First build - Advice appreciated!

[Hecsall]

Hi everyone!
This is my first post since I'm new here, but I've been "lurking" a lot in search of good components for my fist FreeNAS build.
I'm not really new to PC building, but I've never done anything "server-related" and as I know servers and such are a bit tricky to get right, so here I am asking for your opinion.

I'm coming from an old QNAP TS-212P NAS, and I just want some more power and more "flexibility" with the OS.

First of all, the components list (from amazon.it since I'm in Italy):

• Motherboard: Supermicro X10SDV-4C-TLN2F (Datasheet)
• RAM: Crucial Crucial CT16G4DFD8266 (single 16GB ECC DIMM 2666mhz bank, will run at 2133 but nevermind)
• OS Boot Drive: WD Green M.2 120GB
• HDDs: 2 x 2TB WD Reds from old NAS, will expand later as needed
• Case: Fractal Design Node 304 (smallest I found without spending 200€ for a plastic box)
• PSU: Corsair VS350

What the usage will be:
Mainly, this will store documents/music/backups, it will also be used as a media server to watch Movies on a smart tv over Plex or DLNA (found it's possible with MiniDLNA), and I'll use it as a torrent download station.
Maybe I will try to keep a Windows VM in there, or some other Linux distribution (that's why I opted for a Xeon).
I will also schedule some cronjobs to backup some websites hosted on a VPS, all over Rsync.
If you are wondering why I'm considering switching NAS, well, as soon I start to watch a 1080p movie on my QNAP, its CPU immediately spikes to 100%, and after some minutes the stream crash. Also, being an old NAS, there aren't many supported apps and it's hard to find compatible ones.

The initial budget for this build was around 500-600€, but since I'm trying to do something good that can last, I can go a little over (current build sits around 750€ more or less).

Some considerations on the part list:
For the motherboard, I went with that because I don't want to have to change it in the short term, and the Xeon should have enough power to handle pretty much everything and with a TDP of 45 watts seems nice considering that the new Synology DS920+ can reach 32W with just a Celeron inside. Also note, on amazon.it there aren't many "server" ITX motherboards, you can really count them with one hand, and I would like to start working on it in the next 2 weeks so I'll stick with amazon fast (i hope) shipping.
For the RAM, I went for a single 16GB stick so I could, if needed, add one 16gb-stick at a time to reach a total of 4x16=64gb of ram that's the maximum supported for that Supermicro board for DIMM slots.
For the Boot drive, I went for an M.2 drive simply because it costs pretty much the same as a SATA SSD, and on the Hardware Guide, I found that m.2 SSDs are a better choice than USB sticks.
For the Case, I just needed something small that can stay near my TV in the living room without standing too much, and possibly silent. Also, it should be able to fit 6 HDDs right in front of the fans, which should give a decent airflow to keep the disks safe.
Finally, for the PSU I really picked the first "low wattage" PSU I found, feel free to tell me something better, I just tried not to go too crazy with the expenses.

So, I think I wrote pretty much everything, feel free to ask questions or suggest anything!
Thank you in advance!

 

[ThreeDee]

I've ran 7 simultaneous streams with my plex to various friends/family on lesser hardware (Xeon E3-1230 w/32gb DDR3 ECC UDIMM's), so you're golden there.. if you are looking to run VM's and such, I'd recommend getting another 16gb stick of ram sooner rather than later ... and if you value your data, a UPS is nice to have for piece of mind if your power goes out/fluctuates ..etc ..

 

[Yorick]

If I read this right, the D-1521 has just under 6,000 passmark, which means three transcoded 1080p streams for sure, maybe a few more. Transcoding should be optional with Plex, you’d usually direct stream without transcode. Subtitles do require transcode unless they are text-based srt.

That board uses 10gbase-t, a feature you likely won’t use: If 10G, then sfp+ is a lot more affordable on the switch side.

I think this build is okay. You can likely get a little more performance for less if building with a different board, though.

For example x11scl-if paired with an e-2124, and a small m.2 NVMe, for example Hp ex900 120gb, or Intel Optane 16Gb if you don’t trust the HP. NVMe so all SATA ports remain available. 4 SATA, if you need more, you’d add an HBA.
Passmark is around 7k for the xeon.

Another good CPU choice here is the i3-9100f, if you think you won’t ever want more than 64GB of memory. i3 still supports ECC, and has just under 7k passmark. Alternatively some form of i3-8100, whichever is easier to source.

X11SCL-iF | Motherboards | Products | Supermicro

The choice of case limits you a little in board choice, because it has to be mITX, not uATX - this means fewer sata ports and fewer pcie expansion options for things like 10Gb sfp+ cards. I understand the need to stay in a node304. If you can bump up to a node804, then options like an x11sch-f with e-2124g become available, which adds more SATA ports and PCIe slots and an iGPU for playing with hw transcode; or x11scl-f with e-2124, a little less SATA and no iGPU.
Ditto for i3-9100f (no iGPU) or i3-8100 (with iGPU, likely supported in TrueNAS Core 12) or i3-9100 (with iGPU, support in TrueNAS 13 maybe?) being a good choice in uATX boards.

Lastly, power supply: Assume 30W startup draw per HDD, and then deciding on how many HDDs you intend to add, know your eventual limit. Fully modular PSUs are a good idea, they are cleaner in cabling and give you flexibility around 3.3V if you ever want to shuck helium HDDs.

I assume you know this, and: Extending the capacity of your 2-wide mirror can be done by adding additional 2-wide mirrors, by replacing both drives in your mirror one by one, or by taking the data off and rebuilding the pool as raidz.

 

[Hecsall]

Thank you everyone for the fast response!

This morning I checked amazon again and I discovered that the motherboard went from 530€ to 660€, and the Crucial RAM was a non-ECC module so the plan changed a bit.

So, thank you @ThreeDee for letting me know the number of streams you can get with a Xeon, in my case I don't think there will be more than 2 concurrent streams at a time, and for budget-related reasons, I think I will put on the side the idea of VMs and go with a cheaper CPU like an i3 9100 for the moment.
Also thank you @Yorick for pointing out the "scalability" issues of ITX motherboards. I don't think I will ever need an SFP+ card since I'm not in a big network, so for now, I'll stick with the idea of having only 4 HDD, and if I really need more storage I will buy a PCI-e SAS controller to get more SATA ports.

Let me recap what my parts list is now:
- Motherboard: Supermicro X11SCL-IF (still mITX form factor but with support for 9th gen i3)
- CPU: Intel Core i3-9100 (since the higher Passmark score than an 8100, thanks Yorick)
- PSU: EVGA 450 BT (little more watts and trustworthy, EVGA never died on me once)
- RAM: Kingston Server Premier (ECC this time, 2666mhz, 16GB, DDR4 DIMM)
- OS Boot Drive, Case, and HDD stays the same as above
This brings the total to 657€
I could also save the cost of the case since I have a huge spare case at home, but that would be a little big (Thermaltake X9), and would not be fitting so well in the living room... I could keep it in my room but earing fan and HDD noises at night would be a little frustrating.

This should be pretty decent I think, and maybe in the future, I could swap the i3 with a Xeon if needed, what do you guys think?
Thanks again!

 

[ThreeDee]

I don't know how your home is laid out .. but I keep my server in the basement in our pantry .. cooler down there and out of ear shot of everybody.

 

[Yorick]

If you are using an X11SCL-IF, you may as well choose the i3-9100F: The X11SCL does not support the iGPU in the i3-9100, and you don't need it anyway, so you can save yourself a few euros more by choosing a CPU that's just as powerful but doesn't have an iGPU: The i3-9100F.

Keep in mind that you have 4 SATA ports and have chosen an M.2 SATA OS boot drive. This is probably okay, the C242 chipset provides 6 SATA and only four are on the board, which means it's quite possible that you can have your M.2 SATA boot drive and retain all four on-board SATA ports. That said, I recommended an M.2 NVMe drive instead so that there wouldn't be any chance of an on-board SATA port being disabled for the M.2 boot.

 

[Hecsall]

I don't know how your home is laid out .. but I keep my server in the basement in our pantry .. cooler down there and out of ear shot of everybody.

Yeah that's an ideal solution, sadly I don't have any basement and my garage is full of stuff and I can't place any ethernet plug there, I'll have to stick with the smaller "family-friendly" NAS.

The X11SCL does not support the iGPU in that CPU

Won't the iGPU help with video transcoding? Or it's really unusable with that specific motherboard? Saving some euros would be really good, but if there is the remote possibility to use the iGPU for offloading some tasks I don't really mind spending a bit more.
Thanks for pointing out the SSD being a SATA one, but for now I'll keep it since NvME SSDs cost a little bit more, then when I'll add another 2 HDDs if I encounter issues I'll know what that could be, thanks!
So, if you can confirm to me that the iGPU can't really be used I'll dive in with the 9100F (saving 50€ would really be nice)!

Again, thank you for your help!

 

[Samuel Tai]

HW transcoding is hit or miss. It's better to have Plex create optimized versions at different resolutions for the different devices. Even SW transcoding isn't too bad. I have a Xeon i3-1230L v3, and SW dynamic transcoding to 1080p 20 Mbps is good enough for my iPad.

 

[Yorick]

Boot drive: Okay. I checked amazon.it and you are right, the Italian market has fewer NVMe at good prices. There's a Transcend for 31.40, but that's still a hair higher than the one you chose. Keep the one you selected. Transcend for reference: https://www.amazon.it/Transcend-ts128gmte110s-Solid-State-128-GB/dp/B07CXC32T2/

Won't the iGPU help with video transcoding?

Oh you had to ask. I am happy to talk about it, AT LENGTH!

Kidding aside: The C242 chipset does not support iGPU. C246 can, IF both the board and UEFI implement it. That's currently only the X11SCH-F. What's more, FreeBSD has to support it. FreeBSD 12.1 supports the iGPU in an 8100, but not the Coffee Lake Refresh 9100, that's expected with FreeBSD 13. Then, it actually has to work for transcode, and Plex currently has a bug (might be Kaby Lake related though) where hw transcode for PGS and VOBSUB subtitles doesn't work. In addition, on Kaby Lake at least, VC1 transcode can be "blocky" in high-contrest scenes. The two actual use cases for hw transcode don't work or don't work well, currently. No doubt that'll be fixed eventually.

TL;DR: The X11SCL-IF will never use an iGPU, there's no sense in putting one in there.

 

[Yorick]

Side note: Your Node304 build is arguably more forward-looking than my Node804. Sure, I have around 40TiB of space, which should cover me for the next 5+ years for growth, I don't buy that many Blu Rays. And, Seagate aims to have a 50TB drive by 2026. Which means 25TB should be affordable by then no doubt, and a setup with four 25TB or, eventually, two 50TB would have the same useable space as my current 8-drive setup. I can see a future where home NAS is a 2-drive or 4-drive affair, even for those who like to keep medium-sized movie libraries.

 

[Hecsall]

Thank you for the clarification about the iGPU matter, Yorick!
Considering I don't have so many files in my current NAS I think that 4 drives of space will be plenty, and as you said, drives are getting cheaper and cheaper.
Now I can feel pretty safe with this build, I'll proceed to order everything in 2 days if there are no issues on amazon (like crazy price changes).
As soon as I have everything up and running I'll let you know!
Thanks again everyone!

 

[dak180]

- PSU: EVGA 450 BT (little more watts and trustworthy, EVGA never died on me once)

You may want to consider the EVGA SuperNOVA 550 G3; it gives you a bit more headroom, is fully modular, has enough sata power for 6 drives without splitters, a silent mode to not run the fan at low temps and is based off the superflower designs (arguably one of the top two best power supply designs).

 

[pschatz100]

Regarding the iGPU, I would probably pass on it. Yes, it's nice to think about the holy grail of hardware transcoding but right now, quality of hardware transcoding is not as good as software transcoding.

Think about your use case: Whether or not Plex will have to transcode when serving media depends upon the playback devices. Most current smart TV's, and the later versions of Roku's and Firesticks with 4K support, are likely going to be able to playback your media without transcoding. However, if you plan to stream remotely to a friend's house, or to mobile devices and phones, then transcoding will be more important.

 

[Hecsall]

This weekend, as soon as I decided to order everything, motherboard and CPU went out of stock... damn.

BUT this made me think of something I totally ignored, AMD.

I'm a happy Ryzen 2700X user, so I did a little research and I discovered the ASRockRack X470D4U, so out of curiosity, I looked for Ryzen Passmarks to discover that hooooly moly the Ryzen 5 3600 kills any low-budget intel CPU, scoring 17830 points (that's good for Plex even for 4K transcoding as I think I understood), and has a pretty low TDP.
I also searched the forum and I noticed this motherboard has some issues with ECC compatibility and Ryzen CPUs, but so far I think everyone solved their issues and are happy with it.

So the question now is...
Do you think I could go AMD with this board? (leaving the fact that's an mATX, I will adapt somehow)
I already checked and the RAM I choose is inside the tested ECC RAMs from ASRock's website.

 

[Yorick]

AMD is absolutely an option, and that’s a good board to do it with. As you say, uATX, so maybe a Node 804 instead.

 

[Hecsall]

Nice, thank you!
I've placed the order (without the case for the moment), everything should arrive in 2 days except for the board that will arrive in a week.
Let's hope everything goes well with the shipment

 

[Hecsall]

I'm back with some good news!
Everything arrived, and FreeNAS seems to be working pretty well.

First of all, I disabled the "C6 Enabled" inside the BIOS, just like other X470D4U users reported around the forum.
Then I did a test with Memtest86, let it run for like 5 hours, and ended with no errors.
The FreeNAS installation went pretty smooth, but after "playing" with the interface for 2 hours I noticed an alert that popped up saying "Boot pool status is DEGRADED". Did a little research on the forum and found out that with some SSDs there is this "trim" option enabled that caused this corruption, so I did a fresh install and followed what @gnefarious posted on this thread, and with that, I think I managed to get rid of this issue. The NAS uptime is now at about 10 hours and I didn't get any new alert, I also managed to transfer something like 1TB of data without problems.

Some notes for who thinks to buy this motherboard:
- Look out for the SSD trim issue mentioned above, follow @gnefarious answer carefully.
- This motherboard has 2 m.2 slots, but they are not the same. The slot m2_0 supports only PCI SSDs, the m2_1 slot supports both PCI and SATA SSDs, I noticed this because my WD Green m2 drive was not recognized by the bios because it's an m.2 SATA, so not supported from the m2_0 port, I had to use the other one. Keep this in mind if you plan to do mirrored SSDs or something like that, you will have to go with NvME.
- When mounting the AMD stock cooler (if you use that) mount it with the "AMD" logo upside down (pointing to the bottom of the board, to be clear), this way you will save a RAM slot that would be otherwise covered by it. Doing so, you will have 3 available RAM slots because the bottom one is still covered by the plastic of the cooler. If you need 4 slots of RAM you should check some aftermarket coolers, maybe something pretty high.
- The motherboard came with only 1 SATA cable.

So, overall I'm happy with the result, I've already installed Plex, Transmission and configured some SMB shares.
Now every component sits inside the massive Thermaltake case until I buy a proper-sized case