Hardware suggestions

[EQNish]

I shutdown my NAs to move it to a new UPS and now it won't come back up, no video response at all, no audible alerts, I believe the 5 year MoBO has bit the dust. With that as my assumption, I'm looking into a new MoBo and CPU and would like some suggestions!

I really don't want to spend an arm and a leg, I don't really care about ECC memory (I know it's recommended for FreeNAS) and I don't need a lot of bells any whistles
I want to sat in the ATX\MicroATX form factor, and would like as many PCIe 4x (or better). I currently am running 10 drives, and was planing on adding 5 more but with this expense that wont happen for a bit.

anyways suggestions, the whys or why nots?

just so you know what I was coming from GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-D3H LGA with 16G and a Intel Core i5-3350P, is what I had been running my FreeNas on for the past 3 years

 

[Stux]

Have you verified its not the PSU?

 

[EQNish]

Have you verified its not the PSU?

Not yet, I'll be checking that as soon as I get another one in, however I did reduce the complete load to only the MB and video with no change.
Further, the hardware is quite old, and it does need some updating

 

[Stux]

Yes. Thing is, 16GB and a Core i5. Pretty much what you want if you're not interested in ECC. and that means about the only thing you'll be recycling is the case and PSU.

If the PSU is dead then you won't be recycling that anyway.

 

[EQNish]

yeah, I'm kind of prepared for that, I don't want to get rid of the case as it's pretty awesome for my needs...9 (5.25) bay, unobstructed which allows me to put in those 3bay to 5 drive hot swap backplanes.

I'm prepared for new Mobo, Memory, and CPU! I'm pretty sure the lga 1155 i5 I have is not going to find a new MoBo that meets what I'm looking for

 

[Stux]

Do yourself a favor then and do it right with a supermicro X11 board and an i3 or Xeon and some ECC

 

[EQNish]

Do yourself a favor then and do it right with a supermicro X11 board and an i3 or Xeon and some ECC

because I can't find an x11 that fits my wants\needs and the x10 is 300$, add a new CPU for another 250 +/- and then memory is another 250ish!??!?

I know the FreeNAS community pushes ECC, I don't think it is a requirement for my needs. If I have to buy all new hardware, I would like to stay under 500...
I'm already 3K into this endeavor this year, before this outage I was hoping to move to 10G, I guess I'll have to wait till next year for that upgrade.

 

[danb35]

You're putting yourself in an interesting position. You're deliberately disregarding most of the community's hardware recommendations, while at the same time asking for hardware recommendations. That makes it hard to help you.

 

[EQNish]

You're putting yourself in an interesting position. You're deliberately disregarding most of the community's hardware recommendations, while at the same time asking for hardware recommendations. That makes it hard to help you.

Dan I totally understand, but lets just say for arguments sake, If I just asked about a MoBo for anything else...It's been 5+ years since I have had to buy new hardware, I'm sure a lot has changed (i am doing my research, this board being some of it), I know what the Rec's are...really just looking to see if anyone knows of any board that fits the bill\, after all there are a lot of hardware knowledgeable people here.

At this point I'm now considering scrapping the whole system and hanging the drives off one of the Dell T7500 I use as my lab servers. I was going to get a MAC Pro to virtualize MAC OS, which puts me at 1 too many servers in my ESXi lab (again for my needs\Wants) the t7500 has 2 6core xeons and DDR3 ECC memory so it meets the Communities recs, to do this, I would just get as DVD tower\enclosure and move the drives to that, with a good PS. My issue with this is again cash, I would need the Mac Pro, looks to be between 500 - 1000, and then the DVD tower and add-ons (Power Supply, SAS hardware, etc) oh and the reason to move the drives to an external solution is because the t7500 doesn't have the ability to add all the drives and hot swap easily...anyways I'm rambling, back to the question...MoBO (supporting upto 32G ram, and a LOT of PCIe (which I am now learning the PCIe Slots are locked to the type of CPU...so I may just have to go HIGH end MoBo...just don't want the expense))

 

[Stux]

So what are your actual requirements? Why so many PCIe x4?

I would think an X11 with an SAS HBA on board and 10gbe ports would do the trick.