Hello, newbie here! Choice: i3 or Avoton? (Answered)

[jamarino94]

Hello people of FreeNAS!

My name is Jonathan, and I seem to have caught myself up in building my own little FreeNAS box. I'm 22 and just about done with my bachelor in Computer Science. Needless to say I am quite interested in the wonderful world of computers!

While I have some experience with both building pc's as well as linux and commandline, I have no hands-on experience with FreeNAS. I've done some reading around the forum, and it has been quite helpful, so thank you!

However, I find myself in a bit of a dilemma. I am trying to finally decide on hardware, but cannot choose between an i3-4170 and a motherboard with built-in Atom Avoton c2550.

A bit of usesage information:
The primary objective of this NAS build is to provide safe storage/backup of important files (family photos + work related files). My family currently owns a small 4-disk (RAID-6) Synology NAS, that I intend to sync with. Being in different locations, this will hopefully provide protection in case of fire-damage etc. As such, integrity is top priority, and I plan to run RAID-Z3 on a 5-disk array (paranoid, I know). In addition, I would like to use the Fractal Node 304 to keep things small.

As a bonus, I would like to run a VPN-server on the box, for management and access purposes.

Now, the hardware that I have decided on:
- Case: Fractal Node 304 (mini-ITX)
- RAM: 16GB (2x8GB) of [insert cheapest manufacturer here] DDR3L 1600 ECC
- Powersupply: I'll be upgrading my desktop PSU, and using my 2-year old Corsair CX500M in the NAS (Sorry Cyberjock, I cheaped on the PSU. This is the most affordable way for me to realize my plans)
- Disks: 5x WD Red 1TB

And now comes the dilemma.. Drumroll please..:
Mobo + CPU combo: ASRock C2550D4I (2.4-2.6 GHz quad core Atom C2550)

OR

CPU: i3-4170 (3.7 GHz dual core with hyperthreading)
Mobo: ASRock E3C226D2I

Concerns:
I have no doubt that the i3 with the much higher clock will outperform the Atom. But, with the motherboard I will be limited to a max of 16GBs of RAM. As I understand, this means no chance of upgrading to 2TB drives down the line, correct? (5x 2TB = 10 GB of RAM + OS + VPN headroom + cache?)

On the other hand, the Atom board supports up to 64GBs of RAM. Additionally I am quite intrigued by the passively cooled CPU.

What are your thoughts? What kind of (VPN) speeds can I expect from the Atom?

I hope to hear your feedback, and hopefully learn some more :)

PS:
Best case scenario I'll upgrade my internet connection and get 50 Mbit/s, which will mean theoretical cap of 6.25 MB/s upload to the NAS via VPN from the outside. If I can get this on the Atom, I'll be happy.

 

[gpsguy]

Welcome to the forums!

For the Avoton, the AsRock C2750D4I would probably be a better choice.

It's used in the FreeNAS Mini. There have been issues with the Marvell controlled SATA ports. I don't know if firmware updates have fixed it or not. But, given your plan, you could use the other bank of SATA ports.

Mobo + CPU combo: ASRock C2550D4I (2.4-2.6 GHz quad core Atom C2550)

 

[rogerh]

Just to comment on the RAM; in practice, for the usage you specify, 16GB of RAM would probably be enough for 5 X 6TB of HDD. The RAM to HDD capacity ratio is not critical.

 

[rogerh]

Welcome to the forums!

For the Avoton, the AsRock C2750D4I would probably be a better choice.

It's used in the FreeNAS Mini. There have been issues with the Marvell controlled SATA ports. I don't know if firmware updates have fixed it or not. But, given your plan, you could use the other bank of SATA ports.

I disagree a bit. The C2750 is better, but it is an extra £100, and if the OP is not running 10Gb/s ethernet, transcoding or doing anything much in jails I think the C2550 will do, and it will run a lot cooler with no special cooling effort.

 

[jamarino94]

Welcome to the forums!

For the Avoton, the AsRock C2750D4I would probably be a better choice.

It's used in the FreeNAS Mini. There have been issues with the Marvell controlled SATA ports. I don't know if firmware updates have fixed it or not. But, given your plan, you could use the other bank of SATA ports.

Thank you :)

I've looked for the motherboard you mention (I saw it in cyberjocks' post), but it seems no vendors in my country carry it. But then again, I don't know how much the extra cores will help my needs. As I understand CIFS is mostly single threaded and heavily benefits from higher clock rather than the number of cores. I am assuming the same holds for VPN sessions.

With regards to the Marvell controller, it shouldn't be a problem, since I don't plan on using more than 6 drives. But thank you for pointing it out regardless :)

I guess my original post boils down to two questions:
(1) Will 16GBs of RAM support 5x 2TB drives down the road? (with enough room for VPN jail)
(2) Will the Atom CPU be able to run VPN at speeds around 6 MB/s?

Edit:
Seems that writing a response over a period of hours gets your questions answered before you ask them Thanks for the replies, guys.

 

[rogerh]

I suppose there is an argument for more RAM and more CPU power for future-proofing, if you might want to do other things with the server in future, but I'm pretty sure you won't have difficulties with either of your proposed builds doing what you specify in your first post, including the proposed larger disks. In fact,if you do have any problems it is probably a matter of tuning and adjustment and you could come back here and ask. The only thing I would say is that you need a UPS and your old power supply will slightly reduce reliability compared with a new high quality one. A cheap UPS would be OK as long as you are happy for a more than 2 minute power failure to shut the FreeNAS server down, and rely on manually switching everything back on. But you would have to be very unlucky for one power failure to destroy all your data, and hopefully if it did happen it wouldn't be when you actually need the backup. That would be really unlucky! This is where I would be tempted to spend a little more to improve my luck.

 

[Rand]

If all you do is to run backups and file jobs then the i3 will be perfectly sufficient. You can go even lower - I run on a 4130 and its plenty for most needs.
I run 16GB Ram with 12TB pool size (4x2x3TB), no problems either. I also run 10GBe and even thats fine with the i3 - 3/400MB/s.

I had an e3-1230v3 in the same board before but that was way overkill for my usage.

I do have to note that after I was running a W2k12 AD vm I saw the limits of the i3 since thats a busy piece of ... software - but thats a 2 core limit.
I additionally have a C2750 for Backup reasons - mostly idle - never use more than 2 cores of the 8;)
So if you need multiple cores go with the 2550/2750, else go i3. My 2 cents o/c :)

 

[jamarino94]

Thank you all for your suggestions, I truly appriciate them. I am glad to hear that neither CPU nor RAM seem to be an issue, now I just need to decide for real which solution to go with.
I might post a little something if everything goes well. If not, you can be sure I will be posting lots of questions :-D

For now, thanks for your input.

- Jonathan