Building a NAS for streaming to popcornhour's

[Manuel F. Almeida]

Hello guys!

I want to build a NAS for home use only but with medium to great capabilities of future expansion to 15+ TB

I have 3 nmt's (popcornhour ones) so I want to go for a full gigabite system with ZFS file system.

I have chosen only the case and processor yet because I am clueless to what mobo type to buy. I do not want ULTRA expensive things altough I know the ram needs for ZFS, etc.

I want your suggestions for: Motherboard which model's you recommend?

I've seen the thread about hardware suggestions but the supermicro listed ones seem a bit expensive.

The processor will be
Intel® Pentium® Processor G2020 (socket 1155)
(3M Cache, 2.90 GHz)

the case will be
FRACTAL DESIGN ARC NODE 304

 

[jgreco]

I've seen the thread about hardware suggestions but the supermicro listed ones seem a bit expensive.

Really? Because they actually tend to be cheaper than equivalent products from the competition, especially when you consider that those boards may come with a Realtek ethernet chipset which will turn into a candidate for replacement or poor performance. So if you take a X9SCM at $150 and subtract the cost of an Intel Pro/1000 at $35, you need to find a suitable board for $115 or less to be able to have even a chance at winning the expense argument, and then, the Supermicro will start pounding on you in the expandability department.

 

[Manuel F. Almeida]

Ok thanks.

As to the Motherboard X9SCM does not seem compatible with G2020, as reported in here, is it true?

I would want to go for
G2020+ X9SCM

 

[jgreco]

I actually just finished responding to that in this thread.

It is supposed to be compatible, as far as I can tell, and people have actually built systems with them, easy enough to Google. However, I am not one of those people. I list it in the recommendations as an alternative for those who cannot afford the $150 Xeon tax.

 

[Manuel F. Almeida]

Yeah I noticed that. I will buy them then, you guess it does not involve any upgrading and/or tweaking so ?

btw X9SCM comes with IPMI ?

 

[jgreco]

X9SCM comes with IPMI ?

No, but the X9SCM-F does. Most users of FreeNAS don't care about IPMI, which typically adds $10-$40.

 

[Manuel F. Almeida]

Ok thanks for being so kind. Because Im in doubt with this:

Imagine I buy X9SCM-B (or whatever the class of the board which DOESNT come with IPMI is), i pretend to run freenas from USB stick but then how can I log into Bios in the first run, to change boot order if I dont have image? Or do they come with inbuilt graphics ?

 

[jgreco]

The "-B" is just notation for the bulk pak version which omits the retail box, cables, etc. and is basically just the board itself. It is meant for people integrating the product into a Supermicro chassis. So "X9SCM-F-B" would be the bulk pak version with IPMI. "-O" is notation for retail kit.

The Supermicro boards do not utilize the Intel graphics support a CPU may offer. They have their own Nuvotron graphics controller, a "server-grade" (one of the few times that's a euphemism for "low-performance") graphics controller that is intimately married with the IPMI/BMC hardware.