New Ryzen Build

[Poolboy]

This is my first FreeNAS build. I have been a fan of ZFS, waiting for Apple to implement it, which they never did. So I took things into my own hands and now have a great ZFS NAS thanks to FreeNAS. I migrated all my iTunes video over to Plex and wanted a CPU powerful enough to transcode at least 1 - 4k stream. Mission accomplished. I took the forum's advice and implemented ECC memory. Memtest36 and BIOS recognize it and it tested with zero errors. The shucked drives work great. A neat surprise is this consumer Asrock MB appears to support ECC memory although the documentation doesn't mention it. Power usage at idle is 98 watts and bumps up to 150 watts when transcoding a 4k stream. I built 2 identical units to have a replication target for backup.

Fortunately I have had no compatibility problems with anything. All the hardware just works with freenas. The hardware provides plenty of headroom for Jails and add-ons. This CPU/MB scores just under 10,000 on the Geekbench multi-core benchmark.

FreeNas 11.3-U4.1
Asrock x570m Pro4
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X - transcodes 4K Plex without GPU; Infinity fabric clock at 1400Mhz
Kingston 32GB 2666-ECC running at 2800 Mhz (board apparently supports ECC)
Seasonic Gold GX-550
MSI GT-1030
WD 6 - 10TB shucked drives RaidZ2
Corsair 120GB SSD x 2 (mirror boot)
Nanoxia Deep Silence 4 case
Chelsio T520-SO-CR to my SFP+ switch

 

[joeschmuck]

Very good, and you built two systems. Glad there are no problems.

Wow, 98 watts at idle, does that include a monitor, if one is connected that is? 98 watts is a lot of heat.

On the case fans, did you mount two 120mm fans in the front of the case? If not, I'd recommend it, just something slow turning just to move some air over the hot hard drives. Also I'd check the air flow over the other cards and ensure you have good airflow. A smoke stick can help here if needed.

Good luck and enjoy your new FreeNAS servers.

 

[Poolboy]

The 98 watts is headless, although there is a video card installed.
Hard drive temps running 38-45 so far.

I have a fan in the front and a second one in the back.
CPU stays cool with the stock AMD cooler.

Most of the heat seems to come from the 6 spinners.

Thanks for the smoke tip!

Lee

 

[joeschmuck]

Hard drive temps running 38-45 so far.

That is too hot in my book. Try to get the temps down to under 35C. The air flow should be moving over the hard drives, into the case, and out the back and/or top of the case. Make sure you have the two case fans installed in the front of the computer, if you don't have an extra case fan, move the 120 mm fan from the rear to the front, make sure it is pushing air into the case across the drives. That should lower the hard drive temps, unless you are putting the computer in an closet. Remember, it's not all about fast air flow but more about the direction of air flow.

Will the system boot without the video card, just asking to save some power, and if it saves 30 watts or more.

 

[Constantin]

Air flow management inside the case is important. I blocked off unhelpful air paths that circumvented the drives for the three 120mm fans in the front. Then I spaced those drives to have an empty void every other drive, resulting in drives that only get to 35*C when they've been pushed hard for more than a day. The rest of the time, they're around 31*C. I'm not entirely happy with the HDD cage that Lian Li uses but also don't have the time and the inclination to build something better.

A fan in the back also pulls air out of the case. Two 120mm fans pound the motherboard, another hi-static-pressure 120mm fan punishes the CPU heatsink with a 120-50mm offset adapter. The only hotter stuff (~45*C) is the Optane module (NVMe m.2) and the HBA chip (LSI is infamous for making hot HBAs).

 

[joeschmuck]

@Constantin That is not bad at all, very respectable temps. I really dislike the HBA's getting so hot, seems like those could be engineered to be cooler but I'm not that kind of engineer, although I did dream of being one when I was young. I always thought that being able to design digital circuits at the nm level would be so cool. Well that never happened but I'm happy where I ended up. I just hope I live long enough to see ET arrive or we colonize Mars, or even the Moon would be great. Space 1999 colonized the Moon and called it Moonbase Alpha, and yes NASA has created Moonbase Alpha on the souther pole of the moon (it's a game). Yea, Space 1999 is on streaming TV and I watched it the other day. It looked so much more believable when I was in high school, the other day I just laughed.