losmi
Cadet
- Joined
- May 4, 2016
- Messages
- 4
alternate title: The only way we can build a cheap-ish Skylake FreeNAS box in Europe
I'm posting this because people have asked before about this board's compatibility with FreeNAS.
I have finally (almost) completed my build using the Gigabyte GA-X150M-PRO ECC motherboard, I say almost because I don't have the HDDs yet but I have the system up and running with FreeNAS installed and detecting everything.
Before anyone asks why I didn't get a Supermicro board, its the price of course. The Gigabyte mobo+discrete GPU=€136, Supermicro X11SSL-F=€270 X11SSM=€295 X10SL7-F=€350, the choice was more than clear, I don't care for IPMI, for these savings I'll carry a monitor over and plug it in if/when needed, its not like we're using CRTs these days :)
Use Case: 24/7 running CIFS shares for desktop and Kodi HTPC (no transcoding), torrents, perhaps a VM or two, backup and cloud for phones/other PCs.
The build and prices:
Of course there are plenty of opportunities to save money on this build. ie. Pentium G instead of i3, only 8gb RAM, a non-NVMe SSD or no SSD at all and running FreeNAS from USB, a cheap used discrete GPU from ebay and a recycled case. Taking some of these cost cutting measures, I imagine this could be easily built for €400 total or even slightly less! Depends how far you're willing to go.
Using the newest stable download of FreeNAS (9.10) everything was detected and working successfully right from the start.
Some relevant info from dmesg:
And from lspci:
And thats that, now I'm just missing 6x WD Red 4tb which at €170 each are going to hurt and might be a few months away as I try to save up the money by eating bread and salt for every meal :P Hope this helps someone deciding on a cheap Skylake build.
Some photos:
I'm posting this because people have asked before about this board's compatibility with FreeNAS.
I have finally (almost) completed my build using the Gigabyte GA-X150M-PRO ECC motherboard, I say almost because I don't have the HDDs yet but I have the system up and running with FreeNAS installed and detecting everything.
Before anyone asks why I didn't get a Supermicro board, its the price of course. The Gigabyte mobo+discrete GPU=€136, Supermicro X11SSL-F=€270 X11SSM=€295 X10SL7-F=€350, the choice was more than clear, I don't care for IPMI, for these savings I'll carry a monitor over and plug it in if/when needed, its not like we're using CRTs these days :)
Use Case: 24/7 running CIFS shares for desktop and Kodi HTPC (no transcoding), torrents, perhaps a VM or two, backup and cloud for phones/other PCs.
The build and prices:
- Gigabyte GA-X150M-PRO ECC €96
- intel i3 6100 with stock cooler €106
- 2x 8GB Crucial DDR4-2400 ECC UDIMM (CT8G4WFS824A) €92 (the mobo only supports DDR4-2133 but this is all I could find)
- 128GB Samsung SM951-NVMe M.2 2280 PCIe 3.0 x4 32Gb/ MLC (MZVPV128HDGM) €76 (you MUST get a PCIe M.2 SSD on this mobo or you will lose 1 SATA port, with a PCIe SSD you lose the SATA express port but not regular SATA so all 6 are available)
- 2048MB EVGA GeForce GT 710 2GB Passive €40
- Corsair RM550x PSU €100 (I really wanted the Seasonic G2 550 but it is unavailable here :( )
- Fractal Design Arc Mini €50 (purchased used)
Of course there are plenty of opportunities to save money on this build. ie. Pentium G instead of i3, only 8gb RAM, a non-NVMe SSD or no SSD at all and running FreeNAS from USB, a cheap used discrete GPU from ebay and a recycled case. Taking some of these cost cutting measures, I imagine this could be easily built for €400 total or even slightly less! Depends how far you're willing to go.
Using the newest stable download of FreeNAS (9.10) everything was detected and working successfully right from the start.
Some relevant info from dmesg:
Code:
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-6100 CPU @ 3.70GHz (3696.16-MHz K8-class CPU) FreeBSD/SMP: Multiprocessor System Detected: 4 CPUs FreeBSD/SMP: 1 package(s) x 2 core(s) x 2 SMT threads aesni0: <AES-CBC,AES-XTS> on motherboard xhci0: <Intel Sunrise Point USB 3.0 controller> mem 0xdf220000-0xdf22ffff irq 16 at device 20.0 on pci0 ahci0: <Intel Sunrise Point AHCI SATA controller> port 0xf050-0xf057,0xf040-0xf043,0xf020-0xf03f mem 0xdf234000-0xdf235fff,0xdf238000-0xdf2380ff,0xdf237000-0xdf2377ff irq 16 at device 23.0 on pci0 ahci0: AHCI v1.31 with 6 6Gbps ports, Port Multiplier not supported nvme0: <Generic NVMe Device> port 0xd000-0xd0ff mem 0xdf100000-0xdf103fff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci3 em0: <Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Connection 7.6.1-k> mem 0xdf200000-0xdf21ffff irq 16 at device 31.6 on pci0 usbus0: 5.0Gbps Super Speed USB v3.0 nvd0: <SAMSUNG MZVPV128HDGM-00000> NVMe namespace nvd0: 122104MB (250069680 512 byte sectors)
And from lspci:
Code:
[root@freenas] /var/log# lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Skylake Host Bridge/DRAM Registers (rev 07) 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Skylake PCIe Controller (x16) (rev 07) 00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H USB 3.0 xHCI Controller (rev 31) 00:14.2 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H Thermal subsystem (rev 31) 00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H CSME HECI #1 (rev 31) 00:17.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H SATA controller [AHCI mode] (rev 31) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H PCI Express Root Port #5 (rev f1) 00:1d.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H PCI Express Root Port #9 (rev f1) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H LPC Controller (rev 31) 00:1f.2 Memory controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H PMC (rev 31) 00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H SMBus (rev 31) 00:1f.6 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Connection (2) I219-LM (rev 31) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GK208 [GeForce GT 710] (rev a1) 01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation GK208 HDMI/DP Audio Controller (rev a1) 03:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd NVMe SSD Controller (rev 01)
And thats that, now I'm just missing 6x WD Red 4tb which at €170 each are going to hurt and might be a few months away as I try to save up the money by eating bread and salt for every meal :P Hope this helps someone deciding on a cheap Skylake build.
Some photos:
