Which Mini-ITX mobo & CPU?

[gpsguy]

I've been lurking here for a few months and have read the HCL's and build threads, but wanted to gather opinions, before buying the mobo and cpu.

I'd like to replace my old Server 2003 box, with a new FreeNAS 8 build. Since I envision keeping the machine for 5+ years, I wanted to plan for future expansion in a small form-factor box, that I can easily service, if the need arises.

I'm considering an Intel BOXDQ67EPB3 with Q67 chipset. I'd populate it with 8Gb RAM. I'm looking at the Intel board, since it would have an Intel NIC. I'd like to keep the PCI/e slot open - so I can add a LSI SATA controller down the road.

The NIC uses an 82579LM Gigabit Ethernet Controller. It's not on the HCL, though this message, says the NIC is recognized by FreeNAS.

Should I go with an Intel G850 (2.9 GHz) or Core i3 2120 (3.3 GHz) CPU? I plan to start off with a ZFS software mirror.

I already have these parts.

Case: Lian Li PC-Q08B Mini-ITX
PSU: SeaSonic X SS-400FL
MOBO:
CPU:
RAM:
USB: Patriot Xporter XT Rage 8Gb
HD: 2x Seagate 2.0Tb Barracuda XT

 

[b1ghen]

CPU wise you will be fine with anything Sandy Bridge based, even the lower Pentiums like the G620 have plenty of grunt to run ZFS.

 

[leenux_tux]

Hello gpsguy,

It really depends on what your looking to do with the NAS box and how far you want to push it.

I am running a fairly low spec FreeNAS system (see my sig for details) and am, so far, very happy with it. I have four 1TB hard drives, three in RAIDz, with a spare sitting there in case there are issues. It has 4GB of RAM. At the moment it's used for the following.....

1, Housing music for streaming around the house.
2, Housing movies which are streamed wirelessly to laptops (could be up to 3 connected) or my MythTV box, which is 100MB connected via good ol' Ethernet.
3, 4 backup folders, where one of the folders is NFS as well as CIFS so that my VMWare ESXi5 system can get to software images (via NFS), plus I can as well from my laptop (via CIFS)
4, An iSCSI block device (512GB) used for storing VMWare ESXi5 guests for much of the testing I do for work. VMWare is on a completely separate physical machine

For my needs it works fine. Not sure if it gets close to how your thinking of using it though.

The only other thing I am looking at doing is setting up another freenas box so that I can backup my volumes...........just in case...............

 

[xbmcg]

http://forums.freenas.org/showthread.php?5947-FreeNAS-test-box-idle-30-5W-busy-39W - the second entry:

ZOTAC M880G-ITX
AMD Turion II Neo Dual-Core K625 1,5GHz
6 SATAIII (6Gbps), 2 USB 3.0 + 6 USB 2.0
1Gbit LAN + WiFi 802.11n
Mini-ITX

very small form factor, cool and silent, works very good, 6 sata3 lanes on board, AMD Notebook processor,
up to 8GB DDR3RAM, GBit Ethernet + 1 free pcie-1 slot and wifi on board (not yet supported by freenas)

also 2 USB 3.0 Ports + a lot of USB 2.0 + hdmi/dvi-i/vga Graphic on board if needed...

http://pden.zotac.com/index.php?pag...&category_id=7&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=1

I think - this could be the perfect mach, you have 6 internal bays for 3.5"" drives and the mobo has 6 sata ports on board. If you use 3TB drives - you can set up a NAS up to
18 TB JBOD ZFS or
15 TB RAIDZ or
12 TB RAIDZ2 or
9 TB RAID1 or
9 TB RAID10

 

[gpsguy]

Thanks leenux_tux.

My needs are similar to your's, though I'm not streaming movies.

I'm trying to consolidate storage here at home. My Windows 2003 server is full (500Gb IDE) of ISO's, Ghost images, and software installation files. I'd like to move all of this to a new server, as well as be able backup files from my pc's to it. Then backup important files on the FreeNAS box to a portable disk for off-site storage.

Thanks for mentioning your ESXi5 usage. I also have another pc for running VM's (VMware Workstation) on disks local to that pc. Given the way I use it (testing stuff), I could move it to an ESXi environment. Did you add another NIC to your FreeNAS to separate LAN traffic from iSCSI?

I'll definitely take a second look at mobo's with the D525 Atom CPU's.

 

[gpsguy]

xbmcg,

I saw your other thread and will certainly consider the Zotac board. I've been watching the build threads, but there didn't seem to be much activity with the mini-ITX sized boards.

As I explained to leenux_tux, my needs are primarily for file storage.

Having a low wattage solution would be a big advantage.

 

[BrokenSpring]

Hello all

I am just in the process of building my mini nas.
Spec:
Case - http://www.fractal-design.com/?view=product&prod=42
Mobo - http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_CPU_on_Board/E35M1I/
2 x 4 Gb ram
5 x 3TB WD stata 3 drives in RaidZ

All the components are inplace and just installed freenas last night so now the fun begins.

The asus motherboard is great, mini-itx and 6 sata ports, could be just what you are looking for.

 

[xbmcg]

It works great so far. It supports x64, up to 8GB DDR3 and has 6 SATA3 Ports on bord. What is missing is a PCIEx16 slot if you want to add big hardware raid controller. Graphic is on bord and very capable even for HD video decoding - it is not necessary for a nas, but it coul make also a great htpc... Small form factor, and if you go for a Case like this: Lian Li PC-Q08B Mini-ITX - I think it would fit great - the case has 6 HD bays. Another minus could be the missing eSATA port, however there is a PCIex1 slot where you can add a eSATA controller for enclosure extensions... I don't know, if the current freeBSD supports the USB3.0 ports, the 2.0 work great, i have a mini USB Stick 4G to boot the NAS from. I do not use the enclosed WiFi bord - I doubt there are drivers in the freeBSD compilation for it. All in all no problems so far.

 

[leenux_tux]

---Leenux_tux---

Hello gpsguy,

I have two NIC's in my VMWare box, one dedicated for iSCSI and the other for "the rest". I don't have multiple NIC's in the NAS, however, I would consider adding one if needed (if I could squeeze one in, the internals are well packed in !) . I only have a maximum of three (maybe 4 on the odd occasion) VM's running at one time and am not seeing any throughput issues with this number of VM's running. I use a mixture of Windows and Linux guests.

For general storage, backups, music, movies (I know your not looking at that right now), ISO images etc, I'm very happy with my system. It's fairly compact, silent, consumes much less power than my old NAS, the drives can be "hot swapped" if necessary.

The reason I added the iSCSI target to FreeNAs was because I couldn't get ESXi5 to work well with the SATA chipset on the Motherboard I was using (purple screen). Was sheer desperation that I went for iSCSI, and in the end , I'm glad I did.

 

[tropic]

Ugg. I've spent so much time typing and deleting that I've pretty much given up on recommending parts for a mini-ITX NAS. There are too many compromises inherent in this form factor and only a single 16x PCI-e slot for expansion.

In my experience...

E-350 and other low-power APUs: Not enough horsepower, and often paired with mediocre onboard Realtek NICs
Sandy Bridge MBs: Not enough internal SATA ports

If I HAD to build a mini-ITX NAS for home use, I'd probably go with the DQ67EP with a minimum Core i3-2120 CPU and a single 8GB stick of RAM. It has a decent onboard NIC and a PCI-e 2.0 16x slot that actually works at 16x, and it can host 16GB RAM and a powerful CPU. If you're desperate to run 6 HDDs without using up your PCI-e slot, you can route the eSATA ports internally.

 

[Daisuke]

Hello all

I am just in the process of building my mini nas.
Spec:
Case - http://www.fractal-design.com/?view=product&prod=42
Mobo - http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_CPU_on_Board/E35M1I/
2 x 4 Gb ram
5 x 3TB WD stata 3 drives in RaidZ

All the components are inplace and just installed freenas last night so now the fun begins.

The asus motherboard is great, mini-itx and 6 sata ports, could be just what you are looking for.

Great case, I have the same model. Personally, I picked a Supermicro Atom board because I wanted to have green power consumption and dual NIC's. Take a look at my setup.

 

[gpsguy]

Thanks everyone! After a lot of cogitation, I opted for xbmcg's suggestion and ordered a ZOTAC M880G-ITX and 8Gb of RAM this week.

Assembled it this weekend, installed 8.0.4, and setup 3 CIFS shares.

 

[zack0273]

How did you get the Intel 82579LM (the onboard NIC) to work?

I have the same MB DQ67EP and the i3-2120 processor. I am new and installed FreeNAS to a 4GB USB Flash Drive. System comes up, and I goto to configure the Network and no card is listed.

I dropped into the shell and did the pciconf -lv |grep -B3 network and the card is listed.

Thank you for any help.

--Zack

Ugg. I've spent so much time typing and deleting that I've pretty much given up on recommending parts for a mini-ITX NAS. There are too many compromises inherent in this form factor and only a single 16x PCI-e slot for expansion.

In my experience...

E-350 and other low-power APUs: Not enough horsepower, and often paired with mediocre onboard Realtek NICs
Sandy Bridge MBs: Not enough internal SATA ports

If I HAD to build a mini-ITX NAS for home use, I'd probably go with the DQ67EP with a minimum Core i3-2120 CPU and a single 8GB stick of RAM. It has a decent onboard NIC and a PCI-e 2.0 16x slot that actually works at 16x, and it can host 16GB RAM and a powerful CPU. If you're desperate to run 6 HDDs without using up your PCI-e slot, you can route the eSATA ports internally.

 

[tropic]

I admit I had no problems with the 82579LM... I wrote the FreeNAS image to a USB flash drive, connected the 82579LM to a LAN with a DHCP server, and booted from the flash drive. The NIC leased an IP address and was reachable via HTTP when FreeNAS loaded. I was using FN 8.0.x at the time.

8.3.0 works fine on the DH77DF, which has a NIC implementation from the same 82579 family, so I would say the support's there (and you were able to list it as well). Have you tried reseting the network config from the menu, restoring factory defaults or writing a fresh FreeNAS image to your flash drive? You should at least see FN try to initialize the NIC during boot.

Sorry if it's not much help.