I see. I think that your requirements for a server like this are a bit more extensive than mine. My only requirements are to have a solid/stable file server that can run 24/7 and handle my needs for Plex(transcode) and streaming of high bit rate media over cabled network.

If I can achieve stable transfer speeds at the 80-100MB/s range and transcode 3+ streams then I'm pretty much set.
Stability, longevity and redundancy (raid wise) is also very important of course. The file server will hold 10+ tb of files that I don't really wanna lose.

 

[Stux]

Yeah, the Xeon and 10gbe is overkill for your requirements. As is a 16 core denverton ;)

 

[strato]

Thanks for the advice :)
I'll have a good think and I'll probably end up trying to get the cheap 1500x alternative working.
If so, I'll make a post about my experience here in case anyone else is in the same situation.

 

[strato]

Btw. What are the benefits of rocking Dual NIC's? (apart from running 10gbe direct link to another computer).

Is it possible to run both NIC's to a switch and have more outgoing bandwith for the server and thus being able to transfer data at a higher total speed (for several clients at a time)?

 

[Stux]

Btw. What are the benefits of rocking Dual NIC's? (apart from running 10gbe direct link to another computer).

Is it possible to run both NIC's to a switch and have more outgoing bandwith for the server and thus being able to transfer data at a higher total speed (for several clients at a time)?

Reality is that doesn't work unless there are lots of clients, because which client uses which NIC is fixed based on a hash of MAC addresses, so all your clients might use one NIC, or the other, but until you have lots it's unlikely that your load would balance nicely. but 10gbe to a switch with at least one 10gbe port does allow full gigabit to up to 10 clients simultaneously.

I have the extra NICs for running multiple OSes and services. One 10gbe for sharing, one for a storage San, thus the San traffic doesn't affect everything else, and the gigabit links are used for routing via pfSense (wan in) and a redundant uplink or a DMZ (haven't decided yet)

 

[strato]

Ok, got it.

So a scenario where multiple NIC's might be an advantage is for a server running a couple of VM's or simply a dedicated firewall/router?

 

[Stux]

Ok, got it.

So a scenario where multiple NIC's might be an advantage is for a server running a couple of VM's or simply a dedicated firewall/router?

Right. Or serving different high bandwidth services, or servicing many LAN based users (because internet based users appear as originating from a single LAN device, and would all have the same path to your server in your LAN)

But in all these cases, except the firewall thing, you'd be better off with 10gbe rather than using a LAGG.

And since I expect 10gbe to take off over the next couple of years, and I wanted my build to not be handicapped by gigabit, I went for 10gbe ;)

My primary NAS tends to average 300-500mbps most of the time, because it's almost always serving 2-3 clients, so I'm upgrading it to 10gbe too, even though all of the clients are still on gigabit.

At the same time, I don't expect to have an internet connection faster than gigabit any time soon, so I'm using a pfSense vm to route my internet connection off one of the gigabit connections

Another reason I went big on the Node 304 NAS is it's a pilot for the upgrade to my Prjmary NAS which is used in a business environment. Couldn't afford to eff around with it, without practicing first :)

 

[strato]

I'd really like to go for 10gbe for the "future proofing", but if that alone is going to cost me a premium of 300$ ish then I might as well wait for the technology to become more mainstream and upgrade again in a couple of years.

 

[Inxsible]

X6 1090t, 8GB of consumer ram, high end mobo:
This is some hardware I have laying around from an old build. My server has been running on this since my A4 went busted.
Pros: Runs 2 streams with ease. (Passmark: 5620) and will cost me 0.
Cons: Way too hot (TDP 125w). ATX and a bit too noisy.

I just stopped reading after this point in your original post.

You already have a system that matches 80% of your needs. Even the con you listed is under your threshold value of 150W. Remember the 125W TDP of the CPU is peak power. It won't run at 125W all the time.

You have 8GB consumer RAM, so I am assuming it means non-ECC. Now you DON'T NEED ECC RAM, but does your 'high end mobo' and your CPU support ECC? If so, I would spend a bit and get good quality ECC RAM.

As for the noise issue : Buying/Building a new system would cost you anywhere between $900 - $1500 (maybe more). That money would be well spent in trying to keep the machine in a different room and running an ethernet cable from the machine to wherever your client is. Depending on your home setup and how "aesthetically pleasing" you want it to look, it could cost you anything from $20-$500. You'd still end up saving a lot more money.

Looks and noise don't matter as much if the server is in a different room/floor. All the money saved in NOT building a new machine, can be used for paying for the 'extra' power consumption that your current X6 system would have over the 'new' system.

 

[strato]

@Inxsible

That's a very valid point. The X6 1090t does indeed almost check out. But it is unfortunately borderline powerful enough to run 3 transcodes, which I had hoped to achieve.
The motherboard, a Crosshair Formula IV, does seem to support 16gb of ECC ram, so that's a possibility for sure.
It also supports 6 SATA drives in 6Gb's, which is good, but unfortunately it's ATX which means I'd have to go for a much bigger case than the Node 304 or 804.

A TDP of 125w might not be so bad, like you're pointing out. I know it will rarely reach such a high load, but it will still draw 3x the power of an Atom or 1500x for the same workload.
The problem is basically the room I have for this build. It's a 4 square meter (43square feet) technical/storage room. It contains my router, switch, printer and water heater (well insulated and does not output any real heat). The room has a suction outlet to the house ventilation system, but has no inlet other than cracks around the door (no window). With the 1090t I basically have to leave the door half open to ventilate the room or it will get really warm. A solution to this would be to make a vent in the door, but I'm not going to ruin a perfectly fine hardwood door with ugly vents that will be very visible in my hall.

I do like your idea of spending my budget to accomodate my room for the server, but the room just isn't very ideal in the first place. This is unfortunately the only room where the noise of ticking HDD's will not annoy me. Other rooms available are office, bedroom and living room. I just can't stand the sound that mechanical drives make, so it's just not an option to have the server in any of these rooms.

 

[cdgonzalez]

See my signature for my build, low power, low heat, mini-itx.

Jails

• Plex (3 Transcodes is doable if not much else is going on)
• Minecraft Server (kids)
• Other media stuff (SABnzbd/Sonarr/CouchPotato/Transmission/OpenVPN)