BUILD Greenlight for this setup?

[Cupcake]

Hi guys. I need your blessing with my planned rig. A couple of weeks ago I've just finished my first freenas build and with recent readings in this forum more and more concerns from my side rise. Currently I'm using an Asus AMD board with non-ECC ram and only got 3x4TB drives in a Raid-Z1 configuration. Now I want to replace mainboard, CPU and ram with some more serious stuff. Board and CPU have been mentioned in Cyberjock's evil thread of truth, but as I've already wasted money I really want to be sure that everything is right this time. Mostly the NAS will be needed as a dump for backups and Media files from whole household.

Current Setup:
Mainboard: Asus M5A78LM/USB-3
CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 270
RAM: Kingston 16GB Kit (2x8GB Modules) 1333 non-ECC
RAM: Kingston 16GB (Kit 2x8GB) DDR3-1333 ECC CL9 w/TS
Drives: 6x WD 4TB red
Case: Fractal Design Define Mini + 5 x 120mm Fans
PSU: NesteQ NA 4501 450watt semi-passive

Replacement:
Mainboard: Supermicro X9SCM-F
CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1230V2
RAM: Kingston 16GB (Kit 2x8GB) DDR3-1333 ECC CL9 w/TS


Again, I have most of the components already. Only mainboard, CPU and RAM would change (That's why I was looking for Micro ATX boards, so it would fit my case).


UPDATE:
I can confirm that the Asus M5A78LM/USB-3 works with Kingston 16GB (Kit 2x8GB) DDR3-1333 ECC CL9 w/TS RAM kit! I *think* ECC is on but since I only used software/command line to check there's no way to be sure. Thought that this info might be useful to anyone who wants to build a cheap freenas server with an X2 processor and ECC ram.

 

[cyberjock]

That's pretty much my build, just less RAM and Reds(which didn't exist when I built my server). The case should be fine assuming that it provides good cooling for your hard drives. There is some discussion about FD cases in another thread recently with mixed comments as to its cooling abilities for hard drives. Keep the disks <40C at all times and it'll be fine.

 

[Cupcake]

Hehe I thought it will be "like yours" :)
The case is alright in fact, there are 2 cages for harddrives each carrying 3 drives. Every cage has directly in front of it a fan. Currently my drives are between 30°c and 36°c depending on load.

 

[JohnK]

21

Mostly the NAS will be needed as a dump for backups and Media files from whole household.

For your needs you might get away using a Pentium or i3 CPU and rather spend your money on more RAM.
I have looked at pictures of the FD Define and it looks very similar to my FD ARC Mini, apart from the noise dampening front cover. If noise is not a problem I would remove that and get outside air onto your drives. In my FD ARC Mini, my drives are running between 19-22°C.

Lastly, I have never seen or heard of that PSU, but anything with a big golden nob worries me a little.

 

[Cupcake]

Yeah I already removed the front door of the case, the noise is still well under control. 19-22°C is certainly nice, that's almost below room temperature. How do you do this?

I considered a i3 CPU but figured since I'm already buying the second CPU it could as well be a decent one this time. Plus this way I can surely do transcoding for the TV later on. Thanks for the input though

 

[JohnK]

Yeah I already removed the front door of the case, the noise is still well under control. 19-22°C is certainly nice, that's almost below room temperature. How do you do this?

I considered a i3 CPU but figured since I'm already buying the second CPU it could as well be a decent one this time. Plus this way I can surely do transcoding for the TV later on. Thanks for the input though

I probably did a complete overkill on the fan set-up. (7 fans running inside. 140mm top, 2x120mm front, 1x120 bottom, side and back and of course the CPU fan)
I also have my servers running in the only unheated part of my basement and in New England that means cold)

 

[Cupcake]

Okay that explains it :)

Another question, I'm really confused right now. The reason I want to replace the current Asus M5A78L-M mainboard is that it does not support ECC RAM, at least I thought so up until now. I was just crawling around in the BIOS and under chipset -> Northbridge Configuraion I found an option to enable ECC Mode for ECC RAM . I must really have been drunk when I placed the order as I didn't see this in the spec sheet. Otherwise I would obviously gone for the ECC RAM with this mainboard. However, the ECC Mode can be set to

• Disabled
• Basic
• Good
• Super
• Max
• User

which is somewhat odd. A bit researching told me, that AMD ECC mainboards like this one here use the CPU for ECC control and correction. Is this still the same kind of ECC protection I would get as if I went for the supermicro board as described in my initial post? I'm just afraid that this is some "toy" function that Asus implemented to impress customers and it only does part of the job "real" ECC would do. In the BIOS for instance it states that the Max setting invokes a complete RAM scrub every 8 hours. Now this is the first time I hear of scrubs for RAM... Does that make this mainboard useful again? All I want is protection from a self destroying ZFS volume due to faulty ram.

 

[gpsguy]

Yes - bit you would need ECC RAM for it to work.

Joeschmuck, a moderator here, has one and set his to GOOD.


Sent from my phone

 

[Cupcake]

Great, because right now it's cheaper for me to only buy ECC RAM for the board I already have than the whole mainboard+CPU+RAM package obviously. Thank you very much. Once I get the ECC RAM I'll still have some digging to do on those different modes...

 

[titan_rw]

Yes - bit you would need ECC RAM for it to work.

Assuming the OP's AM3+ cpu supports ECC. Not all AMD cpu's do. But yes, the board seems to support ECC, and if the CPU does, then just swap memory.

 

[Cupcake]

The CPU needs to support ECC as well? Man this really gets more and more confusing. Stumbled across this thread on hardforum.com where someone asks about compability and the answer is "Athlon II and Phenom II families apparently support ECC only if it is un-buffered AND un-registered".

This is the first time I hear of un-registered ECC Ram. Checked online shops and I haven't found a single ECC RAM which is unresgistered, only unbuffered. Next I went through the Wikipedia Article about registered memory where it says (to make my confusion complete) "Buffered memory is an older term for registered memory". I checked Joeshmucks signature for his rig and apparantly he uses the same mainboard as I do, a AMD FX-4300 (3.8GHz) CPU and the Kingston registered ECC ram which I was planning to buy. So I guess I'll just get a pair of the registered ECC Ram and see what happens...

 

[cyberjock]

unbuffered is the same as unregistered. Companies use the phrases interchangeably.

For Intel systems, the motherboard must be a server chipset, the CPU must support ECC RAM, and your RAM must be ECC RAM.

For AMD, I have no clue, you are on your own(not an AMD guy for various reasons). But... from what I've read if the motherboard and CPU support ECC then you just have to get the RAM.

 

[Cupcake]

Update (see first post). The 16gb ECC ram works with my microATX board.