BUILD Supermicro X9SCM-F

[Norac]

Hello Freenas forum,

I am new here, but have been reading on this forum for the last year, with the thoughts on building a NAS with freenas. Right now I just have a 3tb livebook from western digital with no redundancy at all and is just waiting to fail at some point...

I need the freenas for home use to store photo, movies and documents. I already have a online backup of my photos, which is the only thing I do not want to loose. I have an intel NUC with XBMC who will do the transcoding when I watch movies on the TV. What I would like to use in Freenas is sabnzbd, couchpotato and sickbeard.

Now I have got hold on some hardware and need some help on finishing my setup.

This is what I have:
- Supermicro X9SCM-F
- Intel Celeron G1620 2,7GHz
- 2x DDR3-RAM unbuffered ECC 4GB, 1600MHz, Kingston

What I want to buy is:
- Fractal design node 804
- Sea Sonic G-Series G-450 450W ATX 2.3 (SSR-450RM)
- 2x WS Red 4TB

I would make a mirror with the hard-drives and when I need more space in the future, buy more disks and maybe rebuild a Raidz2 or just make more mirror with bigger hard-drives.

So my questions.
Is the G1620 enough for my need or should I upgrade?
Is the 8GB ram enough and if I buy 8GB more should it also be 2x4GB or 1x8GB ?
The ram I have are they good enough for Freenas?

Is the power supply right?
Which other hard-disk is worth considering than the WD red?
Does anybody know a case that might be a bit smaller than the Fractal design node 804?

Looking forward to read your comments :)

 

[Ericloewe]

Well, 8GB is the bare minimum. 2x 4GB DIMMs is sub-optimal. You'll have to decide which option you feel more comfortable with: mismatched DIMM sizes or having to buy a whole new set of DIMMs.

 

[Norac]

When you say mismatched DIMMs, that's if I put 1x8 and 2x4 to have 16gb in total?

Is mismatched DIMMs unreliable or slower?

 

[Ericloewe]

When you say mismatched DIMMs, that's if I put 1x8 and 2x4 to have 16gb in total?

Is mismatched DIMMs unreliable or slower?

Yeah.

It should work, but it's not recommended.

 

[Norac]

Okay thank you. I think that I will see how it runs with 8gb first and when I upgrade the ram it will not be mismatched.

But is 8gb ram enough for a mirror of 2x 4tb?

 

[Ericloewe]

It's enough for it not to be dangerous. Performance may suffer.

 

[cyberjock]

Just want to provide some info on this whole "mismatched RAM".

Yes, you can choose to buy sticks one at a time. It "should" work (keyword: should). There will be a performance penalty as you can't interleave the data in RAM equally since they are unbalanced. However, as a general rule for FreeNAS servers, the increase in RAM will result in a performance increase that will be significantly more than the performance penalty from mismatched RAM. So adding more RAM should *always* result in a performance increase.

Now the "should" work part... According to Intel it should work and be fine and stable. However some motherboard manufacturers have done weird things to their BIOS (or something) and made this not work. Many manuals simply won't even mention any configuration that isn't matching even sets of RAM. So YMMV.

Every time I've tried playing with unbalanced RAM it worked fine. You get a message on the POST screen that says something like "Using modified interleaving mode. Performance may suffer." but it worked fine.

 

[Norac]

@Ericloewe, I can see you wrote a post not recommending Kingston ram for the supermicro X10. Would it also be a good idea to avoid Kingston if I buy new ram? The one I have are already kingston.

I looked at the memorylist for the x9scm-f and I would be able to buy these of the list.
Samsung DIMM 8GB, DDR3L-1600, CL11, ECC (M391B1G73QH0-YK0)
or the Crucial which should be the same Micron recommended from your tread.
Crucial DIMM 8GB, DDR3L-1600, CL11, ECC (CT102472BD160B)

Would there be any danger or disadvantage to mix different marks of ram like for example Kingston with Samsung?

I have also looked for 4gb DIMMs on the list, but it seems it's easier to find the 8gb they recommend.

 

[Ericloewe]

Well, I'd avoid Kingston in general, due to thei business practices. From a technical standpoint, there's been no indication that it won't work.

As we've been saying, the typical, most well-known scenario is all-identical RAM - same model number (thus obviously manufacturer), capacity and speed. Everything else should work, but is a potential source of problems.

Like Cyberjock, I've never had trouble with mismatched RAM, though.

 

[Norac]

Thank you both for the information on the ram.

What about Seasonic G-450 and WD Red 4TB?
Something that would be better to consider?

 

[Ericloewe]

Thank you both for the information on the ram.

What about Seasonic G-450 and WD Red 4TB?
Something that would be better to consider?

They're fine.