Will this motherboard do the job

[nyffellare]

Hello,

Do you guys know if this mother board will be good enough for my nas? (MSI B85-G41 PC MATE)
I want to use it for media streaming, file backup, cloud and bittorent downloader.
I combine it with a 4th gen i3 and 8gb (64gb max so for later i'm save, I guess)

Thanks for the help :)

 

[danb35]

Since I'm sure you wouldn't have posted in this forum asking for help with hardware selection without reading the sticky threads making hardware recommendations, you should already know many of the reasons that board is not suitable. And it maxes out at 32 GB, not 64 GB (per MSI: http://us.msi.com/product/mb/B85G41_PC_Mate.html#hero-specification)

 

[mjws00]

No ecc ram, realtek nic. Comsumer grade board with a consumer chipset. All are poor choices for FreeNAS. Read the hardware stickies. If there was a super cheap option you can be certain it would be popular and in there. @joeschmuck's AMD config is the only reasonable option in that class.

 

[nyffellare]

I read the hardware tutorial but all there where intel and the price was extremely high for the motherboard so I was searching for better option and thought this would be good enough. I know a lot about computers but not servers thats why I asked help offcourse.

 

[nyffellare]

@mjws00 Thanks for the tip to look to the guys hardware. It seems pretty good and best of all cheap :)
Are u sure the ASUS M5A78L-M/USB3 and
AMD FX-4300 can handle media streaming, bittorent and all that kind of stuff :) But it seems pretty good and cheap, Its just perfect for the price if it can handle it :)
And 32GB ram is enough for a NAS? Because sometimes I heard that you best have 64GB of ram, or is this only for profesional NAS like in small companies?

 

[jgreco]

The price was "extremely high" for the motherboard because by the time you pay $80 for that P.o.S. MSI board and then discover that you need to pay another $35 for a decent Intel network card or suffer mysterious performance issues, and then find out that it only supports non-ECC memory, then you have to throw away the already-spent $115 and then spend ANOTHER $150 on a good motherboard, you've now spent $265 on that shoddy consumer-grade failboard to wind up where you need to be.

We like to chop out the intermediate failsteps and just get you there right away. You can send some of the money we save you to the FreeNAS Forum Moderator Beer Fund. Or actually just enjoy it on some good beer yourself, since for some reason there's no FreeNAS Forum Moderator Beer Fund. ;-)

 

[mjws00]

There are lots of very very nice prosumer boards that cost far more than the boards listed in the stickies. They are just as poor a selection. It is less about cost and more about, can it support ecc and will it be stable. If there was an acceptable cheap choice it would be there. Joe's build is viable.

I'm not an AMD guy. Sorry. I do trust Joe's experience and judgement. To me the specs say it should be plenty. It has lots of cores and a great clock speed. Streaming h.264 is a non event, transcoding is multi-threaded via plex, bittorent etc is nothing. For home use 32GB should be enough for pretty much everyone, even the large pools. Typical home-based work loads aren't really cacheable, imho. It isn't like you will have much choice to go higher than 32GB and stick with ECC, unless you spend $$$$ on the e5.

Remember also the disks and ram cost far far more than an extra $50 on the mobo. It is one of the best investments you can make in the system.

 

[nyffellare]

haha it better would :)
I am now looking at @@joeschmuck's setup and that looks very good :) only 60€ for a motherboard that supports ecc ram and all that kind of stuff is very nice :) So I guess of copying most of his specs for my NAS :)

 

[nyffellare]

And yes I know the disk and ram cost a lot :p Thats why I start with 8GB and later I can upgrade it :)
For disks I already know the price. I want to use the wd green series of disks I have them in my gaming pc and like them alot, not to expensive and still do the job. but best of all they dont use a lot of power

 

[danb35]

The cost delta between the board you're suggesting, and one of the ones recommended in the sticky, is as low as $50 US if you can find one as open-box at NewEgg, maybe as much as $70-80 if not. There's a reason for the recommendations that are made here, and it isn't to just spend more of your money. Of course, it's your system, and you can build it however you want--but if you ignore the recommendations posted all over this board, and throughout the docs, you're not going to get a lot of sympathy or help when you lose data.

For most home applications, 32 GB is going to be plenty. It had better be, too, because you aren't going to run more than that on an i3--not with the board you're suggesting, nor with any of the recommended SuperMicro boards. If you want 64 GB, you're looking at Xeon E5 territory and some big bucks.

 

[jgreco]

Actually the C2750 will do 64GB...

 

[danb35]

Really? I thought the i3/E3 were hard limited to 32. Good to know there's at least one way around that.

Edit: never mind, the C2750 is an Atom board. Brain fart.

 

[jgreco]

The i3 and E3 are 32. The Avoton and some AMD parts are 64.