ASRock AB350 Pro4 w/Realtek RTL8111GR

[Eddie Current]

I didn't realize the ASRock AB350 Pro4 that I bought has a Realtek NIC which I now know is to be avoided with FreeNAS. I have 2ea. (NIB) Intel EXPI9301CTBLK Network Adapters that will fit and not be in conflict.

Questions:

1. Would I benefit from using two NICs or should I just use one (multi-devices at the same time will be using this NAS to stream audio and video (Plex)?
2. If two or more NICs is preferred in this setup, would it be better to buy one multi port NIC rather than two separate NICs?

Note: not to get into much detail, my network has decent bones.

 

[Inxsible]

Does it support ECC RAM? If it does not, you should sell the board or use it for something else.

1. Two NICs are not beneficial unless you plan to use Link Aggregation which for "most" home networks is not required.
2. See 1

EDIT: I went into the detailed specs and I saw that it does support ECC Unbuffered RAM.

 

[Eddie Current]

Yes, it does support ECC and I have 2ea. 16GB (32GB in dual channel) of 2400 ECC.

I'm n the fence with Link Aggregation, I'm still reading about it and the pros and cons. Plus I not sure if my switches supporting LACP?

 

[BigDave]

Questions:

1. Would I benefit from using two NICs or should I just use one (multi-devices at the same time will be using this NAS to stream audio and video (Plex)?
2. If two or more NICs is preferred in this setup, would it be better to buy one multi port NIC rather than two separate NICs?

1. If your number of client connections are double digits or greater, it might...
2. Properly configured, the two cards you have will work fine being separate, but the downside is they take up two slots on the motherboard...

 

[Eddie Current]

1. If your number of client connections are double digits or greater, it might...
2. Properly configured, the two cards you have will work fine being separate, but the downside is they take up two slots on the motherboard...

I could see that on rare occasions client count could be as high as 8-10, but that would be once or twice a year during holidays.

Just finished reading that my switches do in fact support Link Aggregate Group (LAG) Configuration (managed switches). However, I will go ahead and install both but only use one until I get everything up and running (if no one sees a problem with that). I really don't want to add too much to the already steep learning curve.

 

[Inxsible]

Yup. Play the long game. Tackle one thing at a time. Good Luck !

 

[Stux]

When using link aggregation, no single client will see more than a gigabit. And the way it works is some clients will connect via one of the ports and some by the other.

If wanting to actually get gigabit to multiple clients, using a 10gbe uplink to a switch with at least one 10gbe link actually works well. In this case each client will be able to pull a full gigabit, up to about 10 simultaneously

Of course, the bottleneck then becomes your disks

Pretty cool, but 10gbe is still expensive.

 

[Eddie Current]

If I don't get 10gbe that's OK with me, I just want to learn how to get what I have now optimized.

 

[SweetAndLow]

If I don't get 10gbe that's OK with me, I just want to learn how to get what I have now optimized.

Link aggregation does not help performance for a single client. It only helps performance for your whole network of clients. I would pretend it doesn't exist if I was you.

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