ramblinreck47

Both have been SOLD.

After taking a look at your proposed setup and what you want to accomplish, you should be okay**. The only thing I would add would be a GPU to help with transcoding (assuming you plan to share your media library outside your home). A P400 would be a good ~$75 option that would only take up 1 PCIe slot, use very little power, and give your CPU more power to run your other VM's/Docker containers. **Now, I have looked down this Ryzen/UnRAID/X470D4U path for quite a while (over the last or so since it was first announced). On paper, it should like a slam dunk for processing power, IPMI, and efficiency at a fantastic price. The more you dig deeper on this combination though, the more warts you're going to run into. Here's a list of things that have come up from my research that has me concerned: This motherboard is essentially a first-of-its-kind type motherboard. With that, there have been a ton of bugs that have been found and not all of them have been worked out as of right now. Not to mention since this motherboard is a server motherboard, updates come out very slowly. Most consumer motherboards for Ryzen are on the latest AGESA but this one is at least one full one behind. That isn't likely to change. They are working on updates but you'll have to be very patient. The ASRock Rack support for this motherboard isn't bad but it looks like the team working on it is rather small and limited. ASRock hasn't made this motherboard a priority and it shows in a lot of ways. There are USB 2.0 ports and serious lack of USB 3.0 ports overall. You'll probably need to make the changes below in your BIOS/BMC to get UnRAID working properly and stable. They might not all be needed but they seem to be more commonly used especially with Zen 2 processors and if you're using something in the PCIE x8 slot. Unless you're using the Wraith style cooler that comes with your processor (or any of the Wraith coolers), beware that you'll probably run into issues with clearance with the first ram slot. For some reason they put the mounting brackets perpendicular to how all other Ryzen motherboards are done. I'm not saying Noctua or other brands can't be used, but it's going to take some research and work on your part to see that it's going to fit properly and not hit your ram Ryzen in general seems to have more issues that Intel when it comes to UnRAID. I know there are tons of people out there that don't run into issues but if you check out most of the UnRAID update announcements and bug threads, you'll see Ryzen listed a lot more than others having trouble. Although ECC technically works with this motherboard and Ryzen, it's not known exactly what errors it can detect and where they're coming from. If you're looking for full ECC compatibility, this motherboard and CPU combination is not going to give that to you. This thread is a good read on the subject: https://www.ixsystems.com/community/threads/freenas-build-with-10gbe-and-ryzen.77752/ If you plan on upgrading to a Zen 2 processor, there is a whole host of things that you aren't going to be able to do properly yet due to the kernel UnRAID is currently on and the AGESA that the motherboard is using. Now, this will obviously change over time but for the time being, it's not fully operational in a feature sense. Now, none of this is to scare you away from doing a build with this processor and motherboard. I simply wanted to inform you on some of things I have learned. At this moment unless you need IPMI, I would suggest using a ASRock X470 Taichi or ASUS X470-Pro instead. Both get updates faster and ECC ram is said to work on both of those motherboards. If you want to learn the most there is know about the X470D4U, I highly suggest you read this thread in its entirety (I know it's crazy long): https://forum.level1techs.com/t/asrock-rack-has-created-the-first-am4-socket-server-boards-x470d4u-x470d4u2-2t/139490 At the moment, I'm leaning toward a Intel Xeon E-2288G build. That would be way outside what you'd be paying for your Ryzen build, so I would suggest something cheaper like a E-2136 (or E-2146G if you want to use QuickSync) and a Supermicro X11SCA-F (preferably) or ASRock E3C246D4U. It would cost you a bit more, limit your upgrade path, and give you slightly less performance but you'd have a very solid and stable combination. I hate giving money to Intel but as of right now, AMD just isn't as plug and play as Intel for UnRAID.

I'm glad that you probably found an answer to your problem. The Level1Tech's thread is incredibly detailed and goes into all the problems that the motherboard has had from the very beginning and what got fixed (and didn't) along the way. This motherboard has soooo much potential but I'm still in the Intel camp for my next build until they fix a lot of these little bugs. A Ryzen/UnRAID/X470D4U just isn't a perfect set yet. Hopefully, the newer motherboard BIOS they are working on and UnRAID 6.9 gets this combination to where it needs to be.

It looks like they just announced it would be coming out very recently. If it's anything like their other motherboards, it'll probably take several more months before you actually see it available to buy on common sources like Amazon and Newegg.

This thread might be able to lead you in the right direction: https://www.ixsystems.com/community/threads/freenas-build-with-10gbe-and-ryzen.77752/ Specifically, the last couple of pages of that thread. EDIT** Also, this one is very thorough and covers almost everything...the only caveat being that it's insanely long so you'll really need to take some time to read it or know exactly what you're searching for. https://forum.level1techs.com/t/asrock-rack-has-created-the-first-am4-socket-server-boards-x470d4u-x470d4u2-2t/139490/885

Based upon my contact with the seller of this item: https://www.ebay.com/itm/ASrock-E3C246D4U-Server-Xeon-E-MB-w-2288G-CPU-64GB-ECC-RAM-256GB-NVMe-SSD-WOW/193237315094?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649 This is my conversation with him:

@Mor9oth to respond to some of your last couple of posts: I've never worked with a backplane like that before. As long as it doesn't carry power to the 3.3v pin, you shouldn't need tape (emphasis on should because I've seen some manufacturers like Norco that somehow provide power to the 3.3v pin even with a molex connection). If not, a little bit of kapton tape on the 3.3v pin on the hard drive and you should be good to go. Looking at your backplane, the cable in that link you provided should work. I'm luckily in the USA so these WD external hard drives are getting extremely cheap. I've seen those 14TB at $199.99 here but I'm probably going to wait to upgrade until I can afford 2 of them to use in a dual parity setup.

I can’t speak to the loudness of the 12TB and 14TB drives, but I find the 8TB and 10TB very acceptable noise wise. I have my server down in the finished basement and even when sitting next to it during a parity check, all I can really hear is the fans of the server. Since that person in the reddit thread didn’t post any decibel readings, his idea of loud is just his perception and it’s impossible to discern what he really means. EDIT**Also, be aware that practically all the white drives have the new SATA power standard which uses the 3.3v pin differently than it did with the old standard. If you shuck these drives, attach them to your SATA power and SATA data cables, and power on your computer, you might find out they aren't showing up. This is because on the newer standard that power is not automatically set to go to these pins and that if it does, it causes the HDD to essentially not power on properly. The easiest ways to handle this is to tape over the 3.3v pin (keeping the PSU from sending power to it), snip/remove the cable that goes to the 3.3v pin (I don't generally recommend this), or use a molex to SATA adapter since molex doesn't carry a 3.3v charge (you have to be extremely careful to only buy crimped ones of these and not molded!). All these don't mean anything though if you have a backplane in your case that is molex powered (like practically all Supermicro servers). You simply just plug the hard drive in and it works normally.

I’ve seen people say that the 9th Gen iGPU has actually been working since they upgraded to 6.8.0, which seems weird since it’s still not 4.20. Have you tried it out on any stable release since 6.8.0?

Yeah, this build is way overkill for what I want to do right now, but I’m hoping to not have to do any major updates to it for the next 4-5 years. I’ll do the best I can answering your questions. 1. I right now have a HP Z220 CMT (i7-3770, 16GB RAM) that I have modified with two hard drive cages with the whole setup having 6 x 3.5” HDD’s (Array) and 2 x 2.5” SSD’s (RAID 1 cache). The 6 HDD’s are a mix of 8TB and 10TB WD White drives that I shucked from a variety of WD Easystores, MyBooks, and Elements. I have 4 x 8TB WD White drives that I bought super cheap but don’t have enough room in the case at the moment so that’s a big reason I’m really excited to do my build soon. You are correct that you can’t do an Array of SSD’s. I know this a request that some have made and we’ll probably see this sometime in the future. 2. How do you mean slow? If you’re talking about the OS itself, then no, it’s really fast because the OS once booted lives on the RAM. It doesn’t matter whether you have a cache or not; browsing through the OS is a breeze. I had a Synology DS218+ without a cache drive so I know how slow DSM can move. If you’re talking about accessing drives and uploading data to the drives, it depends. UnRAID doesn’t stripe data across drives (like RAID does) so accessing data from a drive is limited to how fast the drive is. All of my drives are 5400rpm and are still really quick with a greater than 120Mb/s speed. Using a SMB share to upload data to the drives can be limiting though if you’re not setting up a cache for your shares. I see about 50Mb/s without a cache for a particular share. Using a cache for your shares really speeds up the data transfer though. I also have all my appdata sitting on the cache (takes up about 35GB) and makes all my Docker containers run very fast and smooth. I’ll probably update to a NVME cache in the future for SABnzbd and downloading when I finally get fiber, but for right now normal SSD’s are more than adequate. 3. A HBA card like a LSI 9211-8i will let you expand the total amount of SATA data ports. With two breakout cables you can turn the two SAS ports on the 9211-8i into 8 x SATA ports. The HBA card will need to be flashed to IT Mode first though to ensure that the drives are passed through untouched (no-RAID) to UnRAID. I didn’t want to do the flashing myself (partly out of fear of messing it up and partly out of convenience). I instead bought a used pre-flashed one on eBAY from the Art of the Server. He charges more than it would cost for an unflashed one but he does a perfect job flashing the cards and provides support if you need it. This is the one I bought: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Genuine-LSI-6Gbps-SAS-HBA-LSI-9211-8i-9201-8i-P20-IT-Mode-ZFS-FreeNAS-unRAID/163846248833?hash=item2625ff5981:g:shEAAOSwPKZdbst~ Two notes on this though. You don’t want to hook up your SSD’s to a HBA card (anything older than a 9300-8i) since it won’t support trim. Scheduling trim on your SSD will help prolong its life. Best to connect them straight to your motherboard. Secondly, I’m not going to use breakout cables for my build since the Supermicro chassis I’m going to use has a SAS expander built into the backplane and will take a direct link from the HBA card to expand out to 16 ports. Both of these notes aren’t really important to most people and probably you as well but just thought I’d throw it out there.

Here’s the build that I’m working on. I’ve already purchased a few things, but I’ll finish it here in the next few months. Just got to get moved to my new job in a new city and finish paying off the last little bit of my student loans. CPU: Intel Xeon E-2288G 3.7 GHz 8-Core Processor = ~$600 (https://www.cdw.com/product/intel-xeon-e-2288g-3.7-ghz-processor/5846100 OR https://www.ebay.com/itm/INTEL-XEON-E-2288G-PROCESSOR-3-70GHZ-SRFB3-8-core-16thread-octa-core-CPU/193291036144?epid=22036063532&hash=item2d010b25f0:g:W7cAAOSw6IVeFRph) CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D9L 46.44 CFM CPU Cooler = $54.95 (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QCEWTAW?tag=pcpapi-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1) Motherboard: Supermicro X11SCH-F ATX LGA1151 Motherboard = $252.74 (https://www.shopblt.com/item/super-micro-mbd-x11sch-f-o-c246-cfl-xeon/supmic_mbdx11schfo.html) Memory: 2 x Kingston Technology 16GB DDR4-2666 ECC Unbuffered DIMM CL19 2Rx8 1.2V Micron E Die (Server Premier) = ~$180 (https://www.provantage.com/kingston-technology-ksm26ed8-16me~7KIN93CU.htm) GPU: PNY Quadro P2000 5 GB Video Card = $270 (PURCHASED) Case: Supermicro 3U Chassis - CSE836BE16-R920B = $397.87 (PURCHASED) Case Fan: 2 x Supermicro 80mm Hot-Swappable Middle Axial Fan (FAN-0104L4) = $34.80 (https://store.supermicro.com/80mm-fan-0104l4.html) Case Fan: 3 x Supermicro 80mm Hot-Swappable Middle Axial Fan (FAN-0074L4) = $63.00 (https://store.supermicro.com/80mm-fan-0074l4.html) HBA: LSI 9211-8i in IT Mode = $57 (PURCHASED) If the iGPU for the E-2288G is everything it’s cracked up to be, I’ll sell the P2000 and just use the money towards adding stuff to my rack. My new place will be a rental and won’t have fiber internet, so I’ll be underutilizing this entire setup for 2 years until my wife and I build our own house in a part of town that has fiber. If you have any questions about what and why I picked any piece above, I have pretty detailed explanations for all of them and I don’t mind sharing. Side note: My thinking for going with the E-2288G over say an E-2146G is that it’s much easier to add a GPU in the future than it is replacing a processor. It might not be the most cost efficient but it’s definitely the easiest option. If and when the E-2288G becomes old and not as powerful as whatever is new, I’ll just sell the entire motherboard and CPU combo and start over fresh. Intel tends to retain a lot of value on the higher end processors for almost of their sockets. The same can’t be said for AMD. Just look at the Ryzen 7 1800X compared to the i7-7700K.

I’ll give you the second point because I just didn’t use the right words to describe who has been working on the plugin. The LS.IO guys are phenomenal. The first point, the one quoted above, I still stand by. I originally thought the same as you that the 9th Gen Intel QuickSync needed Linux kernel 4.20 and above but it turns out there are several people saying that they are using it with 6.8.0 even though it’s on 4.19. I submit this comment and the following comments on the reddit thread for the 6.8.0 release: Since I don’t currently have a 9th Gen Intel CPU, I cant verify it. If there’s anyone out there that does, it would nice if you could verify that it’s working.

I’m in a very similar place with my upcoming build. I believe I’ve done a lot of research and can probably help. 1. TDP is really a limit to what the processor will operate at under load. Also, AMD and Intel calculate TDP differently so it’s harder to do a direct comparison. Idle power is usually considerably lower with Intel CPU’s while Ryzen processors tend to only idle a little lower than their TDP (but also have a lower ceiling in terms of power consumption). That 80W Intel processor will idle about 20-30W below that Ryzen processor. It’s important to consider this because if you’re primarily using your server as a Plex/Emby server, it will be at idle most of the time. The P2000 is limited to 75W max but if it’s just transcoding and nothing else, it will consume very little power. **Ideally, the P2000 when it’s sitting idle should be below 10W but due to a bug somewhere in Plex and the P2000, it will stay in an active state even after transcoding is done which will cause it to consume somewhere closer to 20W. Plex is looking into it but who knows when that will be fixed. 2. I’m not saying that UnRAID with Ryzen is unstable or not adequate, but there are some known quirks that are still in the process of being worked out (especially with the X470D4U and X470D4U2-2T). You will most likely need to set the power state to Typical Idle Power or something similar and you’ll be without some temperature sensors that are nice to have but won’t be in until UnRAID updates their Linux kernel. You also might run into issues with your PSU you are using causing your processor to run at very low speeds. This seems to be correctable but it’s something you need to be aware of. UnRAID updates for Ryzen also tend to cause a few more issues on average than Intel. 3. With the Intel CPU and QuickSync, you should be able to easily do 15+ 1080p transcodes with little effort except for a few changes in your BIOS and in your go file. Otherwise, you can run it with any form of UnRAID as long at it has a newer kernel where your iGPU is supported (generally anything 6.8.0rc-1 and above). With Ryzen and the P2000, you’ll need to install the Nvidia version of UnRAID which isn’t updated as fast as the regular UnRAID version (it’s still relatively fast but if you want to update when a newer version of UnRAID comes out you’ll need to wait for the Nvidia guys to bake in their drivers). Granted, with the P2000, you’ll be able to do 20+ 1080p transcodes with ease. I’m personally leaning toward an E-2288G and Supermicro X11SCH-F (I don’t need 10g and I have a Supermicro chassis). It will cost more, have more security patches in the future that will lower performance, and the CPU won’t be upgradeable. With all that said though, QuickSync is incredibly efficient, the CPU will idle below 40W, I’ll get 2 full speed NVME slots, it will be powerful enough to last me about 5 years, and I can always add a P2000 down the road if I need more transcoding power. Ryzen is a very powerful CPU at a very affordable price and if the newer Linux kernels bring forward some much needed improvements and ASRock keeps updating their BIOS to be better, I might end up going that route. We’ll see what the next few months brings.

I forget how much work y'all did this past year. There were a lot solid changes from 6.6.7 to 6.8. Can't wait till 6.9 and beyond! EDIT* Almost forgot to say I really like the new dashboard layout and login page. For 2020, I'm excited to see what the newer linux kernels can do for Ryzen and hopefully we see multiple arrays.

I’ve been really interested in IPMI after I’ve spent sometime reading up on all that you can do with it and how it can be integrated with UnRAID. The issue I’m having is how I would make sure it’s secure and not a major liability for home network using what I already have. Background: I have a simple WiFi router from the cable company and the only network changes I’ve made over the last year or so was just to forward a port for Plex and one for OpenVPN (both setup as Dockers on my UnRAID server). Soon, I will have the opportunity to build a new server exactly the way I want it and IPMI has me intrigued. I am starting a new job that will require me to travel considerably more than I am now. I want to be able to make changes and boot remotely. OpenVPN on the server itself is nice and gives me a chance to make changes once the array is started but it would be completely useless for me if the server were to have trouble booting and I couldn’t view what was going wrong. IPMI would help solve this issue. In all my reading about IPMI, it has been very apparent that you shouldn’t ever expose IPMI outside your network. I’ve been trying to go over in my head how I could make sure that my network is relatively secured and still access IPMI while I’m away on work. I’ve tried to get a better understanding of VLAN’s and different subnets but I’m not sure I could do any of this with the router that I have. Would any of these scenarios be viable for me with the equipment I have (or can easily obtain)? Scenario #1: Turn my old Dell Optiplex into a pfesense router and replace the cheap WiFi I have from the cable company. I could then install OpenVPN through pfsense and access the network that way. I don’t know what settings I would have to do in the server BIOS to ensure that the IP address for IPMI is somewhat safe. Scenario #2: Install the Wireguard plugin on my UnRAID server and replace OpenVPN. This would allow me to at least allow me to see my server immediately after it boots and wouldn’t have to worry about Dockers loading before I could VPN in (I don’t want to have to change my array to Autostart on boot). If the server doesn’t boot properly, this scenario isn’t going to be useful. Scenario #3: Scenario #1 plus a managed switch where I could fully structure out a management VLAN for the IPMI port. I have almost no idea how to do this so I want to avoid this at all cost unless I can get step by step instructions. Is there something easier that I’m missing or does anyone have any instructions on how to make this processor at least a little safer without costing me a lot of money?

So, you’re recommending to not use this motherboard with a LSI 9211-8i? I don’t want to change my HBA card and I definitely don’t want to modify the motherboard in a way that would hurt the warranty. Can someone who has this motherboard and a LSI HBA inserted in one of the top two PCIE slots comment on this subject? If it’s too risky, I’ll just get the X11SCH-F and hopefully passthrough the iGPU for Plex and pray it works similarly to this board.

It's the Norco SS-500 hard drive cage...https://www.newegg.com/norco-ss-500-hot-swap-rack-module/p/N82E16816133030 **Mind you, I would never buy anything from Norco. Their customer service has gone from awful to non-existent. If you have issues with these, good luck ever getting in contact with them (they don't have an answering machine setup, they don't answer the phone, and they don't respond to emails). I ordered a part from their online store and they never delivered the item that was said to be in-stock. PayPal reimbursed me because they couldn't even get in contact with Norco. I'm about 98% sure they've actually gone out of business. ****If you want decent hard drive cages, go with Supermicro CSE-M35T-1B's. If those are too expensive get either the iStarUSA BPU-350SATA (BPU-350HD) or BPN-DE350SS (BPN-DE350HD). The iStarUSA cages are a little less solid than the Supermicro ones but they seem to have an active customer service and they come in trayless varieties.

Anyone have issues with putting HBA's (LSI 9211-8i's) in the PCIE slots? I got a little spooked looking at this thread: I'm wondering if it's possible to happen to this motherboard because it has very similar metal shielding over the PCIE lanes. Maybe I'm just being overcautious but I thought it was worth asking. I could always go with the X11SCH-F and get a dedicated IPMI LAN port, no special configuration for IPMI and QuickSync at the same time (at least that's what's been reported in this thread) and no metal shielding but it's a lot harder right now to find in-stock.

Went from 6.8.1 to 6.8.2 with relatively little trouble*. As far as I can tell, all is fine. *Only issue was when I started my array and my docker containers had messed up IP's (just ridiculous numbers). A Power Down and then physical restart fixed it though. I've had this issue in the past with upgrades and luckily I now know not to freak out and just manually reset the server. I'm guessing it has something to do with either the server or my router not picking an IP address in time when it Reboots and just assigning one that doesn't exist.

I’m not the OP but here is a link to Provantage where it is In-stock at the moment... https://www.provantage.com/intel-cm8068404225303~7ITEP6KU.htm

@keithc, did you ever get this cleared up? Has anyone? I'm in the same spot as @bwnautilus where I'm looking at this board and am curious how the shared IPMI LAN port works.

For those that have this is board, did you have to use two Ethernet cables (one to LAN1 and one to LAN2)? Or did you just funnel everything through LAN1 (IPMI and regular internet access)? I see in the manual that LAN1 is shared with IPMI but I wasn’t sure if you should also just use the other LAN port for regular operation as well at the same time. I’d rather go with the X11SCH-F which has a dedicated LAN for IPMI but that board seems to be out of stock everywhere.

I've begun to recommend this very thing to people that want a case that can hold a lot of hot-swap drives. Buy a Supermicro CSE-846, put it on its side, then put it on two of these: https://www.amazon.com/HumanCentric-PC-Stand-Computer-Adjustable/dp/B07RGRV1VX/ref=sr_1_7?keywords=desktop+computer+cart&qid=1578443780&sr=8-7 . Problem solved.

Audio transcoding takes up so little CPU power most people don’t end up doing anything with it. Ideally if you wanted to make sure audio is not transcoding, you could either get a different sound system/media player or just pre-encode all your media to AAC Stereo (which will Direct Play on practically everything).