Lolight

ZFS has become a must have option in this marketplace. Not necessarily from every half-informed potential customer point of view. But IMO LimeTech simply had no choice but to implement it. Otherwise every devoted TrueNas proponent would continue bad mouth Unraid on every home NAS board with their constant FUD on the dangers of bitrot and how Unraid would "loose your family pictures".

I'm not quite sure but I think I've heard somewhere that LimeTech would allow you to purchase the legacy license in this situation. @SpencerJ is that correct?

But then again, what would you get as an alternative in this hypothetical situation? Everyone is going through this exact process while "shopping" around and in the end gets something that meets one's needs. And as it's already been stated here before, there's a reason why so many people were/are choosing to pay for Unraid instead of getting a free alternative.

He meant that the referenced board has many more SATA ports that the CPU itself can support. That's why the board feature a separate third-party SATA controller - JMB585. The problem with those is that they don't play nice with the CPU's low power modes called C-states. The author of the video described it as a "perfect" home server, but that is in his view. Doesn't meant that you can't do better. You can achieve better power efficiency doing it differently.

And not a word on those two shortcomings (to put it lightly), anywhere in Unraid Docs. Not to mention junky controller design of many USB 3.x devices combined with the standard's increased max bus power (=heat) - from 500 mA in USB 2.0 to 900 mA in USB 3.0.

I've given that advice strictly from the try-n-see perspective and my understanding of the CPU power management and general BIOS options tuning. I don't use the power saving settings in the plugin - can't say what it would do.

Yeah, Intel have artificially removed ECC compatibility from the non-business sector of the market. Therefore making its implementation far more costly than it would be otherwise. But IMO, ECC RAM is not critical and doesn't need to be used in a home NAS environment. The decision to stick to it makes it a personal choice. That's all I'm going to say.... (not here to start a war over ECC and its place in a home NAS).

Sure, ECC compatibility if desired will force you into the W680. I've been running an old Asus B250 - it has all I need.

My understanding is that the iGPU shouldn't be affected (I don't transcode). Yeah, you should not have problems running those. You might want to enable turbo boosting and see how it affects your C-state (it should not).

Every legit USB drive comes with a unique GUID, regardless of the generational standard. Therefore has no relation to Unraid requirements for having a unique GUID. The actual USB key quality and its hardware implementation is the big variable that should be addressed by the end user. I can see where your uneasiness comes from in regards of the reported issues associated with USB keys troubles. And I'd agree with you on the need for an official take and recommendation published directly by LimeTech. As it stands now, their Sandisk related PSA statement remains in the same form as when it has been published 2 years ago. They also link the outdated and by now quite mis-leading recommendation for a reliable boot device in the form of the Spaceinvader's USB test which should have been updated by Spaceinvader by now and if not then removed altogether in the view of the available by now evidence. It doesn't provide any favors to newcomers when they're being forced to read through multiple pages of the PSA thread just to get a general idea of the issues involved. The Unraid's FAQ section should also need to be updated with a clear recommendation on the USB standards and a clear warning of the widespread counterfeited product and avoidance measures.

The vast majority of consumer boards with maintained BIOS support (Asus, Asrock, Gigabyte, MSI etc) are designed and capable of securely running 24/7. There's absolutely no advantage in choosing the W680 based boards over others, unless you require their unique features. Features that are not available in the consumer chipset boards. And If you don't need/use those then you're overpaying for increased complexity and power consumption.

Welcome! Try to enable "Race To Halt" and "Energy efficient turbo".

Sure, the point being that it's much easier to achieve good idle efficiency on the simple consumer boards.

Yeah, and in general, if you're after idle efficiency, then stay away from any W680 board, not just the one discussed in this thread.

In "C-States control" choose C10, also do In "Package C-State limit" Enable "Platform Power Management" and then configure the available ASPM entries. Also enable "S3 Save mode", "ErP" and "RC6"

You could also refer to this post and scroll down to "Nvidia GPU Hardware Transcoding Deep Dive":

Here's with pictures, detailed by @PhilBarker (just in case if my post above doesn't link to the intended post): https://docs.phil-barker.com/posts/upgrading-ASM1166-firmware-for-unraid/

It looks like he runs only one stick. In that case @Konnor378 should try to change to another RAM socket. If no change then try another RAM stick.

@sluggathor have you tried to update the firmware?

Over the roof as through the attic?

Then why do you RMA it (them)?

OK, how many passes?

It's not really a requirement, more like a commonly given advice to stay with USB 2.0 if possible, based on prior reliability experiences, also some other factors that you might want to get familiar with by reading the following threads:

Your motherboard has a USB 2.0 header. Just buy a 9-pin adapter and connect your USB 2.0 drive to it. https://www.amazon.com/SinLoon-Female-Motherboard-Header-Adapter-Dual/dp/B0878S6BD5/ref=sr_1_20?crid=2DKTBUFKOTDFA&keywords=9+pin+usb+adapter&qid=1704552445&sprefix=9+pin+usb+adapter%2Caps%2C300&sr=8-20

You should think twice about re-using the old PSU, if it's indeed over 7 years old. PSUs do degrade with age, especially those on the lower end. The cheaper i3-12100 might be more than adequate for your use case. Since you desire power efficiency.. Your could get rid of the HBA by getting an ATX motherboard with 8 SATA ports, but you're restricted by your Node 804 form factor. There are no readily available mATX motherboards with so many onboard SATA ports (at least not from the big 4). https://pcpartpicker.com/list/