Yet Another First Build Thread

[chufi]

I don't really ever build PCs so not really sure the best way to do research for this kind of gear, though I have been lurking around here reading peoples build posts.

Goals
- (main) prevent bit rot for photos
- low power
- use for in house backups of macs via timemachine,
- run crashplan
- reliability / data integrity. [I.e., I'm ok with a component dying and having to wait for a replacement with the system off, not ok with losing data - though clearly would rather not have components die but at the same time doing a build with multiple redundant power supplies, etc, is not going to happen for me.]

No need for transcoding.
Potentially reuse a number of 2TB drives I have laying around.
Will use ECC and UPS (which I have already, APC brand) given the anti bit rot goal.
Will work out some kind of rsyc / other backup plan to my office.

-

Seemingly there are 4 or 8 bay hot swappable 'mini ITX' style cases around.
I would like to go with raidz2 so I presumably have to have 8 bay one with 5 drives in one vdev inside one zpool. I don't need very much total space given this is mostly just photos. The annoying part is adding more space later with raidz2 wouldn't work since I would only have 3 slots available. (can you do raidz2 with 2+2? I don't need much performance for my use case.)

My inclination would be to go for a cheap combo board since I don't think I will have very high demand on this box at all, but didn't seem to find any supporting ECC. Anyway this is what I have found and am looking at and any thoughts would be appreciated thanks.

8 bay hotswap chassis
$149 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IAELTAI/?tag=ozlp-20

N x WD Red 2TB
$98xN http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008JJLZ7G/?tag=ozlp-20

8GB flash drive USB
$10

8GB ECC RAM
$100 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064Z71NY/?tag=ozlp-20

ASUS Micro ATX DDR3 2000 AMD AM3+ Motherboard M5A78L-M/USB3
$60 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DQO9L1Q/?tag=ozlp-20


AMD FX 4-Core Black Edition FX-4300, FD4300WMHKBOX
$102 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009O7YU3S/?tag=ozlp-20

~$75 Powersupply? Not really sure how to size them for efficency at idle
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...7151139&cm_re=seasonic-_-17-151-139-_-Product

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GSJRDRK/?tag=ozlp-20

 

[anodos]

That appears to be a desktop motherboard that maxes out at 8GB RAM. Get a server mobo with intel NICs and ECC RAM from the motherboard vendor's hardware compatibility list. It will be more expensive, but worth the additional investment. I think most people will agree with me that this portion is not optional.

Choose a platform that allows lots of RAM. I regret the motherboard decision I made for one server because I choose a platform that maxes out at 32GB RAM.

 

[cyberjock]

What anodos said...

1. Don't go with desktop boards. The extra hardware(sound, firewire, etc.) can cause problems with FreeBSD.
2. Definitely reconsider AMD. They sometimes work and sometimes don't. AMD isn't well supported on FreeBSD, so there's a chance it won't work now and/or won't work in the future. We have lots of AMD users that are forever stuck on 8.x because their hardware won't boot 9.x without crashing.

Not sure how good/bad that case will be. I'm not sure anyone has tried to use that around here. Generally speaking, unless your case has fans that directly blow/suck air off the hard drives themselves or it's a high-end server case the hard drives may not have enough cooling. Just pointing it out as you may find you cannot cool your hard drives with that case. Small is fine and all, but it also turns the computer into a hotbox and it's well known that letting your hard drives run hot just means that you'll shorten their lifespan.

 

[indy]

I would not worry about the RAM too much.
16GB (or maybe even 8GB) are plenty for a low usage home system.

However Intel systems tend to net better results than AMD.
Not that AMD is bad, its probably just not supported as well by FreeBSD/NAS.

 

[chufi]

Hmm good point about freebsd support, are there 'recommended' low end intel boards that support ECC? I see a number of supermicro boards on here in the forums that come up over and over but seem to support the latest intel chips and people doing multiple stream transcoding, but that is way overkill for my use case so would rather not spend the cash on it if there are cheaper options with good support and ECC.

 

[danb35]

The SuperMicro X9SCL-F-O is ~$160; a few weeks ago NewEgg had them open box for $115. I'm running two of them (one in a FreeNAS box, one in another server), and they seem like very nice boards. I'm a big fan of the IPMI feature. A lower-end i3 processor is ~$120 and will work fine with this board; I think there may be some even cheaper CPUs that will work as well.

As to drive count, for RAIDZ2 you want 4, 6, or 10 disks, and will respectively have the net capacity of 2, 4, or 8.

 

[anodos]

Hmm good point about freebsd support, are there 'recommended' low end intel boards that support ECC? I see a number of supermicro boards on here in the forums that come up over and over but seem to support the latest intel chips and people doing multiple stream transcoding, but that is way overkill for my use case so would rather not spend the cash on it if there are cheaper options with good support and ECC.

Server motherboards are more expensive than desktop ones. This is because of features (like ECC support, good NICs, IPMI) and reliability.
Note that there are non-xeon options for the CPU that support ECC, and you can save money by skipping features you don't need (like IPMI, extra NICs, etc.).

 

[chufi]

As to drive count, for RAIDZ2 you want 4, 6, or 10 disks, and will respectively have the net capacity of 2, 4, or 8.

That is good to know, 2-4 TB is fine and I could then save 4 bays for making a future 2+2 vdev and add that to the pool (or make a new pool) in the future.

Server motherboards are more expensive than desktop ones. This is because of features (like ECC support, good NICs, IPMI) and reliability.
Note that there are non-xeon options for the CPU that support ECC, and you can save money by skipping features you don't need (like IPMI, extra NICs, etc.).

ECC and 1 good NIC, 4-8 sata ports or expansion slot for additional sata controller is all I think I need, but trying to sort through all the motherboards and processors is a challenge for me. I found a list of ECC supported processors on intels site (I think anyway http://ark.intel.com/search/advanced?ECCMemory=true&MarketSegment=DT) but then can't seem to find any of the older ones on newegg (or work out an appropriate low feature board to go with.)

 

[Ericloewe]

Hmm good point about freebsd support, are there 'recommended' low end intel boards that support ECC? I see a number of supermicro boards on here in the forums that come up over and over but seem to support the latest intel chips and people doing multiple stream transcoding, but that is way overkill for my use case so would rather not spend the cash on it if there are cheaper options with good support and ECC.

You can get a basic Supermicro X10 motherboard for less than 200 bucks and an Intel Celeron G1820 (which is enough if it's doing basic file server duties) for less than 50 bucks.

 

[Hyperion]

Reliability is kinda the whole point of having server/pc that works

 

[danb35]

Celeron G1630 (Socket 1155) is $60 at Newegg, and the X9SCL motherboard is $150--though I would recommend spending the extra $10 for the -F version with IPMI (makes it easy to run completely headless, all the time). That motherboard has 6 SATA ports, 2x Intel gigabit NICs, and room for at least one M1015 to give you 8 more SATA ports. Supports up to 32 GB of RAM and ECC. That's a cost delta of $50-60 compared to your first post. If you can find the X9SCL open-box, that'll erase almost all of the cost delta.

If you want to have encrypted disks, you'll probably want to step up to a Xeon processor for the AES-NI feature.

 

[chufi]

Celeron G1630 (Socket 1155) is $60 at Newegg, and the X9SCL motherboard is $150--though I would recommend spending the extra $10 for the -F version with IPMI (makes it easy to run completely headless, all the time). That motherboard has 6 SATA ports, 2x Intel gigabit NICs, and room for at least one M1015 to give you 8 more SATA ports. Supports up to 32 GB of RAM and ECC. That's a cost delta of $50-60 compared to your first post. If you can find the X9SCL open-box, that'll erase almost all of the cost delta.

If you want to have encrypted disks, you'll probably want to step up to a Xeon processor for the AES-NI feature.

Thanks for the recommendations - keeping an eye out for open box seems like a good idea. I see http://www.amazon.com/dp/SUPERMICRO/?tag=ozlp-20 for $43 so not so bad only about $40+ bucks. Definitely don't need encryption.

I guess one follow up question is if want to put another 4 disks at some point in the future would it be 'better' to get an X10SL7 which (I think) has enough ports to run 8 drives (using the SAS ports as SATA) vs adding a m105? I would guess the single board without expansion card would use less power, but of course if I don't ever add more drives it would be a moot point.

 

[Ericloewe]

If you plan on expanding soon, the X10SL7-F is cheaper than separate Motherboard and M1015 (on most occasions).

Power consumption should be about the same (maybe the X10SL7-F uses a little less power since it uses the newer LSI SAS 2308) and an M1015 allows for cleaner SAS cabling (only really useful if you're using SAS expanders, of course) instead of the X10SL7-F's individually-exposed SAS channels.

 

[chufi]

I guess one more question - is there anywhere in the forums where people post the power use of their systems at idle (with specs) to be able to see a range of power use in different configs? I'd be interested in seeing what kind of power use some 'typical' home systems use.

 

[gpsguy]

Yes, it's a desktop board, but it will accommodate up to 32Gb of ECC RAM.

joeschmuck, one of our moderators, is running FreeNAS on the same motherboard and CPU.

That appears to be a desktop motherboard that maxes out at 8GB RAM.

 

[cyberjock]

You can get a basic Supermicro X10 motherboard for less than 200 bucks and an Intel Celeron G1820 (which is enough if it's doing basic file server duties) for less than 50 bucks.

Actually, we've found the Pentium G2020 and G3220 to be about the lowest-end CPU we recommend. At only about $10-20 more than the Celeron it's generally considered a good buy. If you don't plan to do maximum compression, use encryption, or transcode videos with plex in a jail you'll find the G2020/G3220 to be an excellent performer.

 

[chufi]

Do these boards (supermicro X9 / X10) let you install RAM as singletons (I.e., one 16G now and leave a slot open for additional later?)

 

[Ericloewe]

Do these boards (supermicro X9 / X10) let you install RAM as singletons (I.e., one 16G now and leave a slot open for additional later?)

Yes, but only with DIMMs up to 8GB. Intel processors older than the Avoton Atoms (including the Haswell refresh line) do not support 16GB unbuffered DIMMs. Additionally, LGA1155/1150 processors don't support Registered memory.

 

[cyberjock]

Do these boards (supermicro X9 / X10) let you install RAM as singletons (I.e., one 16G now and leave a slot open for additional later?)

Some do, but the answer is best obtained from the manual for your board.

 

[chufi]

It did work as a singleton for 8g ecc - freenas is up and humming along, 30watts when no writes - drives don't seem to spin down ever but at 30watts I don't really care. Got crashplan installed which seems to work even if the transfer rate is fairly terrible 13MBs vs timemachine which hummed along at 60MBs (not running at the same time) I have far more space than I need at the moment so running them both. Still thinking about offsite backup - thinking of getting an older workstation that supports ECC and 4 drives off ebay and putting it at someone elses house to copy data to, but a work in progress.