New Design

[FreeRAD]

What do you guys think:

MOBO: Supermicro MBD-X7SPA-H-O

CASE: Lian-Li PC-Q08B (Maybe the Q25?)

PSU: Seasonic X-Series SS-400FL (Maybe a Pico PSU)

HDD: WD Caviar Green 2.5TB x 3 (To be expanded to 6 once prices drop.)

RAM: 2GB x 2

USB HD: 16 GB - $20

 

I was originally going for 2TB HDD's, but then flooding, and found a deal on the 2.5 TB's.

[vl1969]

looks like a nice small server setup

 

I however do not see a reason to spend $200 on this MB unless small factor is strongly desired.

 

this MB does not offer a lot of room for expansion (neither does the case for that matter)

so unless you already have the it maybe this one is a better one (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813500048)    and cheaper too...

 

also since your setup does not offer a lot of RAM capability  the 16Gb Flash is way too much.

you can get 4GB for like $5 or less almost every-ware.

 

 

sorry if I was to harsh on you,  I am a noob to unRaid  myself but have been doing my research for the last 6 month

 

 

[Johnm]

If you are going for a solid ITX server. The supermictro is strongly recommended.

It can support 14 drives with a SASLP-MV8 addon card (or other HBA/RAID card)

 

who knows if that zotac is compatiblewith unraid. Plus, all the extra junk that you don't want in an unraid server will eat extra electricity negating much the atoms power savings while allowing a greater chance for conflicts and errors in unRAID. Also several of those 6 port zotac boards are only 2 sata ports with a port multipliers causing very slow parity checks and write speeds if the parity drive is on one of those ports.

 

Going back to the X7SPA-H-O, I personally would get the MBD-X7SPE-HF-D525. it is a newer, faster board. It uses less power, has IPMI and is actually cheaper.

Be aware, both boards a bit picky on ram.

 

@vl1969,

when building a server, whenever you can, you go for stability, not always price.

You want a piece of hardware you can turn on for 2 years and  forget about it because it just works.

We actually use these boards for load balancing servers for major websites.

[vl1969]

If you are going for a solid ITX server. The supermictro is strongly recommended.

It can support 14 drives with a SASLP-MV8 addon card (or other HBA/RAID card)

 

who knows if that zotac is compatiblewith unraid. Plus, all the extra junk that you don't want in an unraid server will eat extra electricity negating much the atoms power savings while allowing a greater chance for conflicts and errors in unRAID. Also several of those 6 port zotac boards are only 2 sata ports with a port multipliers causing very slow parity checks and write speeds if the parity drive is on one of those ports.

 

Going back to the X7SPA-H-O, I personally would get the MBD-X7SPE-HF-D525. it is a newer, faster board. It uses less power, has IPMI and is actually cheaper.

Be aware, both boards a bit picky on ram.

 

@vl1969,

when building a server, whenever you can, you go for stability, not always price.

You want a piece of hardware you can turn on for 2 years and  forget about it because it just works.

We actually use these boards for load balancing servers for major websites.

 

While I agree with you in general, I however  do not think that this is the situation requiring such reliability, if I  am wrong than it is only because OP did not specified the primary use of the described server.

 

we all have our needs and wants, and certainly free to spend our cash any way we pleased.

however if we can save some $$ here and there without compromising over all reliability I think we should look at all possible solutions.

 

I suggested Zotac board only as an example(it just popped-out in my quick search fitting the parameters), anybody putting together a build like this should do his homework before anything is ordered of course.

 

as for stability , I have a HP home PC used as 24/7 always on  HTPC for the last 2.5

with no problems.  and that is SOHO hardware...

in the last 23 years I only saw MB failed twice.

once in my 386 Pentium from a lighting strike through the modem.

and once in my P4 do to my stupidity (dropped a screw under MB during hard drive removal on not disconnected PC, overconfident much)

 

so can not say about MB reliability much.

 

pretty much any MB ,if it is not a total garbage, should run 2-3 years with no issues unless there is a mfg. defect of some kind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[WeeboTech]

While I agree with you in general, I however  do not think that this is the situation requiring such reliability, if I  am wrong than it is only because OP did not specified the primary use of the described server.

 

we all have our needs and wants, and certainly free to spend our cash any way we pleased.

however if we can save some $$ here and there without compromising over all reliability I think we should look at all possible solutions.

 

It's an unRAID forum, probably for an unRAID server, Probably to house data in a protected fashion.

It's going to be a server to serve files  & protect them.

I would believe recommendations come from tried and true high quality products.

 

My thought is anyone who feels their data is not worth the cost of quality parts, probably doesn't need unRAID.

 

Now if someone said, give me the cheapest solution, irregardless of reliability. that's a different point.

 

Motherboards fail. I've had a couple fail either from heat or the capacitors drying out.

Each of my supermicro motherboards ran until the day I retired the server.

I.E. they ran for 3-6 years sometimes uninterrupted for years at a time.

I do think they are worth it. A lil more expensive, however I can vouch for years of reliable server class service.

 

[WeeboTech]

BTW, IPMI Rocks and I highly recommend it if the server is not going to be located near a monitor/keyboard

[johnm160]

Had a MB fail a couple of weeks ago that was less than 2 yrs old. It was an off brand I picked up for a computer for my daughter. The savings does not seem woth it now. My ASUS boards have run for many many years without issue.

 

[vl1969]

While I agree with you in general, I however  do not think that this is the situation requiring such reliability, if I  am wrong than it is only because OP did not specified the primary use of the described server.

 

we all have our needs and wants, and certainly free to spend our cash any way we pleased.

however if we can save some $$ here and there without compromising over all reliability I think we should look at all possible solutions.

 

It's an unRAID forum, probably for an unRAID server, Probably to house data in a protected fashion.

It's going to be a server to serve files  & protect them.

I would believe recommendations come from tried and true high quality products.

 

My thought is anyone who feels their data is not worth the cost of quality parts, probably doesn't need unRAID.

 

Now if someone said, give me the cheapest solution, irregardless of reliability. that's a different point.

 

Motherboards fail. I've had a couple fail either from heat or the capacitors drying out.

Each of my supermicro motherboards ran until the day I retired the server.

I.E. they ran for 3-6 years sometimes uninterrupted for years at a time.

I do think they are worth it. A lil more expensive, however I can vouch for years of reliable server class service.

 

 

I never said that quality parts do not matter, however most hardware recommended on this forum is not server type, but SOHO, as in customer level parts.

and I though the whole purpose of unRaid was to have a home file server for reasonable cost.

if we need enterprise level hardware for unRaid then we might as well run a full blown RAID configuration or a like. I understand that many users do go overboard with their builds just because they can. But it does not mean that we all have to go that way.

based on set up posted by OP, it seams that this was a small server config, with limited expansion projected( there is only so much you can fit in that case and on that MB) thus I suggested for OP to shop around before plunking this much money for MB.

 

#1. you CAN possibly find a cheaper MB which not necessarily bad quality with same or reasonably close parameters.

 

#2. personally I would more worry about quality of the Hard Drives rather then anything else in the system.  as the main reason for unRaid in contrast to any other setup is that if your HDD is good then your data is safe. anything else can be replaced as needed as long as you HDD are ok

thus any money saved on other components (provided you still get a good quality hardware) can be applied to good reliable HDD

 

I do agree that IPMI rocks, and I wish I could find MB with it built in that fits my budget.

well maybe in a future builds I will.

 

 

[bcbgboy13]

If you want a small server you probably wont find a better value from the HP Microserver:

 

They are available on Ebay for $230-250 - one example is here:

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/612275-001-HP-ProLiant-MicroServer-612275-001-Entry-level-Server-Ult-Mcro-Tower-/220885425346?pt=COMP_EN_Servers&hash=item336dcc1cc2

 

You will get ECC memory support (non existent with any motherboard using SODIMMs), small and efficient PSU (almost impossible to find in this power range)

If you want you can upgrade the RAM (I believe they come by default with 1GB only) but keep using the ECC

 

Pair this server with a tiny 350-500VA UPS and it is almost guaranteed that you wont have to visit the support forums that often.

 

Search here for people using them and you will find a plenty of info.

[WeeboTech]

#1. you CAN possibly find a cheaper MB which not necessarily bad quality with same or reasonably close parameters.

 

What was recommended as an alternative at $110 seems to have quite a bit of negative commentary about the two ports on the jmicron controller.

 

Sometimes simple, elegant, tried and true works better.

 

For someone new to unRAID with one post asking how the system specs out, I thought it was a decent choice of components.

 

Customer reviews of the suggested MBD-X7SPE-HF-D525-O show good percentage of satisfaction.

Low maintenance overhead usually wins in my view. Time is money. and time wasted messing with something vs using what is known to work seems like a basis to weigh cost upon.

[WeeboTech]

If you want a small server you probably wont find a better value from the HP Microserver:

 

They are available on Ebay for $230-250 - one example is here:

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/612275-001-HP-ProLiant-MicroServer-612275-001-Entry-level-Server-Ult-Mcro-Tower-/220885425346?pt=COMP_EN_Servers&hash=item336dcc1cc2

 

You will get ECC memory support (non existent with any motherboard using SODIMMs), small and efficient PSU (almost impossible to find in this power range)

If you want you can upgrade the RAM (I believe they come by default with 1GB only) but keep using the ECC

 

Pair this server with a tiny 350-500VA UPS and it is almost guaranteed that you wont have to visit the support forums that often.

 

Search here for people using them and you will find a plenty of info.

 

That's a nice price. I almost want to buy one to build an unraid server just for fun...

Ahh... but alas I must resist the unRAID compulsive design syndrome.

 

[FreeRAD]

Hey, you guys mentioned that the MBD-X7SPE-HF-D525 is a better choice, but what about the form factor? I'm looking for a small case to house it, but what kind of motherboard form factors would be compatible?

[chip]

Have you looked at this build using the same case you listed.

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=15800.0

[Johnm]

The MBD-X7SPx comes in two sizes: A and E

X7SPA = mITX

X7SPE = FlexATX (Proprietary).

Technically, there is a  X7SPT = that is a special board with two computers on one motherboard and fits nothing other then 1 special case.

 

The first one (X7SPA) is true mITX, it will fit any mITX case (and any case for larger mother boards). It should fit almost any case out there since mITX uses the first four primary mounting holes  of any standard motherboard.

 

The second one (X7SPE) is about an inch wider then mITX. the PCIe slot it is moved over one row to fit the Supermicro 1u servers riser cards. It will fit in MOST mITX cases. the exception will be the ultra tiny mini cases. Usually the type designed to fit on the back of a monitor.

 

Supermicro reference: http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Atom/

 

Newegg only sells the second type (X7SPE) of the 525 and first type (X7SPA) of the 510. I am not sure why they went this route.

I have some of each of those and they both fit my mITX cases just fine (Chenbro ES34169). they should both fit any Lan-Li case, including the one you mentioned.

 

also, While listed as 4Gig max, you can shove 8Gigs of ram in D525 with certain types of RAM. I have noticed the memory clocks slower when you do this (as do most Supermicro boards when you reach a certain memory amount).

 

I hope this helped and didn't confuse you any more.