Ryzen 5 PRO 4650 Build (new to Truenas)

[th0m]

Hi,

I've been running a "nas" with drives attached to a PI4, and I want to finally move to a real solution, however my budget is not unlimited.
I've read this forum and research the topic and it seems that a ECC memory is very important, am I wrong? Long story short, at 150EUR I could find the Ryzen 5 4650 PRO which is ECC compatible. Can someone help me with the MB and ram ?

I've seen the Biostar B550T-Silver V5.0 which stipulates being ECC compatible but only unbuffered, will it work with ECC registered Ram?

Sorry , I don't know much about it.

Thanks in advance,

 

[Etorix]

ECC memory is (highly) desirable… but less important than avoiding low quality NICs (basically: no Realtek, and no 2.5 GbE).
ECC support on Ryzen is dubious and never certified; the best bet would be with this 'PRO' CPU and a server motherboard from AsRockRack: X470/X570/B550/D4U.

No consumer CPU supports RDIMM: You need EPYC or Xeon (D, E5, W-2000, Scalable) for that.

 

[ChrisRJ]

I've seen the Biostar B550T-Silver V5.0 which stipulates being ECC compatible but only unbuffered, will it work with ECC registered Ram?

UDIMM and RDIMM are incompatible.

Did you look into buying used enterprise gear? Not for HDDs and PSU; but board, CPU, and RAM are not a problem.

 

[Etorix]

UDIMM and RDIMM are incompatible.

With DDR4 there are actually CPUs which can use either—but never a mix—and the modules have the same key.
With DDR5 this is over: DDR4 UDIMM and RDIMM have slightly different keys.

 

[ChrisRJ]

Thanks, I didn't know that. I would assume, however, that the motherboard is (and will stay) something that needs to be looked at carefully.

 

[th0m]

Ok so I've found some Unbuffered ECC ram that's on the compatibility list of some B550 mobos. But I absolutely can't find a B550 with something else than a realtek nic , are they as bad as people say?

 

[jgreco]

than a realtek nic , are they as bad as people say?

Probably!

Is my Realtek ethernet really that bad?

This resource was originally created by user: jgreco on the TrueNAS Community Forums Archive. Please DM this account or comment in this thread to claim it. One of the longest running issues faced here in the forums may be people who come to these forums, wanting to recycle an old PC into a NAS...

www.truenas.com

 

[th0m]

OK thanks guys! So you'd rather go for an intel MB with intel NIC and no ECC than ECC on AMD?

 

[jgreco]

I thought the ECC-on-AMD thing was an unsettled point; there has been a lot of concern about whether or not random mainboards actually implement it or do anything with it. If you are going to get, for example, an overclockable gamer grade Ryzen board and then hope that it implements ECC, I would have some doubts about that, more than a conventional Intel desktop. For sure the Intel ethernet would be an advantage, plus you should never overclock a NAS, so that's another plus.

 

[Etorix]

But I absolutely can't find a B550 with something else than a realtek nic ,

Here you are:

https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=B550D4U

(But you may not like the price. Which bring us back to the suggestion of looking for older, second-hand, server hardware.)

OK thanks guys! So you'd rather go for an intel MB with intel NIC and no ECC than ECC on AMD?

Ideally, we'd always go for Intel NIC and ECC.
But an on-board Realtek is no concern if you use an Intel/Chelsio/Solarflare NIC card instead.

 

[th0m]

Thanks guys, I've found this one : https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/X570M Pro4/index.fr.asp#Specification . Seems EEC comp and Intel NIC . What do you think of it ?

Sorry for all the questions, but I'd really want ECC, but honestly going server grade board + xeon is too expensive

 

[Etorix]

Fait attempt, but you really want an i210 or i350 NIC. I'm not sure how good support is for the i211 PHY.
"Server-grade" does not have to be crazy expensive. An Intel motherboard with a C232/C236/C242/C246 chipset can do ECC with a Core i3 (6/7th or 8/9th generation) without paying the "Xeon tax". The only issue right now is to find one these "old" motherboards.

On the AMD side of things, your best bet for actual ECC support is with the AsRockRack server boards, B550D4U and the older X470D4U and X570D4U siblings. These, unfortunately, are more expensive than average.

 

[AntoninKyrene]

The ASRock B550 Pro4 supports ECC RAM with Ryzen PRO APU.

 

[Evertb1]

Ok so I've found some Unbuffered ECC ram that's on the compatibility list of some B550 mobos. But I absolutely can't find a B550 with something else than a realtek nic , are they as bad as people say?

Let me put it this way: On my workstation, build with a consumer grade motherboard (B550 as well), the Realtek was behaving so bad that I disabled it in the BIOS and put in an Intel NIC.

 

[AntoninKyrene]

Half of the issues I was having with my new set up was the onboard Realtek NIC. Disabling it and adding an Intel PCIe x1 card felt like trading in steam power for a ramjet.

 

[Evertb1]

The ASRock B550 Pro4 supports ECC RAM with Ryzen PRO APU

I would be careful with that. About 2 years ago I had some communication with an Asrock engineer (by e-mail) and he stated that while support for ECC memory was available on some of the consumer grade boards it was only that they were able to run with ECC memory. The system however was not running in ECC mode. His advise was to look at Asrock Rack. Maybe things have changed but again be careful.

 

[th0m]

I've looked at asrock rack MB. They cost at least 100 E more and I can't seem to find one in stock. Why is it so hard to build a nas !

What abour the intel PHY i211 AT nic does someone have a feedback on it ? this is the one on the asrock x570 PRO4


Also, as for ram, I was thinking of going for 32Gb , would 64 be a better bet ?

 

[Evertb1]

Why is it so hard to build a nas !

Building a NAS is not al that hard. But choosing for TrueNAS means choosing for the ZFS files system. And that comes with some requirements that can be costly. Some of those requirements you can ignore but at your own risk. When I started with then FreeNAS the use of an old PC was still promoted on the iX systems site (turn your old PC into a NAS). But that is a long time ago.

 

[Etorix]

Why is it so hard to build a nas !

It need not be difficult… but as you're trying to do that "by the textbook", with ECC and all, there's a lot of information to digest.
And then we are on somewhat difficult times because the latest generation of hardware is expensive (more so than earlier ones, due to PCIe 4.0/5.0, and now DDR5) and the earlier generations are running out of stock. A NAS does not need a lot of computing power, so we want small, low power, server hardware (low cost doesn't hurt either…) and this where it gets somewhat difficult because the market is moving upwards.
If we were looking for >200 W TDP monster CPUs there would be a lot to choose from.

Also, as for ram, I was thinking of going for 32Gb , would 64 be a better bet ?

Generally, ZFS loves RAM and gives this love back as performance so more is better—up to a point.
64 GB or more is the point where it's worth looking into RDIMM platforms: Xeon D-1500 or Xeon E5 (second-hand), Atom C3000 (mostly new).