happymaan Posted January 2, 2014 Share Posted January 2, 2014 Hello I'll be starting my first 21 drive unRAID build soon and I'm looking for a little help with choosing a motherboard/cpu combo. I would like a SuperMicro Haswell board. Getting a chip that is powerful (I will run a number of plugins), but efficient is important to me because I do want to system to be low power while idle. I plan on having a SSD cache drive to help with this. I'd rather spent a bit more money now, and have powerful but low(ish) power system if possible. I do want to make sure my motherboard supports IPMI and can fit 2 x M1015 controller cards. Also I plan on getting 16 GB's of ECC RAM. Any advice is very appreciated, thanks. Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted January 3, 2014 Share Posted January 3, 2014 Supermicro + IPMI + ECC support + support for 2 M1015 (i.e. 2 PCIe x8 slots) ==> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182823 Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted January 3, 2014 Share Posted January 3, 2014 ... pop in a Xeon E3-12xx v3 processor and you'll have a VERY nice system that uses very low power, but has enough "horsepower" to do just about anything you could possibly demand of it in UnRAID. I'd use an E3-12v40v3 (the Xeon equivalent of an i7-4770), but an E3-1220v3 would be plenty if you're trying to keep the costs a bit lower. Both draw VERY low power when the CPU utilization is low ... which it would be the vast majority of the time. Quote Link to comment
Chris Pollard Posted January 3, 2014 Share Posted January 3, 2014 Both of my systems are similar, both work well. 16gb of RAM is currently a bit of waste unless you plan on running ESX, once 64bit unraid is ready then it will be fine (Don't hold your breath for this...) Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted January 3, 2014 Share Posted January 3, 2014 ... once 64bit unraid is ready then it will be fine (Don't hold your breath for this...) I'd definitely install 16GB ... do it with 2 8GB modules, as the memory subsystem is more reliable with only 2 modules installed. As for 64-bit UnRAID ... I think you'll be (pleasantly) surprised at how short the wait will be Quote Link to comment
Chris Pollard Posted January 3, 2014 Share Posted January 3, 2014 As for 64-bit UnRAID ... I think you'll be (pleasantly) surprised at how short the wait will be Maybe, past experience tells me otherwise sadly. Quote Link to comment
PeterB Posted January 7, 2014 Share Posted January 7, 2014 As for 64-bit UnRAID ... I think you'll be (pleasantly) surprised at how short the wait will be Maybe, past experience tells me otherwise sadly. Hopefully, the first 64-bit release will be a simple re-compile of the current 32-bit version, without any feature creep. This should make the exercise relatively straight forward. I wonder whether Gary has access to an early 64-bit build. Quote Link to comment
happymaan Posted January 12, 2014 Author Share Posted January 12, 2014 Thanks...that looks to be just what I want. The only thing that makes me a bit nervous about this MB is that there is not much said on the forums about it yet. You think it will work find with unRAID without any flashing or anything? Supermicro + IPMI + ECC support + support for 2 M1015 (i.e. 2 PCIe x8 slots) ==> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182823 Quote Link to comment
doron Posted January 12, 2014 Share Posted January 12, 2014 Thanks...that looks to be just what I want. The only thing that makes me a bit nervous about this MB is that there is not much said on the forums about it yet. You think it will work find with unRAID without any flashing or anything? Supermicro + IPMI + ECC support + support for 2 M1015 (i.e. 2 PCIe x8 slots) ==> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182823 I'm using his brother, X10SL7-F. Same form factor, similar attributes, but with an LSI SAS controller on the mobo (so before sticking any controller cards, you can connect 8+6 drives right into the board. Sweet). My CPU is Xeon 1230v3. It works very well with unRAID, both bare-bones and virtualized under ESXi. No need to flash anything (even on the LSI, I run with the stock IR firmware and it works perfectly). You might consider this one... or, think of it as "close enough" to the one you were looking at. Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted January 12, 2014 Share Posted January 12, 2014 doron => which version of ESXi are you using with that board? Quote Link to comment
doron Posted January 12, 2014 Share Posted January 12, 2014 doron => which version of ESXi are you using with that board? ESXi 5.5, w/ updated driver to support the onboard NICs. (no extra driver required for unRAID 5.0 and up - builtin drivers are good). Quote Link to comment
happymaan Posted January 12, 2014 Author Share Posted January 12, 2014 Thanks, that looks perfect for me. Thanks...that looks to be just what I want. The only thing that makes me a bit nervous about this MB is that there is not much said on the forums about it yet. You think it will work find with unRAID without any flashing or anything? Supermicro + IPMI + ECC support + support for 2 M1015 (i.e. 2 PCIe x8 slots) ==> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182823 I'm using his brother, X10SL7-F. Same form factor, similar attributes, but with an LSI SAS controller on the mobo (so before sticking any controller cards, you can connect 8+6 drives right into the board. Sweet). My CPU is Xeon 1230v3. It works very well with unRAID, both bare-bones and virtualized under ESXi. No need to flash anything (even on the LSI, I run with the stock IR firmware and it works perfectly). You might consider this one... or, think of it as "close enough" to the one you were looking at. Quote Link to comment
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