X8SIL-F + L3406 or X9SCM-F + E3-1220L

[Grobalt]

Hello all,

 

after 2 weeks i'm happy with unraid and my licence Now all runs and i plan the big storage one - but including more services etc -> esxi.

 

What would you prefer ?

X8SIL-F + L3406

or

X9SCM-F + E3-1220L

 

Both combinations cost here in germany 320 euro ... same price, both support VT-D, etc, am i missing something ? Or .. should i go for socket 775 ? In my eyes, i need 3 pcie slots for controller - VT-D, spin down on all drives for power saving

 

Planned is a norco 4224, 3x ibm br10i controller already here, 2TB Disks, but starting at about 10 disks 2TB. Today, i do not plan to transcode (all BD ISO), no database on the server, just a few file services, torrent, xbmc library etc.

 

thanks for helping!

[Johnm]

The X8SIL and the X9SCM are almost the same board.

One is a first gneration and one is a second generation (sandybridge).

 

The sandybridge "should" give you more horsepower while using less electricity.

Also the X9SCM offers 1 PCIe 4X where the X8SIL has a PCI slot.

 

The X9 does have 2x SATA3 ports. While unraid itself wont make use of those, If you ever get an SSD for a cache drive, that might make a world of difference. If you go ESXi, and put your datastore on a SATA3 SSD. It will be very fast.

 

The only other big difference as i recall, the X8 uses ECC Registered DIMMs and the X9 uses ECC Unregistered UDIMMs.

That would make getting 32gigs of ram for the X8 easier right now.

 

I don't think anyone is producing 8gig ECC UDIMMs at this point.

 

Both boards are good boards, the question is what you prefer.

 

As far as 775, unless you have a q9550 (or similar) and ram already, stay away from it. As far as most of the world is concerned, it is a dead technology. if a year from now your mobo or CPU dies or you need ram upgrades, new parts will be hard to find. it is also no where near as power efficient as as the newer 1156/1055. Also, I do not remember if the 775's supported VT-d or only VT-i.

 

My q9550 servers are more like space heaters then servers next to my E3-12xx servers.

[Grobalt]

hi and thanks for feedback. last night i bought

 

SAMSUNG 32GB DDR3 1066 Mhz ECC REG M393B2K70BM1-CF8

BEST PRICE, WARRANTY , PC3 8500, 2x 16GB, KIT

 

for 355 usd incl. shipping - maybe i sell them for much more, dont know yet if i want to keep ecc.

 

esxi data will be stored on my old x25-g2 intel ssd - not best, but much better as any mechanical disk

 

*edit*

damn... thought there are only standard udimm and registered rdimm on the market ... nice learnings ;-)