Replacing motherboard with MW34-SP0 (and therefor cpu and memory)

[sjoerd]

Hi,

 

My current build is based around an very old 4th gen i7. Need to upgrade the hardware and scale down the array as it consumes too much power. I'm planning on replacing variety of disks (big/small) to 4x 4TB driver or 3x 6TB - plus 1 parity.. Also going to add 2 nvme's - one for file cache, one for vm's - and I can't remember what @SpaceInvaderOne recommended also placing the dockers on the "vm cache pool".

 

Anyhow.. I recently bought an aliepress nas motherboard having 6 sata ports, 2 nvme bases around an N5105 - added 2x 16G sodimm. Getting unraid to start was painfull - had to add a lot of kernel bootparam.. Adding vm's and docker was doing altight - looked promising but had crashes from time to time and copying some vm's from my current unraid to this testset crashed after couple of Gigs got transferred. Could not get it to work under load - pitty - all in all lost 300,-- euros there (cant reuse the sodimms atm)

 

Soo looking for a normal motherboard having at least 2x nvme (3 better) and at least 6 sata (8 better) *without shared pcie-lanes*. That way I don't have to add an extra disk/raid controller. Most motherboards contain a lot of rgb and overclocking junk I don't want and have those shared pcie-lines between the nvme-slots. I want stability and I do not want to get into the supermicro brand prices.

 

Do such "servergrade" consumer motherboards exist - looking for intel  socket 1700 btw. AMD seems to be more powerhungry.

 

The only board that is nice enough (no idea about the costs) is this pretty awesome board from Gigabyte (also gigabyte fanboy so +1 I guess)

https://www.gigabyte.com/Enterprise/Server-Motherboard/MW34-SP0-rev-11

 

- Are there boards similar to this one?

- anyone know where the buy this in Europe (where a normal consumer can shop) and how much it costs?

- anyone using for unraid but better question is maybe : can unraid handle this board?

 

 

Edited February 8, 2023 by sjoerd

[Decto]

Hi,

 

Workstation class boards are expensive as below, you'll need to shop around for a price but £350 - £600 , Eur420 to Eur720 is common depending on features 

 

Gigabyte

 

Supermicro  or Cheaper

 

LGA1200 may be a little less expensive as I think it was PCI_E 4 and DDR4, personal preferane of mine to stay at least one generation behing for Linux to let others beta test my data storage hardware + drivers.

 

LGA1200 Supermicro  Supermicro Web

 

Also check ASRock under their 'ASRock Rack' branding.

 

Personally I still feel 8TB drives are a sweet spot between parity cost, SATA ports usage cost/TB, rebuild / partity check time for small to mid size arrays.

 

With the caveat on fresh hardware support in the kernal, workstation boards are generally well supported if they are primarily the core chipset. 

If there is a non standard network / raid etc. chip build onboard you may want to look how well that is supported.

Edited February 8, 2023 by Decto

[sjoerd]

Those prices are not consumer friendly anymore.. Got my eyes on the Gigabyte z690 UD (or maybe the z790) board. The z690 is around around 190 euro and has 3 nvme and 6 sata which suits my needs. Also it's a standard chipset and the board has not extra fancy bell and whistles. I assume unraid can deal with this motherboard just fine?