Please advice me on new build

[Peter K]

Hello, FreeNAS community!

I have decided to build a NAS server for home use and would like to ask for some advice.

I. Regarding Mobo + CPU I have a budget option and a more powerful and future-proof option:
1. Supermicro X10SLL-F with Pentium G3260 (only 1150 socket CPU available locally) for a total of ~255 eur
2. Supermicro X11SSL-F (or upgrade to SSM-F for ~23eur) with Kaby lake Core i3-7350K for a total of ~390 eur

II. Since 1151 socket CPUs are more available, I have more options so I would like to know:

1.The hardware recommendation thread states that mostly Kaby Lake i3s don't support ECC memory, but since:
- The motherboard supports 7th Gen i3s - https://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C236_C232/X11SSM-F.cfm
- The CPU supports ECC - https://ark.intel.com/products/97527/Intel-Core-i3-7350K-Processor-4M-Cache-4-20-GHz-
I should be fine?

2. Furthermore, the motherboard does not state to support 8th Gen i3s, but they do support ECC and use same socket; for example:
https://ark.intel.com/products/129942/Intel-Core-i3-8300-Processor-8M-Cache-3-70-GHz-
So if I find a good deal on a Coffee Lake i3, should I grab it?

3. Is it worth the money to upgrade the CPU I am considering (~180 eur for the i3-7350K) or is it worth the performance drop to downgrade to save some money; for example with:
- Xeon E3-1220v6 for ~215 eur and shipping from abroad (damage risk?)
- i3-6100 for ~130 eur
- Pentium G4400 for ~75 eur

Of course this also depends on whether 8th Gen i3s are a viable option, which would change the available models I am looking at.
The server won't be heavily used initially - most often 1 connected user at a time; will most likely jail Transmission (and probably some others after I get used to it); most likely will be accessed by TV (and I am a noob, so I will be grateful if you let me know what is better - that the TV read the files from the NAS, or that the NAS transcodes them to TV?). Hopefully if all goes well more users will connect over VPN, which atm I do not expect FreeNAS to take care of, but would be useful if it can.

III. The hard drives will be WD Red and I am waiting to see whether there will be Black Friday deals in order to pick the best option.
A likely configuration I am considering is 3x3TB in RAIDZ1 for valuable data + 1x4TB for data I wouldn't care much if I lose.
Is it a good setup that would allow easy future expansion? Eventually I would be happy if the 3x3TB RAIDZ1 can become 6x3TB RAIDZ2.
Will boot from USB.

IV. Power Supply
With 4 HDDs (~120W) + max 72W for the currently considered CPUs + some more for other parts of the system, a 400W power supply seems to be enough for me?

V. Have not looked at cases and memory yet, and I believe that concludes all needed parts.

WIll be grateful for your advice,
Pete

 

[Mihalich]

G4620
16 GB RAM DDR4 ECC (of 2 kit)
4x3TB RAIDZ1
Boot: SSD DOM 16Gb SATA ES2LDS1605-016 (or 32 GB)
MB: X11SSH-F (8 SATA)

 

[Evertb1]

The components mentioned by @Mihalich are a good choice for many use-cases but it is a bit depending on your current and future needs. That being said: the current generation of Pentium CPU's like the G4620 are offering a lot bang for the buck.

Is it a good setup that would allow easy future expansion? Eventually I would be happy if the 3x3TB RAIDZ1 can become 6x3TB RAIDZ2.

Your system will be able to support a pool of 6 x 3 TB in RAIDZ-2 but you will not be able to update an existing RAIDZ-1 pool to a RAIDZ-2 pool. You will need to destroy the Z-1 pool first before you can use that disks in a new pool.

Will boot from USB .

Think about booting from an small SSD. They are not that expensive anymore and more reliable then an USB stick.

 

[Peter K]

G4620
16 GB RAM DDR4 ECC (of 2 kit)
4x3TB RAIDZ1
Boot: SSD DOM 16Gb SATA ES2LDS1605-016 (or 32 GB)
MB: X11SSH-F (8 SATA)

Thanks for the advice!

This is actually a good and cheaper CPU, but I was not considering it as I did not know whether it is supported. I still wonder whether Coffe Lake are supported?
Since locally only G4600 and not 4620 is available and G5600 is newer and more powerful than both and I can get the G5600 at a better price than G4600 can someone confirm whether it will work or not?

Also SSD boot actually seems OK now that I looked at it - I had the memory of SSDs being much more expensive. (Thanks for the advice to Evertb1 as well)

At first I thought that the SSH board was worse, because I would pay more and lose a PCI slot for an M2 slot I wouldn't use, but actually it might indeed be better to start with SSD from the start than upgrade in the future.

I guess your logic for putting all 4 drives in the RAIDZ1 is for better performance both for the valuable and for the expendable data?
Actually I am more concerned with the security of the valuable data than the performance. Maybe I would do something like 3x3TB RAIDZ1 + 2x2 TB RAID0 for better performance on the expendable data. All depends on what deals I can get on what drives.

But definitely I will look at the CPU and board + SSD :)

 

[Evertb1]

Actually I am more concerned with the security of the valuable data than the performance.

If data security is important for you, a RAIDZ-2 configuration should be prefferred above a RAIDZ-1 configuration. With RAIDZ-2 you can loose any 2 disks of the vdev before you are in real trouble. However, data security starts with a good backup strategy no mather what kind of storage pool you build.

 

[DrKK]

Just for the record, the system, as you've configured it above, it unlikely to draw more than 50W or so. You can get a small power supply.

 

[file_haver]

@Peter K
I had a dilemma similar to yours. I upgraded my FreeNAS PC many times in the last few months and finally settled on a build. It actually is very similar to what you listed for potential specs.

The biggest obstacle i see for you is price. What I mean is, I first picked up a HP 6200 with 4gb ram and a Pentium G620 for $45 usd. It actually ran amazingly even when being a network mapped drive on a couple of my pc's and streaming Plex to my TV at 1080p. I had good temperatures too but the main issue was the case being unable to hold more than 2 drives. I first ghetto rigged the HP motherboard into an ATX case with a lot of drive bays but then I ran out of SATA plugs. Then I was able to get a Dell T3500 for $30 which I then upgraded the cpu from W3503 to E5640 ($6 shipped) which allowed me to use cheaper ECC and the Xeon cpu. I upgraded to have a proper motherboard and didnt want to put more money into these machines so I went for my current build.

anyway the point is the Pentium is plenty capable if this is to be a home machine, not something serving a small business all day long.

With all this said I upgraded to a SuperMicro X10SLQ-L ($20 USD), 2x 4GB DDR3 (waited on ebay until i found a set with buy it now for $23 shipped), an Intel i5-4590T ($63 shipped, waited a few days for one on ebay to show up below $70), an Antec Three Hundred Two case as it was the cheapest i could find that held over 4 drive slots (about $54 with tax) and a 500w Thermaltake 80 Plus White rated power supply with a 5 year warranty.

The T series sacrifice a little performance for lower TDP and since the Xeon in the T3500 was sucking up around 80w during low use and up to 100w at heavier load... I wanted to save on power.... The new machine with the T i5 consumes 50 less watts at idle and peak!!!

It seems difficult to find much below 500w nowadays plus often times the 500w are cheaper than anything slightly lower, I usually use evga power supplies but the Thermaltake had good reviews and a long warranty so it is probably decent to trust.

The supermicro board is great BUT i did not know it does not have iKVM functionality before i bought it. I also wanted the non L version, but the price was too good to pass up for a board without issues. Part of the reason i bought it also is that it had a BIOS with new microcode within the last few months. The supermicro board is great and i recommend it, I just wish it had iKVM.

Now to answer your question about which CPU to use. The price jump is up to you although that seems like an awful lot for a Xeon, since there are loads of LGA 1366 etc Xeons on ebay over here for $15 or less which compare very well to the other CPUs you are looking at, and they use ECC.

I almost went for a Pentium G3258 for my current build since i've already owned one and it is a great value CPU, but given i couldn't get one used for much less than $35-40 shipped, I looked at i3's which went for $50-60 each, and then noticed i5's go for $60-80 so i decided to get a cheaper i5. By contrast the i7's started around $120 or double the cost of an i5. You have to check ebay constantly as any of those CPUs on the lower price end sell fast but they get listed frequently too. As my machine does more Plex streaming than anything I wanted to put a better CPU in given how close in price they were.

There is no need for m.2, if your board has one and it doesn't disable a sata channel if you have a m2 ssd a cheap one could make a great reliable boot drive. I actually went from using a plain 2.5" ssd for boot to a nice Samsung usb 3.1 drive to get the sata port back. The supermicro board only has 5 sata ports and i use all 5. My next upgrade will be a SAS card. BTW I do have it auto back up the config daily to a separate server and to a different usb drive in case of a boot drive failure but i am not worried since it's a fairly high end usb drive.

Updating the bios on the supermicro is easy, be sure you do it. Use rufus to make a FreeDOS boot usb and copy on the firmware update files.

 

[Evertb1]

A

so i decided to get a cheaper i5

Are there i5's available that support ECC memory?

 

[Peter K]

A

Are there i5's available that support ECC memory?

Wondered the same when I read it so I checked and according to Supermicro's site, file_haver's board supports 4th Gen i3, i5 and i7, and here is an i5 that supports ECC:
https://ark.intel.com/products/79199/Intel-Core-i5-4410E-Processor-3M-Cache-up-to-2-90-GHz-
and here is an i7:
https://ark.intel.com/products/75555/Intel-Core-i7-4700EC-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-2-70-GHz-

Unfortunately for me, there are no motherboards locally worth considering for the increased CPU options :(

People living in USA are lucky for having such a big market so that there is a lot of supply and demand for different niches and a good aftermarket.
Here in Europe there is only one supplier for Supermicro boards in my country. And if I order any parts from abroad I would have to put more time on researching which sellers are good and potentially face language barriers and even if I find a good deal, the delivery cost could make it pointless, there will be transport risk and it will be harder to use warranty if needed...
Therefore I am kinda stuck with local small market with low choice and no established second-hand sources or UK market, which is usually expensive anyway...

I could be able to source parts from Germany if anyone can recommend a good place to shop online other than Amazon?

Also, I agree that RAIDZ2 is better for security, but then the tradeoff is lower capacity. So my reasoning for 3x3 Z1 + 1x4 separate in case of 4 total disk is that if 2 fail, there is a chance that valuable data is not lost, while if two fail in 4x3 Z1 all is over. Of course I would prefer Z2, but then that will hit my budget harder per TB of storage.

Will keep updates how the build goes,
Pete

 

[Evertb1]

Also, I agree that RAIDZ2 is better for security, but then the tradeoff is lower capacity. So my reasoning for 3x3 Z1 + 1x4 separate in case of 4 total disk is that if 2 fail, there is a chance that valuable data is not lost, while if two fail in 4x3 Z1 all is over. Of course I would prefer Z2, but then that will hit my budget harder per TB of storage.

Let me preach for a moment: backup backup backup. But now back to business.

You can be a bit creative with your budget and with what you buy. I know nothing of prices in your part of the world (I am from the Netherlands) but lets assume that at least the price differences between drives of various sizes are comparable.

Would I buy 3 x 3 TB WD reds (eur. 95,50 a piece) and 1 x 4 TB WD Red (eur. 119,90) it would set me back eur. 407,60. I would then end up with a RAIDZ-1 pool with a practical usable storage space of around 5.2 TB and a stand alone disk of 4 TB doing not much else but offering extra storage without any added value.

Would I be able to stretch my budget a little more I could buy 6 x 2 TB WD reds (eur. 76,90 a piece). It would set me back eur. 461,40. But I also would end up with a RAIDZ-2 pool offering a practical usable storage space of around 7 TB and with better parity. This solution would offer less total storage (depending of the use of the 4 TB drive) but would give me a better feeling about my storage pool.

Now I know that you can spend your money just once and the extra 55 euro can be make or break for you. But looking a bit at other options should be worth your time.

 

[file_haver]

A

Are there i5's available that support ECC memory?

AFAIK they are all named Xeon.

 

[Peter K]

Reporting back on project progress!

6x3TB WD Reds are in transit - found a very good black friday offer.
Will most likely get a Cooler Master 500 case, which can fit the 6 HDDs and have space for possible increase - http://www.coolermaster.com/case/mid-tower/cm-force-500/
Will most likely get a X11SSH-F motherboard as suggested - will connect an SSD to the M2 slot and have the 2 SATA connections free for possible additions.
Will most likely get a Pentium G4600 (can find a better deal than the suggested G4620 and I believe the reduced performance is negligible).
Not settled on a PSU yet, but considering some 550W.
For a boot drive I will most likely get a consumer grade SSD - WD 120 GB - https://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Green-WDS120G2G0B-Internal/dp/B078WYRR9S

Regarding memory, I have identified the following possibilities:
1. Samsung M391A1G43EB1-CRC
2. Micron MTA9ASF1G72AZ-2G3B1
3. Crucial CT16G4WFD8266 - http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/ct16g4wfd8266

I can only get the Crucial, so that will settle me with a single 16GB stick.

If anyone thinks I should stay away from any of the components, or there is a better option, please let me know :)

Regards,
P