New System Hardware Setup - Works

[joeschmuck]

I have been meaning to upgrade to ECC RAM because when you do a scrub, if there is a memory error, you corrupt your data. So I purchased the following system below and it works well.

MB: Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 $65
CPU: AMD FX-4300 $99
RAM: Kingston KVR1333D3E9SK2/8G (x2) $178

I'm still testing throughput but it looks similar to my old system which I was very happy with, windows files transfers over CIFS is 80 to 105MB/sec depending on the files. I just haven't had time to setup my network for detailed throughput testing.

Power draw with no drives connected was around 65 watts sitting at the BIOS setup screen (wish I had tested before putting in the RAM). Power draw running my current configuration at idle (all drives spinning) is 95 watts. With the drives active just reading or writing data during a transfer it jumps to 115 watts. I could drop this to about 75 watts if the drive spin down but I like to keep mine running. This is slightly higher by maybe 10 watts compared to my older system with it's graphics card and standard RAM. This MB has a built in graphics video but I haven't figured out how to disable or reduce it's power sucking yet to save on power. There has got to be a way. I will check into underclocking the system to see how much power I could save because I really don't need all that CPU speed but turning off the video will likely save the most power.

EDIT: I am not able to reduce the video power draw however I enabled "Powerd" in FreeNAS and it dropped my idle (with drives spinning) down to 67 watts.

I'm using the newly redesigned stock fan that comes with the AMD CPU, this thing is quiet! I can't even hear it running and it's cool to the touch so no need to get a massive heat sink here. It does have some weight to it though so when you see it's size you wouldn't imagine it.

If you want to encrypt your drives, this CPU has AES so it should scream. I don't have any desire to encrypt my drives so I will not be testing it.

So what are my bottlenecks in this system? Well first it's the gigabit ethernet port. Adding a second port and having it work with FreeNAS would be helpful. The next possible bottleneck are the hard drives (WD RED 2TB x6) in a RAIDZ2 configuration. I didn't think writing would slow down so much but on dd benchmarks it did. But still the speed is well over 200MB/sec.

I do recommend this system for FreeNAS home use.

EDIT: Some Photos of my little project...

 

[Yatti420]

I've been looking at alot of 1155 Asus serverboards with ECC support.. Seems most value efficient in order to avoid a CPU upgrade.. Most supermicrons I've looked at need xeon CPUs or 2nd gen I3.. Which is extremely overkill imo for household NAS use..

Looks like ASUS will support my G6 series pentium but not the G2120 series pentium.. Problem is I just upgraded to the 22nm series for a little higher clock and better ram support..

Probably going to have to weigh if the I3 is a better buy then an older server board..

 

[joeschmuck]

I didn't think the I3 supported ECC RAM, maybe I'm wrong. Yes, AMD was the most bang for the buck for certain and I'm really impressed with the cooling solution for the new FX CPUs. And the good thing about buying the DDR3 ECC RAM from Kingston, lifetime warranty so I can use it in any system in the future, well until we change to another standard.

And true, a Xeon feel a little overkill for a home system. If I were to have that CPU then I might as well have some high speed hard drives too.

 

[David Prince]

Hi,

I'm thinking of building a very similar system. Are you still running it? Any regrets or is it still performing well?

Also a general question - how do you determine that ECC Ram is functioning properly?