want to build a new quiet, low power unraid server

[Vr2Io]

My desktop ITX was Z390, it support 8/9th Intel CPU, which also suppport with C246 but no ECC. The mobo was Z390M-ITX/ac.

( In fact I completely forget it have 6 SATA, bacause I haven't use SATA )

 

Also hard found in market, it much cheaper then C246, cost me around 140usd @ Amazon.

 

Edited August 19, 2021 by Vr2Io

[CS01-HS]

6 hours ago, mgutt said:

Note: Do not buy 11th or 12th gen. High power consumption and no Intel GVT-g support.

 

I don't think everyone's as obsessed about power as we are. When bdee1 says "low power" he's probably (?) thinking closer to 60W than 20W.

[Vr2Io]

7 minutes ago, CS01-HS said:

 

I don't think everyone's as obsessed about power as we are. When bdee1 says "low power" he's probably (?) thinking closer to 60W than 20W.

Just add some comment, my 9700k+Z390+10G NIC, measure at AC main with power factor ~0.6. BTW, it use 50W actually.

Edited August 19, 2021 by Vr2Io

[bdee1]

4 minutes ago, CS01-HS said:

 

I don't think everyone's as obsessed about power as we are. When bdee1 says "low power" he's probably (?) thinking closer to 60W than 20W.

That’s correct.  I am in fact thinking more along the lines of 60-70, rather than 20. 
 

Does that change any of your recommendations or open things up a bit?

[mgutt]

4 minutes ago, CS01-HS said:

obsessed about power as we are

Yes of course, but except of that, GVT-g is a huge loss I think.

[mgutt]

38 minutes ago, bdee1 said:

 

with that said, the ASRock C246 WSI looks interesting, if a bit pricey

In Germany around 100 €. Are you from Europe? Maybe some of the dealers ship internationally:

https://www.idealo.de/preisvergleich/OffersOfProduct/6567847_-c246-wsi-asrock.html

[bdee1]

4 minutes ago, mgutt said:

In Germany around 100 €. Are you from Europe? Maybe some of the dealers ship internationally:

https://www.idealo.de/preisvergleich/OffersOfProduct/6567847_-c246-wsi-asrock.html

I am in US. On Amazon I’m seeing it for $223. 
https://www.amazon.com/AsRock-C246-WSI-Mini-ITX-Motherboard/dp/B07Z4XWNHY/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=ASRock+C246+WSI&qid=1629413711&sr=8-1

 

if I went with that board, what CPU and memory would you recommend?

Edited August 19, 2021 by bdee1

[mgutt]

13 hours ago, bdee1 said:

On Amazon I’m seeing it for $223. 

Uff crazy. I could send you a unit for 140 € (incl shipping). But I don't know how much you need to pay for local taxes. PS I have multiple C246N-WU2 on stock as well. But they cost 250 €. Or are you maybe able to buy it cheaper from Amazon Germany?

https://www.amazon.de/Gigabyte-C246N-WU2-Mini-Motherboard-Intel/dp/B08XNL3TDP/

 

13 hours ago, bdee1 said:

what CPU

Any 8th or 9th would be fine. So:

- i3-8xxx or i3-9xxx

- Xeon E-21xxG or Xeon E-22xxG

- Pentium Gold G5xxx

 

If you don't need ECC:

- i5/i7-8xxx or i5/i7-9xxx

 

So you have a huge bandwith.

 

13 hours ago, bdee1 said:

memory

ECC? Do you have in the US a website to filter for ECC, Non-Reg, Non-LR, DIMM? We have a nice one for that:

https://geizhals.de/?cat=ramddr3&xf=15903_DDR4~15903_keinSO~15903_mitECC~15903_ohneLR~15903_ohneREG&sort=r&hloc=at&hloc=de&v=e

 

 

[bdee1]

thanks so much for your reply and your offer to ship the mobo!  I feel like local taxes as could get expensive and/or complicated.

 

for simplicity's sake i was thinking of just getting these from amazon:

 

Mobo: 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08GMCP55R/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?smid=A4UCFL9LU89NR&psc=1

 

CPU:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08LKJPR5X/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=AM5XI9N2OGT2D&psc=1

 

I would still have to pick out some memory

 

what do you think? 

[mgutt]

1 hour ago, bdee1 said:

CPU

Don't buy F-CPUs, they don't have an iGPU.

 

1 hour ago, bdee1 said:

Mobo

Regarding my research all 1200 ITX Boards have only 4 SATA ports. The only differences are: 1 or 2 M.2 Slots, 2.5G LAN or not. So why not buying a board which has 2 M.2 Slots and 2.5G LAN onboard? Like one of those:

• ASRock H570M-ITX/ac
• ASRock H470M-ITX/ac
• MSI MPG B460I Gaming Edge WIFI
• ASUS ROG Strix B560-I Gaming WIFI
• GIGABYTE B560I AORUS Pro AX
• ASUS ROG Strix Z490-I Gaming

With two M.2 Slots you could install this card, so you could still use your PCIe Slot:

http://iocrest.com/index.php?id=2070

 

Another interesting point could be to buy a board which officially supports Bifurcation. Asus mentions this for Z490 and Z590 in the manual as follows:

 

This means you could buy this card and install 3 NVMes (at the moment it's much more expensive because of Chia, usually it costs under $40):

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=asus+hyper+m.2&__mk_de_DE=ÅMÅŽÕÑ&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

 

By that you could upgrade the board to 9 HDDs/SSDs and 4 NVMes. Note: Check length of the card because of your case. Another option is the much smaller Dual M.2 Adapter card from Supermicro, which would give you 3 NVMes in total (or 4 if you don't use the IO Crest adapter):

https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/accessories/addon/AOC-SLG3-2M2.php

 

[bdee1]

sorry for my ignorance its been a long time since i have looked at new hardware and it seems a lot is new to to me.  I appreciate you hanging in there and answering so many questions.   WIth that said - I have a few more 😁

 

 

1) What is F-CPU?  If I am looking at a LGA1200, which CPUs are recommended that have an iGPU?

2) I see what you mean about gettign the 2.5G LAN and dual m.2 slots - makes sense. and i love the idea of getting the SATA expansion card to go in the m.2 slots.  unfortunately, I have not been able to find any of the Motherboards you mentioned in stock.

3) what are your thoughts on this motherboard? https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813144460?Description=mini ITX lga1200&cm_re=mini_ITX lga1200-_-13-144-460-_-Product&quicklink=true

4) assuming that motherboard is ok, then what CPU do you recommend for it?

 

again - thank you so much for all your guidance on this.

 

[bdee1]

or another option I found on newegg - that might work?

Mobo

https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813144460?Item=N82E16813144460

 

CPU

https://www.newegg.com/intel-core-i5-10600k-core-i5-10th-gen/p/N82E16819118124?Item=N82E16819118124

[ChatNoir]

59 minutes ago, bdee1 said:

1) What is F-CPU?  If I am looking at a LGA1200, which CPUs are recommended that have an iGPU?

Intel CPUs use various suffixes to differentiate between close variants. For example i9-9900K, i9-9900KF, i9-9900KS or i9-9900T

Some explainations from Intel here : https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/processor-numbers.html

In that case F is without iGPUs. But always check as some reference never have an iGPU and do not have the F suffix. Thank you Intel.  

[JonathanM]

Always, always, ALWAYS check the intel ark site to see if the CPU you have in your cart to purchase has the feature set you are expecting. Voice of experience talking here. Sometimes vendor descriptions get copy and pasted without verifying the actual details.

[bdee1]

 

22 minutes ago, ChatNoir said:

Intel CPUs use various suffixes to differentiate between close variants. For example i9-9900K, i9-9900KF, i9-9900KS or i9-9900T

Some explainations from Intel here : https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/processor-numbers.html

In that case F is without iGPUs. But always check as some reference never have an iGPU and do not have the F suffix. Thank you Intel.  

 

awesome info - thank you!!

 

[bdee1]

12 minutes ago, JonathanM said:

Always, always, ALWAYS check the intel ark site to see if the CPU you have in your cart to purchase has the feature set you are expecting. Voice of experience talking here. Sometimes vendor descriptions get copy and pasted without verifying the actual details.

sorry if this is a dumb questions but what is the intel ark site?

 

[JonathanM]

1 minute ago, bdee1 said:

sorry if this is a dumb questions but what is the intel ark site?

 

ark.intel.com

[mgutt]

1 hour ago, bdee1 said:

what are your thoughts on this motherboard? 

Looks ok to me. But it does not mention any Bifurcation in the manual. Maybe it's worth to ask MSI?!

 

Asus is to expensive? It's really crazy what happened to the hardware prices.

 

 

[bdee1]

16 minutes ago, JonathanM said:

ark.intel.com

great bit of info, thank you!!

[bdee1]

11 minutes ago, mgutt said:

Looks ok to me. But it does not mention any Bifurcation in the manual. Maybe it's worth to ask MSI?!

 

 

 

when you talk about bifurcation, is that basically just something that would allow me to use my PCIe port to run multiple SSDs?

 

Would i need bifurcation in order to make use of the M.2 Sata card you referenced above?

 

the reason I ask is that i don't have any immediate plans to use any SSDs in my new unraid system.  it will likely be standard spinning drives only.

[Lolight]

On 8/21/2021 at 2:18 AM, bdee1 said:

the reason I ask is that i don't have any immediate plans to use any SSDs in my new unraid system.  it will likely be standard spinning drives only.

It's generally recommended to add a SSD cache drive to your system.

Just about all newer motherboards have at least a single M.2 socket. 

The NVMe M.2 SSD drives are very cheap now. You don't need a large one - a 250 GB drive would suffice for your usage.

Here's Spaceinvader One on cache:

 

[TStavley]

On 8/16/2021 at 9:10 PM, Vr2Io said:

 

 

How do I get this graph on my dashboard? Running 6.9.3

[ChatNoir]

56 minutes ago, TStavley said:

How do I get this graph on my dashboard? Running 6.9.3

That's probably 6.10.0 RC1