Dwarf Cavendish
Contributor
- Joined
- Dec 19, 2017
- Messages
- 121
I am currently running FreeNAS on an HPE Microserver Gen10. It runs alright, but it is noisy. Furthermore, it for now seems impossible to get a CPU temperature reading in FreeNAS. This, plus mild annoyances over proprietary formats of the machine's internals make me consider replacing it with a self-built machine that is nice and silent. I could then put it in a place with better airflow and on top of that keep tabs on the CPU temperature (which I cannot do right now).
One thing that is important to me is power efficiency. Two boards that I am considering are the Fujitsu D3417-B2 and its successor, the D3644-B. Some specs: the D3417-B2 has the Intel C236 chipset for Skylake CPUs and supports ECC with any CPU that supports this. One such CPU is the Pentium G4560. The D3644-B has the Intel C246 chipset for Coffeelake CPUs. According to the spec sheet, a Xeon CPU is required for ECC support. However, this information in the spec sheet is likely to be too restrictive. On a German forum, a Fujitsu employee states that any CPU that supports ECC on this chipset should work and also confirms this testing with an i3-8100. That would mean that the Pentium Gold G5400 would also be a viable option.
Both boards have an Intel Ethernet controller and (I presume) an Intel SATA controller. I would say that either of these two would have good compatibility with FreeNAS and that there is no pressing reason to stick with the slightly older platform for compatibility reasons. On a Dutch computer forum, the C236 board has proven to be very power-efficient (although not tested on BSD) and for now I assume that its successor will have similar performance in that regard. Also, where I live the price difference between the two is negligible, which would be a reason to go with the newer platform.
I was wondering if anyone is willing to share their experience with either of these two boards. From what I can tell, these look like nice boards for a FreeNAS build (although not in the hardware recommendation list). Or am I overlooking something?
One thing that is important to me is power efficiency. Two boards that I am considering are the Fujitsu D3417-B2 and its successor, the D3644-B. Some specs: the D3417-B2 has the Intel C236 chipset for Skylake CPUs and supports ECC with any CPU that supports this. One such CPU is the Pentium G4560. The D3644-B has the Intel C246 chipset for Coffeelake CPUs. According to the spec sheet, a Xeon CPU is required for ECC support. However, this information in the spec sheet is likely to be too restrictive. On a German forum, a Fujitsu employee states that any CPU that supports ECC on this chipset should work and also confirms this testing with an i3-8100. That would mean that the Pentium Gold G5400 would also be a viable option.
Both boards have an Intel Ethernet controller and (I presume) an Intel SATA controller. I would say that either of these two would have good compatibility with FreeNAS and that there is no pressing reason to stick with the slightly older platform for compatibility reasons. On a Dutch computer forum, the C236 board has proven to be very power-efficient (although not tested on BSD) and for now I assume that its successor will have similar performance in that regard. Also, where I live the price difference between the two is negligible, which would be a reason to go with the newer platform.
I was wondering if anyone is willing to share their experience with either of these two boards. From what I can tell, these look like nice boards for a FreeNAS build (although not in the hardware recommendation list). Or am I overlooking something?
