Way too many MB's, which would work for my needs?

[VampyreGTX]

Okay, I'm looking to build a server to compliment my HTPC.  My media collection currently stands at around 125 movies, about 70% Blu-Ray. I'm looking to continue expanding my collection, and as movies come out, I purchase and rip to my HTPC and store away the original media to keep the room clean, organized and for simple, quick, movie playback.  I'm about at 70% capacity on my current HTPC drives (with no back-up or parity).  If one drive goes down, I'll need to spend considerable time re-ripping everything, once I figure out what was lost.  I'm looking at starting a build on an unraid system by years end.  I've got everything pegged down for the most part; except for the MB.  I'm on a tight budget, but my wants in terms of future-proofing for size are as follows (I am an AMD groupie, but will settle with Intel for ease of finding good unRaid compatible parts if necessary.)

 

I don't need a TON of space up front, a 1 tB would take about 2-3 months to fill, I'm looking to start with about a 3 drive system initial, 2 storage, 1 parity, most likely 1.5 or 2tb. I'm hoping to be at 16 drives of media eventually, but at that rate, it would be 4+ years before I would need that storage at my current media acquisition rate.  My current hardware for the remainder of the system is as follows.  This was based on the Supermicro C2SEA board, but not sure if that's the best for my current needs and budget (and no longer available at NewEgg, my preferred vendor, I will absolutely NOT buy from Buy.com) i would also like to have onboard video, for simple ease of setup. 

 

Case: CoolerMaster Centurion 590

 

MotherBoard: That's what I'm looking for input on!

 

PS: CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX 650W

 

CPU: Intel Pentium E6300 Wolfdale 2.8GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor (dependent on MB, though would prefer AMD, but seems Intel is more popular for unRaid)

 

Mem: Crucial 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) (once again, this will most likely change based on Mobo)

[prostuff1]

If you have not already found the  Hardware Compatibility Page take a look there and see what boards are popular and which ones have been used with the most success.  If you want one that is known to work well then pay attention to the "Tested Level" column.  Users here have taken the time and tested these boards according the the  Motherboard Rating System and found that they are working well.

 

The "Tested Level" is an ongoing thing and new boards get added once someone tries them out.

[Chris Pollard]

The GIGABYTE GA-MA74GM-S2 seems a popular choice.  I bought a GIGABYTE GA-MA74GM-S2H and I'm happy with it.  You need to be aware of the potential HPA gotcha however. ( http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=UnRAID_Topical_Index#HPA )

 

and if you are just using the box for storage choose a low power CPU to save money on electricity.

[Kaygee]

Some of the AMD platforms like the 790G now allowing unlocking of disabled cores. So an AM3 ready 790G board and a Sempron 140 might get you a working Athlon  x2 240.

 

Look for a SB710 or SB750, Gigabyte boards seem most popular. You need "ACC feature" in the bios. Take a look on the HW compatibility list and see if any have passed at least level one testing.

 

45W dual core would be nice, if it doesnt unlock or the second core is dead, no worries it'll run unRAID just fine as a single core. AMD (and Intel AFAIK) batch test CPUs, grading them based on random test samples, this means this "trick" may work or it may not work with your CPU.

 

Obviously if you go down this route burn in and pre-testing to make sure the unlocked core is good are a pre-requiste.

 

This is how I chose some suitable motherboards, look at the onboard sata port count. Now look at the available expandability (slots available). Currently 4 port PCI-E cards are as dense a port population as you can use. SIL cards can support something called a port multiplier. This allows a single port to support upto five further devices. So in theory a cheap two port SIL3132 card could support 10 sata drives on one PCI-E x1 slot. 

 

PCI-E x16 ports are sometimes graphics only ports. There seems to be very little info avaialble on which boards work and which dont with respect to populating PCI-E x16 slots. For this reason it may be preferable to buy a board with more x1 or x4 PCI-E slots rather than x16 slots like SLI or crossfire boards.

 

PCI-X motherboards are much rarer to find, they offer good bandwidth and unRAID supports an 8 port PCI-X sata card, which is reasonably priced. These motherboards are typically server or workstation boards so often support ECC memory slots and also have 4/6/8 memory slots which is nice, but far from essential. 2GB is plenty of RAM for a vanilla unRAID box.

 

PCI slots, limited to 133MB/s, for either reading or writing. Nice to have but adding more than a couple of HDDs will slow down parity checks and builds, accessing multiple media streams or copying data to the array whilst viewing media may cause slowdowns or stuttering.

 

Try to find a MB with a supported Gb NIC built in. Most streamers are 10/100 only, but copying data to the array at 12MB/s can be tedious, a good Gb will copy to unraid at around 40MB/s. Single NIC is all that is currently supported.

 

Adding a PCI-E Gb nic means loosing future SATA expansion ports, try to avoid. Adding an Intel or Realtek Gb PCI card is an alternative if the onboard nic refuses to play nice.

[WeeboTech]

This is how I chose some suitable motherboards, look at the onboard sata port count. Now look at the available expandability (slots available). Currently 4 port PCI-E cards are as dense a port population as you can use. SIL cards can support something called a port multiplier. This allows a single port to support upto five further devices. So in theory a cheap two port SIL3132 card could support 10 sata drives on one PCI-E x1 slot.

 

Keep in mind, with 5 port PM's, you get an average drive speed of around 60mb/s.

10 drives on PM may be a bit slow.. but not as slow as some postings I've seen.

 

If you can choose boards which support multiple 4X cards, there are 4 port 4x marvell chipset based boards which have good performance.

 

 

PCI-X motherboards are much rarer to find, they offer good bandwidth and unRAID supports an 8 port PCI-X sata card, which is reasonably priced. These motherboards are typically server or workstation boards so often support ECC memory slots and also have 4/6/8 memory slots which is nice, but far from essential. 2GB is plenty of RAM for a vanilla unRAID box.

 

You can get away with 512MB to 1GB without issue. 2-4GB provides extra cache space which aids in preventing disk spin ups.

 

PCI slots, limited to 133MB/s, for either reading or writing. Nice to have but adding more than a couple of HDDs will slow down parity checks and builds, accessing multiple media streams or copying data to the array whilst viewing media may cause slowdowns or stuttering.

 

You can also check the PCI slots to see if they are PCI 2.3 - 66Mhz compliant.

The Promise TX4 and "some" SIL3114 4 port cards are PCI 2.3 - 66Mhz compliant.

This provides 266Mhz bandwidth over PCI.

Also, they usually work in PCI-X slots.

 

I discovered this one day when I could not figure out how I could have 4 drives with a extremely fast transfer rate on a PCI card.

Then executed a command on linux discovering the PCI slot and card was running at 66mhz.

 

I would not doubt the Supermicro 8 port AOC-SAT2-MV8  SATA card can run at 66MHZ on a PCI 2.3 slot.

[Kaygee]

PCI 2.1 added 66Mhz support as an extention, PCI2.2 added 66Mhz 3.3v. The usual problem is every device needs to be 66Mhz or the bus reverts to 33Mhz, this includes onboard devices like USB contollers.

[WeeboTech]

The usual problem is every device needs to be 66Mhz or the bus reverts to 33Mhz, this includes onboard devices like USB contollers.

 

I think some of the more advanced server class boards have different bus'es and/or can handle the different clock speeds.

At least the higher end supermicro workstation and server class boards.

 

I do have an MSI ITX board with a PCI bus, that runs the slot at 66mhz. It does have IDE and USB also. I did not notice it slowing things down.

[Kaygee]

A lot of the workstation boards have multiple buses too. Very nice if you have them. Lspci will show what speed each device supports and its latency. Increasing the cards latency can impove its performance perversly!