BUILD server grade used components for home NAS?

[Stux]

Okay, its a little bit hard to help as basically your question consists of "what do you think of this obsolete hardware, its cheap?"

We need a different approach :)

We could recommend up2date hardware, and then you would have a baseline to step back from. Another approach is to recommend you look into a used Dell C2100 system, or similar used systems. Beware, these systems get retired because they use a lot of power, and modern systems use less.

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/ode-to-the-dell-c2100-fs12-ty.43665/

Anyway, for a regular NAS, made with up-to-date modern/new components I would start by recommending an X11SSM-F, the goto LGA1151 board.

https://www.supermicro.com.tw/products/motherboard/Xeon/C236_C232/X11SSM-F.cfm

And add a Pentium, i3 or Xeon depending on performance requirements. And then a single stick of 16GB DDR4 RAM.

Now, if you look at how expensive that is for new up2date hardware, then you have a baseline, to step back from.

You should consult the Hardware Recommendations Guide, its pretty dang good.
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/hardware-recommendations-guide.12/

X8/Nehalem and X9/SandyBridge is not on the list.

Regarding 650$ Xeon D board... you're paying for 2 10gbe connectors and 16 SAS lanes. That's worth maybe $3-400$, but you can add that capability via PCIe cards one day, so if you have no immediate need, then don't pay that. It really wasn't an appropriate recommendation.

 

[CookiesLikeWhoa]

A little bit?! ohmygod. X10SDV-4C-7TP4F is for $650.
Dell T20 whole server cost less.
I'm not so much cheap as I posted in 1st post, that board+cpu for $60.
But c'mon, 10x more? Isn't there anything between? Board+cpu for $200 or $300? :D

also 20 SATA, 10GbE and up to 128GB seems like.. I'll use 5 sata (max), network 1Gb (working on notebook with no chance for 10Gb Ethernet) and 32GB. So probably no reason to pay for possibility I'll not use.

X10SDV-2C-TLN2F.
6 SATA ports.
2 Cores
1GbE
2-300$.

Just to give you a heads up though, X8 and X9 use a lot more electricity. I have an X8 system (see sig) that idles at 300W with just one side powered up and 1 PSU installed. Depending on your eletricity costs, that will add up quickly.

 

[maur]

Okay, its a little bit hard to help as basically your question consists of "what do you think of this obsolete hardware, its cheap?"

Oh, come on. Few times, not once, but few times I asked for model or socket which is newer from the one I proposed in first post :)
So I'm open to suggestions..

Anyway, for a regular NAS, made with up-to-date modern/new components I would start by recommending an X11SSM-F, the goto LGA1151 board.

Thanks :) I'll look for it.

Now, if you look at how expensive that is for new up2date hardware, then you have a baseline, to step back from.

Oh, I already knew that. ;)
I'll look into recommendations guide, as a pillow lecture today, thanks :)

Regarding 650$ Xeon D board... you're paying for 2 10gbe connectors and 16 SAS lanes. That's worth maybe $3-400$, but you can add that capability via PCIe cards one day, so if you have no immediate need, then don't pay that. It really wasn't an appropriate recommendation.

That's the reason for my reaction. I assume 10gbe connections or 16 sas lanes don't just appear as a free bonus. And I definitely won't need them, I'm certain of it. home nas, 1 user, business backups and work related vm. That's not heavy usage. :)

One more thing regarding price. $600 is my limit, for whole box, without hard drives. I'd rather spent $400, but I can live with $600..
And in that budget I see I can buy Dell PowerEdge T20, or T30 with E3 12.. V5 cpu, 8 or 16GB. I think it's not bad machine?
I'm afraid looking at supermicro board prices for new hardware, building something similar to that Dell would be more expensive in total.

 

[maur]

Just to give you a heads up though, X8 and X9 use a lot more electricity. I have an X8 system (see sig) that idles at 300W with just one side powered up and 1 PSU installed. Depending on your eletricity costs, that will add up quickly.

WOW. Idling at 300W? That I totally wasn't expecting.
I'm already looking at X10-X11 boards, thanks to some user who enlightened to me what X-number stands for and what I should be focusing. :)

I only hope X11 board with some xeon e3 v5 will not idle at 100W... Right? Please, tell me it will not ;)

 

[maur]

I found that X11SSQ-O with i5-6500 takes 30W consumes idle.
Supermicro X9SCM-F + Xeon E3-1230 @3.2GHz with 16GB DDR3 and 1TB Seagate 7200 consumes 39W when idling.
Sounds reasonable.

I don't know CookiesLikeWhoa how you achieved 300W in idling state.;)

 

[CookiesLikeWhoa]

It has 2 add in cards, 12 HDD's, 2 CPU's, and all the DIMM slots are occupied. Sadly it's just not an efficient platform. The other option could be that IPMI is lying to me.

The only reason I steer people away from that old of hardware is because those bills do add up. I live in California, electricity is $0.18 a kw/h (I'm actually paying closer to $0.25 a kw/h but that's another story). That adds almost another $40 per month to my electricity bill. Even at 100 Watts, I'm still looking looking at at least $15 more a month. Couple of months of that and you're savings really start to evaporate. On top of them being hotter, and louder than new servers.

If you add more HDD's you'll quickly tack on more watts. (I think WD Reds idle at ~4 watts per drive) With a 10 HDD array you add another 40 watts at idle. If you use 7200 RPM drives (which I did -.-) it can be as much as 5-6 watts per drive. The E3 line is much lighter on power use compared to the older E5 and X5xxx line.

More a cautionary tale than anything.

 

[joeschmuck]

An example of my X11SSM-F power usage... Keep in mind that I'm running ESXi and FreeNAS on top of that so this is 6 hard drives for FreeNAS, 1 SSD for some VMs, 1 Hard Drive for more VMs, and two PCIE cards. I did shut down my Ubuntu VM for the measurement.

57 Watts at idle. I feel that this seems a little low but I suspect ESXi has very good power management. And the hard drives are all spinning. Actually I'm not trusing the power meter on the UPS here, it just seems too low but the UPS is not a calibrated device either.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

I wrote email to seller with Dell T20 asking if he can arrange 24 or 32GB ram for me

Can you buy RAM from crucial.com in Poland?

 

[maur]

Can you buy RAM from crucial.com in Poland?

I can, eu.crucial.com as well as other resellers.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

OK, that means if you do buy an off-the-shelf system, you can get guaranteed compatible RAM.