BUILD Another Build Check Thread...

[Mitch72]

Sorry to be adding on to all of the others... Just looking for a check of my build, a few quick questions I'd like to ask too. Planning on building around an 5TB FreeNAS setup. Will predominantly be used for media streaming. Most likely will have a Sickbeard/SABNzbd setup for downloading also if possible.

Case: Fractal Design Define R4
Motherboard: Supermicro X10SLM-F
CPU: Intel Xeon X3-1230v3
RAM: KVR16E11/8 8GB Kingston ValueRAM - unbuffered with ECC
PSU: Seasonic G series 360W
HDDs: x5 WD 3TB Red (in Raidz3)

My only concerns are regarding lack of Haswell compatibility with FreeNAS. I've also seen a bit of anecdotal info about various PSU's being incompatible with IPMI and supermicro boards, but couldn't find anything solid about it.

Supermicro availability is a bit tricky here, but I can get a X9SCM-F and a X3-1230v2 for pretty much the same price if there's an issue with the Haswell CPU. Are there any serious compatibility issues with Haswell?

The HDDs will be in RaidZ3 in a single vdev. For expandability, I'll add another vdev of another 5 3tb HDDs and a M1015 when required.

I'm just looking for feedback in case I've missed anything stupid. Thanks!

 

[DrKK]

Your build sounds perfect. You have the DrKK Seal of Approval, right down the line. Proceed, sir.

 

[DrKK]

Sounds like a G3220 CPU would probably work for you. And that's $150 or so, cheaper. Had you considered that? I run one for mine, and unless you're going to be transcoding in Plex or something, you're more than fine.

 

[PenalunWil]

Why not get the X10SL7-F or X9SL7-F both have a LSI 2308 SAS controller built in. It will give you the option of expanding at some point in the future. It is also quite easy to flash to IT using the firmware. If I can do it anyone can ;).
That would give you eight sata connections using the LSI in IT mode and a further six on the Mobo, a total of 14. Okay its a little more expensive but how much is a M1015? I've just finished by build and it's great. It was my first ever build.I mean I haven't even built a computer before.

 

[joelmusicman]

For the Haswell compatibility, there's no issues that I've noted on my G3220, and plenty of folks run Haswell-based builds around here. The only issue of note is that USB 3.0 is not supported by FreeBSD/FreeNAS and the ports may or may not be available for use as USB2.

 

[Mitch72]

Thanks for all the responses!

Sounds like a G3220 CPU would probably work for you

Yeah, it's around $200 less here, much cheaper. I do plan to do some Plex transcoding, but nothing too major, most of my media is already in compatible containers/formats. :)

Why not get the X10SL7-F or X9SL7-F both have a LSI 2308 SAS controller built in. It will give you the option of expanding at some point in the future. It is also quite easy to flash to IT using the firmware. If I can do it anyone can ;).
That would give you eight sata connections using the LSI in IT mode and a further six on the Mobo, a total of 14.

It's about $100 more here, still about half the price of a M1015 though! I'll probably go with the X10Sl7-F. Based on that, I'll probably go with a 7 drive Raidz3 vdev.

The case only has 10 -11 drive bays (including the 5.25" bays with adapters in them) so I might have to consider something different later on, but x7 3TB drives will give me 10.9TB usable, which is pretty much the maximum capacity I planned for anyway. I guess I could go with another x4 3TB drives in a separate RaidZ2 vdev.

For the Haswell compatibility, there's no issues that I've noted on my G3220, and plenty of folks run Haswell-based builds around here. The only issue of note is that USB 3.0 is not supported by FreeBSD/FreeNAS and the ports may or may not be available for use as USB2.

Thanks! That sounds great. I'm not too worried about usb3, and there's enough usb2 ports on the motherboard so there shouldn't be any issues.

 

[Benny Mac]

Hi there. Sorry to be that guy, but I'll add my comment as I'm also at the "About to press the buy button" stage.

I'm going for a Supermicro X10SL7-F and would like to get the Kingston memory, as it's far cheaper than the recommended Samsung type. But if you search this forum you'll find a lot of posts in the last couple of months about possible problems with the Kingston 8Gb modules. On the Kingston website you'll see that module isn't recommended for any X10* board (unless I'm misreading it).

If you haven't yet ordered your ram, then you may want to take a read and make up your own mind. And if you have ordered, then please let us know how you get on!

PS: I've already got a Fractal Design Define R4. Lovely case. Next time I get one it'll be the version with the window ;)

 

[PenalunWil]

Try looking for Hynix RAM. They are definately on Supermicro's list for theX10SL7-F
http://www.servercase.co.uk/shop/co...ddr31600mhz-ecc-unbuffered-memdr380lhl01eu16/

 

[Mitch72]

Sorry for the late reply! Just following up on everything. I've completed the build now, very happy so far. Ended up going with the Samsung (x2 8GB)

Read/Write speeds topping out at around 110MB/s over LAN. SabNZBD downloading, plex streaming etc all completely fine. Haven't tried any transcoding yet, will report back when I do.

 

[i3luefire]

Why not get the X10SL7-F or X9SL7-F both have a LSI 2308 SAS controller built in. It will give you the option of expanding at some point in the future. It is also quite easy to flash to IT using the firmware. If I can do it anyone can ;).
That would give you eight sata connections using the LSI in IT mode and a further six on the Mobo, a total of 14. Okay its a little more expensive but how much is a M1015? I've just finished by build and it's great. It was my first ever build.I mean I haven't even built a computer before.

what is the "X9SL7-F"?

 

[katit]

Why not G3470? Affordable, similar to older "G" but faster clock which is important for SAMBA

 

[MtK]

HDDs: x5 WD 3TB Red (in Raidz3

This sounds like a huge waste of storage...
You'll have more parity drives than actual data drives...

 

[PenalunWil]

what is the "X9SL7-F"?

I thought it was the Supermicro X9 series with the LSI2308... but it's not. I think it's the X9SRH-7.

 

[DrKK]

Why not G3470? Affordable, similar to older "G" but faster clock which is important for SAMBA

Won't make any difference that anyone could possibly notice.

 

[katit]

Won't make any difference that anyone could possibly notice.

If SAMBA uses 1 thread and we do it at 3GHz vs 3.6GHz - it's a 20% speed difference.

I won't notice difference for sure, it's not my NAS...

 

[DrKK]

If SAMBA uses 1 thread and we do it at 3GHz vs 3.6GHz - it's a 20% speed difference.

I won't notice difference for sure, it's not my NAS...

No. Not necessarily. The 20% speed difference would only be the problem if the SMB connection was bottlenecked at the CPU. You will almost never see that, particularly sub 10GbE. The bottleneck is the network, generally.

I mean, someone correct me if I'm wrong.

I literally think you literally won't notice one single difference, even if you tried to measure one.

 

[katit]

I cant argument because I dont know what exactly SAMBA doing. I do agree that in practical sense there will be no difference because network latency, seek speed and so on adds up to much more then what we save on CPU. But I don't think it's correct that difference will be only when we "bottleneck" CPU. The difference will be in time that it takes CPU to process set of instructions even without queue (bottleneck). So, for example (and I don't know what's where, just guessing here) if all data needed for samba located in ARC or other fast cache and we are working with large lists of small files. SAMBA processes files one by one. Checks permissions, builds headers, etc. Process all data and generate packet is strictly CPU. One processor will do it 20% faster. And it's not about CPU utilization graph we see, because it's just averaged out thing. In practice CPU runs 100% when it processes instructions.

So, I don't know if copying 10000 small files will make a difference with one or another in _practical_ sense. Most likely not. But in any case - this CPU will process queues faster than slower one, there is no doubt. And I know for sure that higher clocked CPU with less threads will work better than slower expensive Xeons with 16 hyperthreads when there is no software that utilizes it.

 

[Ericloewe]

The singlethreaded nature of Samba is often misrepresented. Every connection gets its own thread, so CPU bottlenecks are rare when dealing with realistic scenarios of heavy load (multiple users == more data but also more threads).