Got a new TP-Link 10g network card and installed it in my ASRock Z97 Extreme mobo. No dice. Tried two different slots and it didn't work. The lights on the network card don't ever come on so maybe it's a bad card, not compatible with my Mobo, mobo too old or needs to be enabled in the bios?

 

Any help would be appreciated.

According to the manual in section 2.4 about the expansion slots, only the x1 slots can be used, the other slots are only for graphic cards. From the pictures, it looks like the x1 slots are not open, so your TP-Link TX401 won't work, since that has a physical x4 connector and doesn't fit.

DOH!!! Thanks a bunch!!! I had no idea. What do you suggest? New computer or do they make a 10g card that plus in a different way?

Those x1 slots are only PCIe 2.0, which means a single lane gets about 500MB/s or about 4gbit, so at most you'd get a 2.5gb card which would work. But most 10gbit connections won't do speeds of 2.5 or 5 gbit so it depends on what it'll be connected to if it accepts that or not.

 

So, I think it's time for an upgrade for your motherboard at least.

What can you suggest for mobo cpu combo? Does it matter these days for just an Unraid file server? Should I just look for a mobo that has the stuff I want?

 

Basically what I'm asking is hardware compatibility an issue these days?

 

Also should it matter if I have one SATA controller or not? I was upgrading this server and put in a 20 port SATA PCI card so I could use that for all my drives on the new computer or is it better to have multiple cards for the hard drives?

Ok what about this setup.

ASUS PRIME B860-PLUS WIFI B860 LGA 1851 ATX motherboard

Intel Core Ultra 5 245KF - Core Ultra 5 (Series 2) Arrow Lake 14-Core (6P+8E), LGA 1851

TP-Link 10Gbps PCIe Network Card (TX401)

LSI 9305-16i PCI-Express 3.0 x8 two of these.

CORSAIR Vengeance 64GB (2 x 32GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR5 5600

CORSAIR RMx Shift Series RM1000x Shift Fully Modular 80PLUS Gold ATX Power Supply

 

Let me know if this is overkill for a file server. Thanks.

Hold the phone batman. I just built a new desktop computer and the old one is still good. Here are it's specs.

Asus X-99 A Rev 1 Mobo. Link to the MOBO manual https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/LGA2011/X99-A/E10088_X99-A_UG_V3_U_for_web_only.pdf?model=X99-A

16gb RAM (4 Sticks) is this enough RAM for a file server?

Intel Core i7-5820K CPU 3.3ghz

 

Then I would add 

TP-Link 10Gbps PCIe Network Card (TX401)

LSI 9305-16i PCI-Express 3.0 x8 (two of these)

Edited April 10, 20251 yr by Cartierusm

On 4/9/2025 at 9:30 PM, Cartierusm said:

Does it matter these days for just an Unraid file server? Should I just look for a mobo that has the stuff I want?

20 port SATA PCI card

 

For file-servers it doesn't really matter, although the unraid GUI responds faster with faster single-core performance usually. When you want VM's and dockers and transcoding and such, that's when you want more specific, but for file-servers almost anything goes.

 

On 4/10/2025 at 3:46 AM, Cartierusm said:

Asus X-99 A Rev 1

16gb RAM (4 Sticks) is this enough RAM for a file server?

Intel Core i7-5820K CPU 3.3ghz

 

Then I would add 

TP-Link 10Gbps PCIe Network Card (TX401)

LSI 9305-16i PCI-Express 3.0 x8 (two of these)

That will work fine, although the X99 chipset is not a server-chipset so if you want to go crazy and put a xeon e5 2680 or something on it later, it will work but may miss some features.

 

If you're only using SATA/SAS harddrives and not SSDs, you can also consider a single 9305-24i, and if you need more ports, an expander like an Adaptec 82885t. Also the 9400-16i may be around the same price or available cheaper with or without expander.

I just realized the fastest those regular old sata hdd can deliver is probably 6gbps right, which translates to about 750mb per second, right? So a 10g network is useless? My 1gbps should handle that no problem?

1 hour ago, Cartierusm said:

I just realized the fastest those regular old sata hdd can deliver is probably 6gbps right, which translates to about 750mb per second, right? So a 10g network is useless? My 1gbps should handle that no problem?

 

Are you writing to a single drive at a time like with a traditional Unraid Array? If so, you'll be limited. But instead if you're using a Pool and you're using ZRAID or some other RAID implementation, you can go much faster than your 1Gbit link can handle.

 

All my servers that deal with downloads and file transfers have 10Gbit links and connected to 10Gbit switches. Other devices on the network are a mix of 100mbit, 1Gbit and 2.5Gbit. The catalyst that started my journey upgrading all the network equipment was getting 1.5Gbit fiber ISP connection and wanting to make sure I was able to saturate it with as little as one machine. And of course knowing that I can upgrade to 3, 5 or 10Gbit any time with my current (or a future) ISP.

 

Edited April 11, 20251 yr by Espressomatic

1 hour ago, Cartierusm said:

My 1gbps should handle that no problem?

So 1gbit is about 125MB, and there is some overhead and such, so usually you'd reach about 120MB. Modern hard drives can easily reach that speed, let alone SSDs. So that means as soon as you start copying, the entire link can be consumed with that, and if you need it for something else like internet, there won't be space. So 10gbit is the way to go (although I would have gone with fiber, since those cards also get warm, it's less than copper, and uses only 1watt or less per port instead of up to 5watt.)

1 hour ago, Espressomatic said:

 

Are you writing to a single drive at a time like with a traditional Unraid Array? If so, you'll be limited. But instead if you're using a Pool and you're using ZRAID or some other RAID implementation, you can go much faster than your 1Gbit link can handle.

 

All my servers that deal with downloads and file transfers have 10Gbit links and connected to 10Gbit switches. Other devices on the network are a mix of 100mbit, 1Gbit and 2.5Gbit. The catalyst that started my journey upgrading all the network equipment was getting 1.5Gbit fiber ISP connection and wanting to make sure I was able to saturate it with as little as one machine. And of course knowing that I can upgrade to 3, 5 or 10Gbit any time with my current (or a future) ISP.

 

Ok thanks. Yeah it's just a regular array with shares. No pools.

18 minutes ago, Wody said:

So 1gbit is about 125MB, and there is some overhead and such, so usually you'd reach about 120MB. Modern hard drives can easily reach that speed, let alone SSDs. So that means as soon as you start copying, the entire link can be consumed with that, and if you need it for something else like internet, there won't be space. So 10gbit is the way to go (although I would have gone with fiber, since those cards also get warm, it's less than copper, and uses only 1watt or less per port instead of up to 5watt.)

Ooooo fiber. Interesting. I have no concept of that stuff. I'll do some research.

 

So I'll just go with the X99 computer as is and just add my 20 Port Sata Card that I just got and the 10gbe card. I'll also add an SSD 1 TB (not nvme) as a cache.

 

Should I have more than 16gb of RAM?

 

Here's the Sata Card I just got. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CZJKYH11?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1

12 hours ago, Cartierusm said:

hould I have more than 16gb of RAM?

 

Here's the Sata Card I just got.

That's not good. It has port-multipliers, which means many problems, see here. Even if they work, they are extremely slow, they only connect with x1 or x2 at most. For what they cost, you could get a 9200-series or 9300-8i and a sas-expander, although it would use more electricity and generate more heat, it would run full-speed.

 

As for memory, you need 4GB or more, so for a file-server 16GB is fine.

Seconded the 9300 recommendation. I'd opt for more than 16GB. Likely 32GB if there are any plans to move to ZRAID in the future as it uses a lot of memory for optional caching, which I also highly recommend for a file server. You can't underestimate the performance increase when moving to this type of Pool storage. The downside is all drives need to spin up at the same time, but if data access speeds are important to you, this is a small price to pay. The classic Array is acceptable for long-term backup targets as it's much slower.

EEK, this all a bit over my head, but not by much, I catch both of you's drift. A lot to comprehend here. I decided not to go with my old system as it has no onboard video and I don't want a video card in there. Trying to make it as streamline and less things to go bad as possible.

Ok I hate to ask but can you recommend a system. No shorthand if you please as I don't get some of it. I have a Norco 4220 case with 5 Mini SAS on the backplane. I can use either a mini sas to mini sas (or something else I don't know about) or mini sas to sata reverse cable. I have 20 HDD, 19 regular and an SSD 1tb I want to add as cache.

 

Motherboard, CPU (with onboard video), I'll go with 32gb of RAM, TP Link 10gbe, Cards or combo of onboard controllers for the 20 HDD. Amazon links if you want.

 

THANKS!!

I'm a great fan of Supermicro motherboards, at one point the development system and recommended was an X10SL7-F with a Xeon e3 1230 v3. I got that and ran with it for years, even got an e3 1285 v4 for it, which has a GPU it can't use (chipset doesn't support it) but the cache makes it run fast. Then I got an X10DRH-CT which has 10gb on board, but then windows 11 came, and I got some really cheap Xeon gold 6138 processors, which I used on a X11SPL-F.

 

These boards all have a BMC or Baseboard Management Controller, which means you can turn them on remotely, check logs, control them remotely, and it has onboard video so no videocard required which is very useful (no need to buy a monitor, keyboard or mouse) and it also has hardware information. Which told me the board was tested with 6248 processors, which I am currently running, with 192GB ram. That X11 also has 7 PCIe x8 slots (one runs at x4), so if you want a videocard for transcoding, you can just put it in, and I'm currently using it with 25gbe networking-cards. With 10gbit onboard, the equivalent with slightly less PCIe slots would be the X11SPi-TF (thats I not L).

 

These are older boards, but there's great modern boards too. If I wanted to buy something new completely instead of getting used processors, I'd buy the X13SEI-F or X13SEI-TF for 10gbit.

 

As for storage, the X10SL7-F was great because it has 8 SAS and 6 SATA connectors, so you'd only need a single HBA. I like reliability, so if something fails, I want to be able to replace that part, and keep going, so I'd run a 9305-24i, but with hard-drives, any combination that has enough slots will work. So for example a 9211-8i with a RES2SV240 expander, or a 9201-16i HBA with a 9211-8i (or 9207i or any other LSI/Avago/Broadcom card). It's more a question of power-usage and heat than what works or not. And cost of course.

 

Speaking of cost, even though those are really cheap solutions, they cost about the same these days as more modern variations, like a 9300-8i with a AEC-82885T expander. That last one is really nice because it can be powered by PCIe or with a Molex plug so you can stick it anywhere and have it work.

 

Oh, and for some cards there are cards with less connections, like the 9305-16i but then you see the sad empty places on the board, and those cards work fine but I hate seeing that, so I won't mention those.

Thanks a bunch. I appreciate it. This is a lot to unpack. Again a bit technical for me, but I'll see if I understand.

 

So I'll go with the SI LOGIC CONTROLLER CARD 05-25699-00 9305-24I 24-PORT SAS 12GB/S PCI-EXPRESS 3. My backplane is mini SAS, so I'm assuming I can just buy a regular SAS to Mini SAS cable? Does it have to be reverse or anything special?

 

Here's my buy list:

Supermicro X11SPI-TF Server Motherboard - Intel Chipset - Socket P LGA-3647-1 

Intel Xeon Gold 6138 20 Cores 2GHz 27.5MB 10.4 GT/s 125W LGA 3647 CPU SR3B5 (Renewed)

SI LOGIC CONTROLLER CARD 05-25699-00 9305-24I 24-PORT SAS 12GB/S PCI-EXPRESS 3

5x 10GTEK SFF-8643 to SFF-8087 Mini SAS HD Cable, SAS 3.0 to 2.0, Compatible with RAID Controllers, Servers, Backplanes and Hosts, 100-Ohm

EMIX RAM 64GB (2X32GB) DDR4 2933MHZ PC4-23400 2Rx4 1.2V CL21 288-PIN ECC RDIMM Registered Server Memory KIT

Dynatron B11 3U Active Narrow Type CPU Cooler for Intel FCLGA3647

 

I'll obviously use my existing Norco 4220 and power supply.

 

Anything else I'm missing?

 

Edited April 13, 20251 yr by Cartierusm

The 9305-24i uses SFF-6843 connectors also known as Mini SAS HD, your backplane uses Mini SAS which is SFF-8087. The SFF-6843 is newer, but it's basically the same connection, just in a different format, so you can get SFF-8643 to SFF-8087 cables, like you already selected.

 

For SATA you do need forward or reverse cables, because SATA has cables crossed so receive connects to transmit on the other end, but for SAS it is straight through. That means if you have SAS at one end and SATA at the other, the data only flows in one direction, which is why you need the different cables depending on where it needs to go.

 

The 6138 is great, will work fine, but I didn't like how it was a bit laggy with the unraid interface. I also only choose those because I could get them cheap. One of the things to keep in mind is the TDP which is how much heat the processor can generate. My board only supports 165W TDP processors, the X11SPi-TF supports 205W, so you could for example put a Platinum 8168 on there, or a slightly better than the 6138, the 6148 which is also really cheap.

 

The only thing to keep in mind with processors, some have ES in the keywords or description, those are Engineering Samples. For some reason people really want those because they may have features that aren't in the released retail processors, but they won't run on most Supermicro boards without altering the BIOS. If it doesn't say, googling the S-Spec code usually tells you what kind it is, like SR3B5 is a normal model.

The memory you selected is probably wrong, since it doesn't display any of the stuff that is important like manufacturer of the memory, or type. Supermicro really likes SK Hynix memory, or Micron but that might be hard to get (at least it is where I am).

 

The 6138 supports speeds up to 2666Mhz, the 2nd generation (like 6248) supports up to 2933Mhz. The easiest way is to go to a boards page (like the X11SPi-TF page) and under Resources you'll find a Tested memory list. It'll list supermicro part-numbers, which aren't very useful, since they can show numbers for many part, however if you use the store-link or google those, it'll tell you exactly what type they are, for example MEM-DR432LC-ER26 is really Micron MTA36ASF4G72PZ-2G6E1, and if you google that, it'll show you places that charge about $30-$35 instead of $100 that Supermicro would if they weren't sold out.

The other type they recommend is HMA84GR7AFR4N-VK which is what they tested one of my boards with, but if you find some memory, you can also go the other way around, for example, I'm using HMA84GR7CJR4N-VK, if I google Supermicro + the type it shows a link to the supermicro site where they sold this memory as MEM-DR432LC-ER26 (hey, it's the same part-number!), and there is a validity checker on the store-page for systems and motherboards which shows the memory is compatible with my (and your) boards, despite not being listed with the other method. So if you can get some memory cheap, this might be a better method.

That was a lot to dig through. Thanks a bunch. I really appreciate it. Here's what I ended up ordering.

Supermicro X11SPI-TF Server Motherboard - Intel Chipset - Socket P LGA-3647-1

Intel SR37J Xeon Platinum 8168 2.7GHz 24-Core Processor (Renewed)

5x 0GTEK SFF-8643 to SFF-8087 Mini SAS HD Cable

Dynatron B11 3U Active Narrow Type CPU Cooler for Intel FCLGA3647

LSI LOGIC CONTROLLER CARD 05-25699-00 9305-24I 24-PORT SAS 12GB/S PCI-EXPRESS 3

2x Supermicro Certified MEM-DR432L-HL01-ER26 Hynix 32GB DDR4-2666 ECC REG DIMM

 

So I went with two sticks of 32gb RAM, it was cheap enough.

 

Anything I need to know about setting it up?

Mess with or update the BIOS? I guess other than that just move my drives and Flash drive over and bob's your uncle? Right, Unraid will figure it out. Nothing to install or update?

Edited April 14, 20251 yr by Cartierusm

14 hours ago, Cartierusm said:

Anything I need to know about setting it up?

 

If you buy a new board, it will have been tested for operation. So when you get the board (you only need the plain board, no CPU, no ram etc), take a photo or write down the IPMI password (there will be a sticker saying BMC and PWD), get a powersupply and connect the 24-pin to it, put a network cable in the dedicated ipmi port to your switch/router, apply power, you should get a LED that eventually starts blinking, which is the heartbeat LED for the BMC. It usually takes about 30-45 seconds to start up. For first use, it's easiest to use IPMIview which you can get here. (There's also an android app but that depends on how your network is set up but you can try that too). IPMIview has a search-function you can use, and it should come up with the IP address of the board. Use a browser to connect to that, and enter ADMIN as username, and the password from the sticker. If there was no password listed, you have an older board from before November 2019 and the password should be ADMIN. If they changed it, but the board boots, you can reset it, but let's assume it's the default password.

 

Reason for wanting to connect the IPMI, is because even without processor and memory and other devices, is because it just plain feels weird to talk to a board that doesn't have anything attached and works anyway, it's not something a lot of people do, especially not with a new board. So instant celebrity status. But the real reason is practical. The main-screen will have information about what firmware and BIOS is installed and such. So you can copy/past that information to a text-file in notepad or something. It'll also show the MAC-addresses of the network-ports which can be handy.

 

Next on the left it'll have Hardware information, if you click that, it'll show information about the system, and a whole lot of things you can open with arrow-icons, with information about BIOS, CPU, DIMMs, and powersupply. Most useful is to copy information about the CPU and all the DIMMs and add them to the information-text-file. The reason to copy all this information, is because you know the board booted with those devices. So if you have issues, and are able to get those same devices, and it still doesn't work, it means you're doing something wrong, or the devices are broken. Or if the devices do work on another board, you're doing something wrong or the board is broken. Since the information will be erased once you boot successfully, it's important to copy that.

 

At this point, if you purchased or got a 'supermicro product key' for SFT-OOB-LIC you can also apply it under Maintenance->Activate license, and after that you can update the IPMI firmware from Maintenance->Firmware update, and the BIOS from Maintenance->BIOS update. Although you may want to wait with that until you've booted at least once. I have two of them, so I updated one after booting it, but the other I updated before putting a CPU on, so I know it can be done, but if something goes wrong, you won't know if it is the BIOS or the devices you connected, so its probably better to wait.

 

After that, remove power, put on the CPU using the procedure in the manual (Intel has a video here but do not do what they did, use hand-tools). Also, because pin 1 is in a different direction than usual with processors, it helps to put the board, cooler and cpu next to each other so you can visualize how it all connects to each other before you find out your cooler is the wrong way around and now you have no cooling paste to replace the ruined stuff (the carriage comes with the cooler, make sure to select the right one if there are multiple). Make sure to follow the 1-2-3-4, and because of the weight, it helps to keep a finger or two on the cooler to keep it from tipping over. You can do 1 a little, then 2-3-4 also a little, and then 1 fully etc, but the order is very important to prevent damage.

 

For the BIOS, you may have to change the boot-order, once you connected the USB, but that's about all. There is an USB-connector on the front of the board, so that's the easiest location. Otherwise, everything should start up, however, before moving all the drives and everything, disable autostart for the array, dockers and VMs, once moved, start the array, and then check if you have to edit anything for the dockers and VM's, especially regarding networking, because your board will have different MAC-addresses.

 

Other interesting things you might not expect, the RAM-slots all face the same way, for older processors, memory faced differently so you'd always install memory with the labels facing away from the processor, one side was reversed. So if you automatically reverse the memory installing the second stick out of habit, and can't get it to go in, you know why.

 

Edit: Forgot to say, like with all new memory, run a memtest! unraid has memtest86+ which should work okay. I have memtest86 so I used that, and found I purchased a bad stick, but I didn't test that one with memtest86+ to see if it also would fail.

Edited April 15, 20251 yr by Wody

Excellent. Thanks. I'll keep you updated. Should have everything by Monday. Everything is new except the CPU which is renewed.

Ok transfer over went perfect. I started it up and it booted and everything was good. I didn't touch the BIOS or anything at all. Just left it as is.

 

So i added a cache drive. Put a NVME on the board, booted it up, watched a video on how to setup a cache, added a pool called cache and asigned the NVME 1tb as the cache drive and formatted it. Over in shares there is a new icon next to Appdata and System. If you hover over it, it says, "Secondary Storage to Primary Storage". Then after watching the video I pressed the move button. Now there's an orange warning sign in shares next to appdata and system. It says, Some or all files are unprotected.

 

So what did do wrong?

6 hours ago, Cartierusm said:

Some or all files are unprotected.

Moving the appdata and other files such as dockers and VMs to cache means they aren't stored on the array but in a pool, which means they don't have the parity-protection of the array, and that's what it is warning about. So this is expected behavior.

 

You can always make a directory or share on the array for backups, and then copy the files from cache there when not in use (but rename the folders something else on the array, for example bappdata instead of appdata so it won't try to use them instead of the files on cache).

 

Then when (not if) the cache drive fails, you can get a new one and put the files back on the new cache-drive (or temporarily copy/move them to /mnt/user).

 

Don't forget to enable TRIM in the scheduler, and set autotrim on in the cache-settings, if it isn't yet. If TRIM isn't enabled, it'll lower how long the cache-drive lasts.