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

[rogerh]

Edit: I thought this was a duplicate but one disappeared.


Why not make an air vent in the wall, say above the door? It usually isn't hard, and is much more reversible than in door.

 

[strato]

Ok, so I've sort of decided to go for the 1500x and done some further research about it. Sadly, this has confused me even more.

First of all. I have a Asus B350M-A board laying around which I bought to pair with the 1500x. When I bought it, it was listed as ECC compatible on the Asus website, this has now been removed... Yay!... :(

The odd thing is the following:
A320M-A (lower end board) does support ECC
B350M-Plus (X-fire version of B350M-A) does support ECC

So this leaves me wondering. Why on earth does both these cards support ECC, but the B350M-A all of a sudden doesn't? Isn't that very odd?
Is it possible that Asus has done a mistake and that the board will support ECC?

This also means that I don't have a qualified vendor list to use when finding compatible ram, because the list does not contain any overview of ECC compatible ram. It seems to me that this is the same for all the 3 boards I've mentioned.

Is there a good chance that the board will work with any ECC ram from a reputable brand?


And if not; will I be just fine with normal un-registered ram for my requirements? Or will this make my server unstable or unsuitable as a file-server?


And also, an unrelated question. I've found that the node 804 looks like a decent case for micro-atx builds with 6 HDD's. Do you have any other recommendations?

 

[Inxsible]

RMA the board and get a quality server board.

If you are gonna have only 6 drives with no expansion in the future, the Node 304 is a great case. It's only mini ITX though. Node 804 is also a great choice.

 

[strato]

@Inxsible
Well, I dont think quality server boards in the Micro-ATX / ITX format exists for Ryzen.

The most "high end" I can find is a Biostar x370GT3 which supports ECC un-buffered ram, but the compatibility list shows it only supports a total of 3 ECC sticks by Hynix and Apacer which are not available in my country.

It seems that it's near impossible to get a ITX/micro ATX build with ryzen that has support for ECC.

Even the most high end ATX boards has like 2-3 ECC sticks in their QVL list.

How meaningful are the QVL lists? Is it normal that ECC sticks not listed in the list will still work?

 

[ChriZ]

In QLV list are tested modules. If it is not there it does not mean it will not work, but you can't be 100% sure.
Check Crucial's website --> http://eu.crucial.com/eur/en/compatible-upgrade-for/Biostar/x370gt3

 

[strato]

Ok, I see.
Crucial has not listed any ECC ram for the B350M-A that I currently have. I still have a couple of days left to refund it, so I'll do that and consider if I'll buy a different Ryzen board or just ditch the idea all together.

But if I decided to go without ECC ram. Will this be a huge issue for my requirements?

 

[ChriZ]

Lack of ECC Ram is never an issue.... until it becomes an issue

If some of your data is destroyed and you couldn't care less, then no, it is not an issue.
If data is only media that can be ripped/downloaded again easily and you don't care about the time you will need to spend in order to replace it, then no, it is not an issue
If data is family photos that you couldn't care less if they were destroyed, then no, it is not an issue

(The above may happen in the server's lifetime, may not)

The point I am trying to make is that how huge of an issue it will be, depends of how much you value the data this machine will handle..

 

[strato]

I get it. Mainly it's a media server for stuff that can indeed be replaced.
All other stuff of true value is also backed up on various cloud services.

But still, it would be a huge pain in the ass to replace 10tb + of media...
I think ECC is the way to go :) Thanks

 

[Inxsible]

@Inxsible
Well, I dont think quality server boards in the Micro-ATX / ITX format exists for Ryzen.

The most "high end" I can find is a Biostar x370GT3 which supports ECC un-buffered ram, but the compatibility list shows it only supports a total of 3 ECC sticks by Hynix and Apacer which are not available in my country.

It seems that it's near impossible to get a ITX/micro ATX build with ryzen that has support for ECC.

Even the most high end ATX boards has like 2-3 ECC sticks in their QVL list.

I am sorry if I missed it but does your build have to be based on Ryzen. Have you already bought the Ryzen CPU?

How meaningful are the QVL lists? Is it normal that ECC sticks not listed in the list will still work?

FWIW, I never checked the QVL lists when I built my system. I just bought Crucial 8GB ECC Unbuffered sticks and plugged them in. They worked and still do.

But if I decided to go without ECC ram. Will this be a huge issue for my requirements?

FreeNas will work without ECC. But if sh!t hits the fan, you will be glad if you have ECC support.

 

[strato]

@Inxsible
I have a 1500x laying around that I got on sale. I could always use it for another build or just sell it for a slight profit.

The ryzen is appealing because of the extreme performance and low efficiency for a very low price compared to any Atom or Xeon build.

The alternative is for example the C3958 which would probably make things very easy and straight forward. But I'd have to spend 700$ more to go that route and I'd get less performance.


Well, I'm going to need a couple of DDR4 ECC sticks no matter what. So I might just as well buy a couple, try them on the Ryzen build and see if it works. If it doesn't work I can just repurpose them for another build, like the C3958.

 

[pro lamer]

FreeNas will work without ECC. But if sh!t hits the fan, you will be glad if you have ECC support.

Oh boy! It's the first time I can see anyone mentioning these circumstances. And such circumstances seem to me much more probable than other I,ve known till now (like some unclear to me: memory bit error. On the other hand I,ve once encountered a case of a RAM stick stopping working during its lifetime). As a wrap-up: @Inxsible - thanks a lot for this post.

 

[Stux]

It’s the difference between “something weird happened and I lost all my data” “oh you don’t have ECC, oh well, <shrug>”

And that not happening.

 

[pro lamer]

Pardon my French, I've recently come into an opinion that AMD consumer grade motherboards ECC support is questionable (or only gaming ones?) (https://www.nas4free.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=12186)

 

[Inxsible]

Oh boy! It's the first time I can see anyone mentioning these circumstances. And such circumstances seem to me much more probable than other I,ve known till now (like some unclear to me: memory bit error. On the other hand I,ve once encountered a case of a RAM stick stopping working during its lifetime). As a wrap-up: @Inxsible - thanks a lot for this post.

You are new to the forums, I believe. But you will see these kinds of posts a lot. Every one thinks FreeNAS users are extremists about using ECC RAM. I don't think it's that, it's more about having ECC reduces that 1 angle of investigation when something bad happens.

 

[Inxsible]

Pardon my French, I've recently come into an opinion that AMD consumer grade motherboards ECC support is questionable (or only gaming ones?) (https://www.nas4free.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=12186)

Consumer grade motherboards and ECC most often don't go together.

Manufacturers don't want to put ECC support on "consumer" grade boards in order to keep the price down.
Prosumers don't want ECC support on motherboards that they are going to put in desktops or HTPCs etc.
And most consumers don't know the difference between ECC and non-ECC.

 

[Ericloewe]

Pardon my French, I've recently come into an opinion that AMD consumer grade motherboards ECC support is questionable (or only gaming ones?) (https://www.nas4free.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=12186)

Yeah, that's the been the status quo for years. Nobody really wants to commit to a proper server/workstation board using AMD consumer-level CPUs.