BUILD Supermicro X9SRE-F with a Xeon E5-2670

[yourmate]

Hello again,
in the last couple weeks I just gave it a rethink and made some adjustment to my previous build - by lowering the initial cost but keeping the coolness factor of the build (having a Xeon 2670 on board IS very cool according to @jgreco ;) )

So I have returned the brand new SuperServer 7047R-TRF (chassis with 2 redundant PSUs and a Supermicro X9DRi-F mobo) and bought the following components instead (I marked the items green I need some feedback on)

Things I've already bought:
Fractal Define R5 (£47)
Supermicro X9SRE-F (£80)
Intel Xeon E5-2670 2.60 Ghz 20 Mb 8-Core CPU Processor SR0KX (£50)
4x Samsung M393B1K70DH0-CK0 8GB DDR3 1600MHz PC3-12800R ECC Registered RAM (£45)
APC SmartUPS SC420I (£20)


Still not bought/decided
Corsair HX750i High-Performance ATX Power Supply — 750 Watt 80 Plus® Platinum Certified PSU (already purchased - new for £56) - I've bought this but still not sure...
Noctua NH-D9L (not ordered yet - new for £42)
Kingston 16GB SSD SS050S2/16G (not ordered yet - USED for £10)
I think size wise it's enough but is it reliable? I don't know why I do not like the USB stick idea...

Storage
2x WD Red 4TB (already have them in my W7 install) and 4 more HDDs I can find (500GB, 640GB laptop drive, 1TB, etc) just to make up to 6 for one vdev in RaidZ2 (I will change them as soon I can get my hands on proper WD reds)


Saving £270 on the first four items makes me a bit happier and will help with the purchase of HDDs. It also partly pays for a client only (no storage) HTPC for the main telly.


Purpose
- strictly home use for general file serving
- backup server to backup my phone & laptop and a couple more computers on the fly
- download server for torrents
- media server to stream my music and movie collection to a couple of Kodi boxes
- and provide remote access for me when I need some of my clients config files working on site


Thanks for your feedback and thoughts.

 

[danb35]

Consider using 2 x 16 GB RDIMMs, since the system supports them. You won't likely outgrow the memory capacity even using 8 GB sticks, though.

On the drives, you realize that the vdev will be limited by the capacity of the smallest disk, right? So if you have six disks, and the smallest of them is 500 GB, your usable capacity will only be 2 TB.

 

[yourmate]

Just realized when I went through my list that the original SuperMicro setup had a CPU cooler as well. What would you guys recommend? Would I need a fan attached to the cooler or may I get away with a big one without a fan?

 

[yourmate]

Consider using 2 x 16 GB RDIMMs, since the system supports them. You won't likely outgrow the memory capacity even using 8 GB sticks, though.

I had a look but - interestingly - they cost a lot more. Or I was just lucky to find the 8GB sticks really cheap...

On the drives, you realize that the vdev will be limited by the capacity of the smallest disk, right? So if you have six disks, and the smallest of them is 500 GB, your usable capacity will only be 2 TB.

Thanks, I did realize that but I am so exited to get this thing up and running that I would run it on six 80GB PATA drives if I had nothing else ;)

 

[jgreco]

Yeah, we were just discussing the pricing of the larger DDR3 parts in another thread. For a low cost high performance build, it's probably hard to beat the E5-2670 and 8GB parts as long as you don't mind the minor tradeoffs of "somewhat older" and "eats a little more power". Over the likely life of the build, the cheap parts probably far outweigh modest savings that you'd get with newer somewhat lower power parts.

 

[yourmate]

If you don't mind me asking, where did you get an X9SRE-F for 80 quid? If I could find a used X9 server board anywhere near that price, I'd be building something a lot like this.

I don't mind at all. I just got lucky - as it usually happens - the guy said it's faulty because he had boot problems on Windows 10 ;)
I said that's a shame and bought it for £77

If you don't mind to have an E3 instead I can sell you an X9SCA-F for £55 plus p&p

 

[Dice]

I was wondering whether I could be OK with a fanless heatsink or would I definitely need one?

If you are referring to server chassis where quite often there are fanless solutions, hoping to migrate that part into your antec consumer grade chassi you will have yourself a nightmare of overheating issues. The servergrade cases have high efficient and noisy fans and often use fan ducts to adjust airflow to push through the fins of passive coolers. Don't try that at home. Get something with a fan.

Beyond that; damn you for getting a supercool "oldschool" rig for change.

Cheers,

 

[yourmate]

Beyond that; damn you for getting a supercool "oldschool" rig for change.

Thanks Dice for chipping in - again - to help, I was just too scared to get the "full monty" so I've tried to end up with best of both world - less hardware for less money but hopefully powerful enough when I need it ;)

If you are referring to server chassis where quite often there are fanless solutions, hoping to migrate that part into your antec consumer grade chassi you will have yourself a nightmare of overheating issues.

TBH, I was suspecting this so last night I had a good look around and found a NH-D9L which is "in-line" with the airflow I'd like to create in the chassis (2 x 120 mm fans @ the front and 2 @ the back) so I hope it'll do.

Would this be adequate?

 

[yourmate]

Also, I just noticed that some people use an - insane amount of (at least for me, that is) - SSDs for jails. Why is that?

 

[jgreco]

Also, I just noticed that some people use an - insane amount of (at least for me, that is) - SSDs for jails. Why is that?

What's insane? A pair of 240GB SSD's might run you $150, is insanely fast, offers redundancy, reduces load on the main pool, etc. I don't do any jail work but I know I can stick a dozen VM's on a 240GB datastore easily enough, so I have to assume that you could do nearly anything you wanted to within that space, unless what you're doing is something that just eats gobs of space.

 

[yourmate]

What's insane?

Yesterday I just seen somebody who had SIX of them ;)
Or he just made a mistake in his signature...

I can stick a dozen VM's on a 240GB datastore easily enough

Would it be useful for transmission / openVPN / sickrage / sonar / owncloud kind of things as well or just VM's?

 

[jgreco]

Yesterday I just seen somebody who had SIX of them ;)
Or he just made a mistake in his signature...

Two, six, whateva...!

Would it be useful for transmission / openVPN / sickrage / sonar / owncloud kind of things as well or just VM's?

I'm guessing transmission/sickrage/sonar are file-share-y type things. We've discussed, in the past, the impact of fragmentation on pools, and how things like BitTorrent tend to cause randomly ordered writes on a pool. With that in mind, anything that provides a staging area for assembly before permanently storing something on your pool is probably a healthy thing to have.

OwnCloud for remote access to files is probably something that requires access to your pool, so the operational bits of OwnCloud are pretty tiny compared to the datastore. OpenVPN is literally just an executable that runs. Neither of those would seem to benefit much from SSD. However, if you were operating a filesharing collective of some sort with OwnCloud, that might be different.

 

[Dice]

TBH, I was suspecting this so last night I had a good look around and found a NH-D9L which is "in-line" with the airflow I'd like to create in the chassis (2 x 120 mm fans @ the front and 2 @ the back) so I hope it'll do.

Would this be adequate?

Most likely it is adequate. Myself, I would've aimed for a model featuring at least 120mm fan. That is probably a relic from the days I used to overclock anything and everything for fun. Noctua have done great in several builds of mine. Yet they are indeed pricey. An upcoming hyped 'replacement' in the 'Half noctua price segment' from the ever popular Hyper 212 EVO by Coolermaster, there seems to be a new king in that segment: be quiet! - Pure Rock. It features higher TDP acceptance compared to the NH D9L, probably at a fraction of the price. Two key elements in my reviewing.

Here is an url. I'd get that one if it is 'sourcable' from your location.

http://www.bequiet.com/en/cpucooler/532

 

[yourmate]

Myself, I would've aimed for a model featuring at least 120mm fan.

Thanks again. As this is not ordered yet I'm still open for suggestions, so I'll definitely look into this...

 

[yourmate]

BTW, 5 minutes ago the postman came... :D



The memory has just been bought from HK and the CPU will be here next week as well...

 

[yourmate]

I just had a look of the prices and I think I'm doing great budget wise. Everything - except my CPU - is either brand new or a couple months old and they are good quality parts...

 

[Dice]

Are you up and running with this machine yet?
What cooler did you get in the end?
How's the overall feel of the build?

 

[yourmate]

Hey man, thanks for getting back to me!
Have you ever heard about the 1,000 hour testing?!? ;) That's what's going on!!!

The milestones up until now:
1) by 27/04 pretty much everything was here (except the 4 x 4TB HDDs, the 2 Samsung SSD boot drives, the Noctua case fans and the Corsair HX750i PSU)
2) I had second thoughts anyway about the PSU and I decided to install the spare XFX550 Pro (80 Bronze) I had
3) so I hacked the system together (cables everywhere) and run it for 2 days on memtest86 - 5 pass 0 errors :)
4) meanwhile I received the SSDs and the Noctuas so I decided to build it properly... all wiring in the back of the unit done with cable ties, properly rooted, optimised
5) because the PSU wasn't modular it took a couple hours but I finished just in April still five minutes to May so hooked it up to the telly and...
6) ...and pressed the button and the PSU had no smoke in it anymore ;) WTF?!? I am positive that jgreco's sent one of his green PSU goblins to take the life out of it so I won't be able to use an 'underpowered' system :D
7) took the whole thing apart (all cable ties, all wiring) and installed the HX750i - which is very nice and quiet I must tell and when you switch off the unit it chimes at the end ;) and by 6 in the morning freenas was up and running
8) now I have installed freenas probably 5 times, reflashed the BIOS and IMPI, set up the thresholds for the fans

I've bought a new 16TB WD EX4100 off of eBay yesterday for £450, will collect it tomorrow. Strip out the four 4TB WD RED and the unit goes back for sale and I hope I'll have the drives for £80-90 each brand new which is great. Then I can start the drive test...

I had a look of the be quiet! range so much so that I was looking for their PSU instead of the Corsair up until this point. As far as the fans are concerned the be quiet! is almost as much expensive as the Noctua here in the UK (just 10-15% cheaper) so I ended up buying 3 Noctuas NF-A14 PWMs for the case and for my CPU I've bought this bad boy. Now that was expensive - same price as the CPU!!

The feel? This stuff looks and feels cool and professional, I like it. The SM mobo drives me crazy as it takes half an hour to boot up ;) The bloody logo comes back on at least four times...But hey, when it'll be up and running I won't restart it 4 times per day so no big deal.
The OS? I can tell you it is a hard learning curve. It sucks every day as I have to figure out things but I like challenges...

So all in all it's good. I've spent a shitload of money and I have a server in my house. What kind of different fun would a geek enjoy anyway?!?