Question on Hardware

[TheMadCat]

I'm looking for input on building a new home NAS that storage files (may use syncing My documents for one/two computers) and if possible stream video/music.

The build goals is
-Low Power Consumption
-Minimum cost

The system build I select so far is:
Motherboard : Asus E35M1-M PRO Micro ATX
Ram Memory : Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1066
Case : Xigmatek ASGARD PRO (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Support : Antec 750W ATX12V Power Supply
HD : 3xSeagate Barracuda Green 2TB 5900RPM

CPU Speed is critical for CIFS (Windows) shares. SAMBA is single threaded, and you will get performance with a faster processor as opposed to multiple cores. ...

By going with Asus E35M1-M PRO Micro ATX Motherboard how will the performance be affected?

There seems there may have issue with the build-on Realtek 8111E gigabit NIC and maybe USB from newegg.com feedback.

I'm looking into maybe getting different HD selection. It seem some people are having problem with green HD being slow spin-up. How much of a problem is it?

 

[palmboy5]

Go ahead and lower that PSU down to something like 400W or probably less - much less. For example, my NAS box has an AMD Athlon II X2 3.2GHz with 8GB RAM and eight 2TB green drives and the highest power usage I've seen is 165W, during startup. Idle is less than 100W. (Measured with Kill-A-Watt)

For the Realtek 8111 series NIC chips, I remember having trouble with that where FreeBSD (or was it Ubuntu... lol) was choosing an incorrect driver to run it and I had to manually change it. But it does work eventually and probably does already. I do see the Newegg review mentioning an issue, but then there are other reviews with FreeBSD/NAS that say it's good so *shrug* on that.

There is no way that E-350 CPU is going to be fast enough for SAMBA, at least not enough to even get you half the throughput that ethernet chip will provide. You can look at the second paragraph of a post I made in the same thread you quoted aaronb:
http://forums.freenas.org/showthrea...Outline-thoughts&p=28929&viewfull=1#post28929

Clearly, a "faster processor" is necessary, but what speed of processor is deemed fast enough is the question. From looking at benchmarks, the E-350 CPU performance looks to be very slightly faster than Atom counterparts, and these lines of CPUs are made to be the slowest/lowest power options available. So, if "faster processor" is to be heeded at all, that motherboard+CPU is definitely not the way to go.

Also, the excuse/selling point for why the E-350 and related AMD CPUs are so slow is that they have respectably fast integrated GPUs to help take some of the burden. The problem then is that FreeBSD/NAS makes no use of that GPU, so all you're getting is a slow CPU.

 

[frosted]

+1 for lowering the PSU. As stated, 700w is overkill BIG time. A good brand 300w PSU would be more than enough. But if your best price is on the 700w for some reason, then go ahead.

 

[survive]

Hi TheMadCat,

Take a look at the e-350 thread:

http://forums.freenas.org/showthread.php?27-AMD-E-350-Thread-(now-in-new-forum-)&highlight=e-350

A 700w cpu is total overkill. Biggest problem I think you will have is finding a quality PSU that's small enough. Take a look at this thread. There's a link to the 80Plus people where you can look up any tested PSU & see how efficient it is.

http://forums.freenas.org/showthread.php?6273-PSU-sizing-for-home-file-server&highlight=psu+sizi

-Will

 

[TheMadCat]

I have basically the same setup as you:
ASUS E35M1-M Pro
8GB Memory
9 x 2gb Samsung HD204UI drives in a RaidZ2.
Four of the drives are connected to a Syba SY-PEX40008

I first setup the system with 5 drives connected to the mb sata ports in a raidz2. This performed well, I never tested raw speed using dd, but over cifs, I was able to get an average of about 70-75 Mb/sec writing and 90 or so reading. Now, with the 9 drives in the system, I get a little bit slower performance, I am assuming because of the syba card, so I average around 60Mb/sec writing and 85Mb/sec reading. I've not benchmarked anything, I'm just basically quoting numbers off what I see reported by windows, so take that for what its worth.

I have looked at my top processes when writing, and samba usually sits at around 42% or so.

palmboy5, thank you for the information. It true that the motherboard+CPU I select will have issues with SAMBA, but seem base off tigger490's post it will be within accept limit.

survive, thank you for the MD E-350 Thread which lead me to tigger4980 post. Still reading the thread.

I know that the UPS I select is overkill but what about later on I max out the number of SATA HD the box can support. Will the lower UPS be able to handle it? With a higher UPS the less stress the UPS will feel as most UPS inter-parts are use to there limit.

 

[frosted]

You haven't talked about any UPS yet. I think you mean PSU (Power Supply Unit, not Uninterruptible Power Supply)
Your board supports only 5 internal SATA drives. A hard drive would consume maximum ~10w, making an easy 5*10=50w, which is really a small amount of power.
There's been mention than when a drive starts spinning, it create a power spike. But even if you double the power consumption, you would be fine with a good 300w PSU. So even thinking about future upgrade, 700w is at least 200% too powerful.

Even a GOOD 300-350-400w PSU wouldn't be stressed by the load you expect to have.