I'm new to the board here and starting to acquire hardware to build an unRAID server (upgrading from a Drobo)

 

I'll start by letting you know that I'm a scrounger and, well, in a word: "cheap". I want to do this on the cheap - but not twice.

 

Here's what I'm facing right now. A buddy has a spare Athlon X2 3800+ which I would like to take advantage of since he's going to just give it to me. But, every time I find a good price on a socket 939 motherboard, I find out it uses the nforce4 chipset and I've read a lot of horror stories about these on the forum. Basically I'm confused. I have some questions and hope you guys will be kind enough to lend me some advice.

 

- Did the data corruption issues that seemed to be associated with the Nforce4 get resolved with a more recent kernel?

- Were these problems isolated to using the on-board SATA controllers or have they also been found using add-on SATA cards (like a Silicon Image) with these motherboards? (In other words, can I avoid the corruption issues by not using the on-bard controller?)

- I guess I should also ask if you think I should just forget the idea of using a free CPU since it forces me to use a socket 939 board? If so any economical suggestions?

 

Also:

Any recommendations for a power supply would be appreciated - I plan on adding quite a few hard drives (say 10-15 by the time I'm through) and don't want to have to upgrade in a few months.

 

Thanks for any advice you have.

I use a Socket 939 motherboard Asus A8N-SLI Premium Motherboard which has a nforce4 chipset. I have 8 disks plus a cache drive and have been running it for 9+ months. No problems. Great board for unRAID. Can be found on ebay.

I have been using a GIGABYTE GA-MA74GM-S2 with absolutely no issues.

- Did the data corruption issues that seemed to be associated with the Nforce4 get resolved with a more recent kernel?

- Were these problems isolated to using the on-board SATA controllers or have they also been found using add-on SATA cards (like a Silicon Image) with these motherboards? (In other words, can I avoid the corruption issues by not using the on-bard controller?)

 

Just in case you did not see these nForce comments:  http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Hardware_Compatibility#Motherboards_.2F_Processors

 

I have never thought or heard of a suggestion that these problems were kernel, OS, or driver related.  Rather they have seemed (a highly untechnical evaluation!) like hardware flaws within the nForce chipsets themselves.  The nForce chipsets did achieve some very high performance numbers in some situations, better than Intel chipsets for comparable CPU's and bus speeds, which to me, says that they may have pushed beyond the electrical tolerances that were safe, stable.  Or they just used flaky chips or faulty firmware, fixed later with nForce5 and higher chipsets.  It looked like registers that, under heavy traffic, would have a bit flip or stick.  Nothing you can fix with software.  My opinion is that only Asus worked hard enough with BIOS updates with workarounds, to produce the A8N family of nForce4 boards, that had any stable success.  I personally would not recommend any nForce board less than nForce5, but as Bryant said, some have found success with a few of the Asus A8N family.

 

I note that the Hardware Compatibility page does have a DFI LANParty UT NF590 SLI-M2R/G, using the nForce 590 chipset and AMD Socket 939, but don't know if you can find this or a similar board.

I am still  "in the process" of testing my Epox 9npa+ Ultra - nforce4 Ultra motherboard for unRAID use.

 

I have not concluded yet, but so far I have not been able to produce any bit errors. I have transferred quite a few hundred GB of data back and forth between another PC and unRAID running with this motherboard, without detecting a single bit failure (executing a LOT of binary comparisons across my network between the machines )

 

I am planning to perform more extensive testing pretty soon. Especially with more drives in the unRAID array. So far I have only been testing using 1 parity drive and 1 drive for data (1 drive connected to the nForce4 onboard controller and 1 drive on a Sil3132 PCI-E x1 controller card). All of the other drives in the machine are NTFS drives currently in use by Windows XP (which the machine is usally running when not testing unRAID ), so  it takes some "planning" to do a smooth migration 

 

I have posted about my testing previously in this thread:

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=1771.0

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks so much for the responses. I'm glad my low-ball offer for a Foxconn mobo on eBay got rejected. It'll give me some time to sort this out.

 

I note that the Hardware Compatibility page does have a DFI LANParty UT NF590 SLI-M2R/G, using the nForce 590 chipset and AMD Socket 939, but don't know if you can find this or a similar board.

I just assumed that was just a misprint since the DFI LANParty UT NF590 uses a socket AM2 -- I need a socket 939 (these aren't the same thing, right?)

 

OK - so I think I'm going to steer clear of nforce4. Next question:

 

I've found some socket 939 boards with the VIA K8T800 Pro / VT8237 chipset. These come with SATA-150 on board and comments on other forums indicate the "don't support SATA-300". Does this just mean they don't support SATA-300 onboard? Can I get a SATA-300 controller, add to these motherboards, and get SATA-300 suppport? Is there something inherent in the VIA chipset that will prevent data from transferring that fast?

Thanks so much for the responses. I'm glad my low-ball offer for a Foxconn mobo on eBay got rejected. It'll give me some time to sort this out.

 

I note that the Hardware Compatibility page does have a DFI LANParty UT NF590 SLI-M2R/G, using the nForce 590 chipset and AMD Socket 939, but don't know if you can find this or a similar board.

I just assumed that was just a misprint since the DFI LANParty UT NF590 uses a socket AM2 -- I need a socket 939 (these aren't the same thing, right?)

 

OK - so I think I'm going to steer clear of nforce4. Next question:

 

I've found some socket 939 boards with the VIA K8T800 Pro / VT8237 chipset. These come with SATA-150 on board and comments on other forums indicate the "don't support SATA-300". Does this just mean they don't support SATA-300 onboard? Can I get a SATA-300 controller, add to these motherboards, and get SATA-300 suppport? Is there something inherent in the VIA chipset that will prevent data from transferring that fast?

 

If you want to build an unRAID server around a socket 939 motherboard the ASUS A8N series MB's have been used successfully and are on the "Hardware Compability" llist. Why would you want to buy an inferior board that is not on the list?

Well, I suppose I would choose an "inferior" board if it met my needs and cost less than a "superior" board. However, if it cost less and met my needs, then I wouldn't call it "inferior".

Thanks so much for the responses. I'm glad my low-ball offer for a Foxconn mobo on eBay got rejected. It'll give me some time to sort this out.

 

I note that the Hardware Compatibility page does have a DFI LANParty UT NF590 SLI-M2R/G, using the nForce 590 chipset and AMD Socket 939, but don't know if you can find this or a similar board.

I just assumed that was just a misprint since the DFI LANParty UT NF590 uses a socket AM2 -- I need a socket 939 (these aren't the same thing, right?)

 

OK - so I think I'm going to steer clear of nforce4. Next question:

 

I've found some socket 939 boards with the VIA K8T800 Pro / VT8237 chipset. These come with SATA-150 on board and comments on other forums indicate the "don't support SATA-300". Does this just mean they don't support SATA-300 onboard? Can I get a SATA-300 controller, add to these motherboards, and get SATA-300 suppport? Is there something inherent in the VIA chipset that will prevent data from transferring that fast?

 

This is true. But unless you have a PCIe slot, chances are your PCI SATA controller is going to bottleneck you very quickly!

 

There is VERY little performance advantage of SATA-300 vs SATA-150.  Its like saying that the speed limit just went from 150 to 300 miles per hour.  How much faster are you going to be able to drive your Camry?

 

If you are as stingy as your name sake, you'd know that the worst thing you could do is buy something that doesn't work or meet your needs for very long and have to rebuy something else.  Stick with a proven motherboard.  I'd suggest the Supermicro board that Tom uses (C2SEE).  You KNOW it is going to be compatible version after version.  But it is an Intel board.  If you are going to pick an AMD MB, at least pick one that has positive remarks for a few people here.  It is not a sure thing like the C2SEE, becuase adding more drives or upgrading to the next version may cause problems.  But at least you have a good chance.  You also want a motherboard that can handle the number of drives you plan to expand with without putting more than 3-4 on the PCI bus.  Otherwise you're going to get very slow parity check speeds.

 

Another thing to consider is that drives are getting larger, and old motherboards may or may not have problems with them.  BIOS updates on older boards sometimes never happen.

 

Pick wisely ... stingy ... or you may have to change your name to "shoirt sighted".

bjp999 - I think you just might have me pegged.

 

The very reason I posted in the first place is because I don't want to do something that seems like a good deal now ("woohoo! Free CPU!") only to find out later that I need to start all over because I added a 7th drive or something like that.

 

You bring up a good point about the SATA 150 vs. 300. It's a NAS box. The "every-day" bottleneck will be gigabit ethernet. When I do any sort of maintenance, the additional speed would come in handy though so I'll avoid building a box full of PCI-SATA cards. I appreciate that I never considered that angle.

 

I'm already suffering from a short-sited NAS decision - I have a Drobo which, in theory, I love, but in practice: the only way to increase storage capacity is to throw away hard drives and add bigger ones (that's a fine approach if your storage requirements grow at the same rate your hard drives fail). Right now I'm at 85% capacity with a 2TB solution (1.3 TB available). If I wanted to double my capacity, it would cost me over $400 (buy 4 1TB's and throw away 4 500GB's). If I had unRAID, it would only cost me $150 to double it....okay maybe I could sell the used 500GB's on eBay or something, but you get the idea...

 

Thanks for the advice.

I note that the Hardware Compatibility page does have a DFI LANParty UT NF590 SLI-M2R/G, using the nForce 590 chipset and AMD Socket 939, but don't know if you can find this or a similar board.

I just assumed that was just a misprint since the DFI LANParty UT NF590 uses a socket AM2 -- I need a socket 939 (these aren't the same thing, right?)

 

Thanks, I've corrected the Hardware Compatibility page.