Will they? Need help building "2 Intel Xeon e5645 LGA 1366" system from scratch

[jokka]

I have https://ark.intel.com/products/4876...r-E5645-12M-Cache-2_40-GHz-5_86-GTs-Intel-QPI, two of them.

I search the forum and I've got these:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/reuse-old-esxi-server-for-freenas-newbie.58651/
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/dell-t5500-build-and-shutting-down-overnight.55915/
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/hmmm-maybe-dell-r510.60721/
but if I'm not mistaken they're all pre-built system.

I appreciate any suggestions following:
1. What board do I need that still on the market (which is better Supermicro or Intel server board)?
2. What supported memory for that particular board?
3. Will I need some add-on card or flash something?

I would like to build maximum potential this system can provide (especially RAM and Hard drive capacity).
This machine will be a home media server primarily and put gazillion movies and audios (mostly FLAC) files in it.

Thanks in advance.

 

[danb35]

What board do I need that still on the market

There wouldn't be any new Socket 1366 boards still on the market; you'd be stuck looking for used (or, possibly, NOS, though I wouldn't bet on it). Those chips are after all, eight years old, and are only worth about US$20 each. They should work just fine for FreeNAS, but they're far from optimal I'd strongly encourage you to just look for something a bit more modern. If you'd give an indication of how much storage space you think you need, we could give some better suggestions.

 

[nightshade00013]

Fully agree with @danb35 on this one, getting a newer system will be worthwhile as you will save a decent amount of electricity plus you will have a rough time finding a board.

However if you are absolutely set on using the cpu's then http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/QPI/5500/X8DT6-F.cfm is what you probably want to look at. Just buy ram, PSU with two 8pin cpu plugs, and flash the SAS controller to the correct version and add drives. It will support 14 drives on it's own and with a SAS expander or expander backplane it will run a lot more. You can find other boards that are similar and use them but you will have to acquire a SAS controller separately but this gives you a point to start looking.

 

[jokka]

There wouldn't be any new Socket 1366 boards still on the market; you'd be stuck looking for used (or, possibly, NOS, though I wouldn't bet on it). Those chips are after all, eight years old, and are only worth about US$20 each. They should work just fine for FreeNAS, but they're far from optimal I'd strongly encourage you to just look for something a bit more modern. If you'd give an indication of how much storage space you think you need, we could give some better suggestions.

Thanks for your reply.
The title say building from scratch, it really mean building my brain (knowledge) about FreeNas from scratch. My purpose in this is just build a simple NAS so I can learn little by little and grow from there. About building a modern machine, I'm collecting all material I can find, especially from this forum. I have some different option on my note now. But you know what will happen when too much reading without practice. So, I thought, hey, I can build something from these "about go to dumpster processors". At least learn some basic.

Fully agree with @danb35 on this one, getting a newer system will be worthwhile as you will save a decent amount of electricity plus you will have a rough time finding a board.

However if you are absolutely set on using the cpu's then http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/QPI/5500/X8DT6-F.cfm is what you probably want to look at. Just buy ram, PSU with two 8pin cpu plugs, and flash the SAS controller to the correct version and add drives. It will support 14 drives on it's own and with a SAS expander or expander backplane it will run a lot more. You can find other boards that are similar and use them but you will have to acquire a SAS controller separately but this gives you a point to start looking.

Thanks for your reply.
I'm interesting at this board right now. There's a link on ebay, but I can't access ebay right now (it's been 2 days, timed out something).
It only have 6 SATA which suited for my purpose. I already have 6 pcs 8TB WD Red.
How much memory should I have? Should I go just 32GB or go for 64GB?

Thanks in advance.

 

[nightshade00013]

I would look for a board that has more memory slots than the one you linked. Reason being is that you can buy cheaper ram and end up with more. The X8DT6 has 12 slots so even filling with 4GB modules you end up with 48GB of ram and FreeNAS loves ram, the more the better in all honesty.