Recommended Mini-ITX boards for FreeNAS

[airflow]

Hi!

I built a FreeNAS-system with the following hardware:

Chassis: Fractal Design Node 304, Mini-DTX/Mini-ITX
MB: ASUS H87I-Plus (C2)
CPU: Intel Core i3-4130T, 2x 2.90GHz
RAM: Kingston ValueRAM DIMM Kit 16GB, DDR3-1333, CL9, ECC
HD: 4x Western Digital WD Red 3TB, 3.5", SATA 6Gb/s (raidz2)
1x old SSD from laptop to host system-dataset and jails

The system runs fine and I'm satisfied with the functionality. After reading in this forum I found that ECC-functionality is recommended. With above hardware, ECC is supported with RAM and CPU, but not the mainboard. So I'd like to exchange the mainboard to another one. I'm not sure, which one.

What is a recommended MB for FreeNAS given Mini-ITX formfactor? Current MB (ASUS H87I-Plus) has 6x SATA 6Gb/s. I found the following:

* ASUS P9D-I (90SB03I0-M0UAY0): 2x SATA 6Gb/s (C222), 2x SATA 3Gb/s (C222)
* MSI CSM-C222-089: 2x SATA 6Gb/s (C222), 3x SATA 3Gb/s (C222)

The first MB has only 4 SATA-Ports (which is one less I need), so I would need to add a PCIe-card with additional SATA-ports. The second MB has the right number of SATA-ports, but with different speeds.

At the moment I would go with the second board. Are different SATA-speeds (within the same volume/pool) problematic? If at a later point I'd like to increase the number of disks in the pool from 4 to 6, could I easily do this by adding a PCIe-card with 2 SATA-ports? Are there any other Mini-ITX boards you would recommend for FreeNAS?

Thanks,
airflow

 

[enemy85]

I have an asrock (c226) and i would suggest u that one, or the c224 version. They work without any problems

 

[marbus90]

ASRock E3C224D2I or E3C226D2I.

For HDDs you don't need SATA 6Gbps. Also you need to destroy and rebuild the pool in order to add another 2 drives to that vdev.

 

[DKarnov]

I think the vast majority of socketed Mini ITX builds here are going to be using one of the two AsrockRack boards. For this application the C224 and C226 variants differ only in price.

 

[fracai]

C224 is cheaper with 4 SATA3 and 2 SATA2
C226 is more expensive with 6 SATA3

I don't think there's a compelling reason to go with the C226. I sure wish I'd saved the dollars ;-)