REALLY need some help & Guidance on MoBo & CPU selection...

[Redstorm]

Please guys, I could really do with your help...

 

I want to build a new unRAID server, but I also want to build a gaming rig!

 

I have read a little (and I mean a little) about unRAID now working with virtualisation technology so I want to know if its possible to combine my two requirements into one 'mega' server build

 

unRAID

 

Case:  Fractal Design - Define XL (10 x 3.5" bays & 4 x 5.25" bays) - Already purchased

PSU:  Cooler Master GX650 Bronze (80 Plus) - Already Purchased

5in3 drive bays adaptor to allow me to expand to 14/15 drives + Parity

 

GAMING RIG

 

- Want to play FSX, FPS's (Call of Duty, ARMA, Crysis, etc)

- Keen to experiment with 2 M2 SSD's in RAID 0 (Stripe) for fast boot and application launch times

- I already have a nVidia GTX750 GPU card

 

So the first question is can I combine the above two requirements into one build or should I just build two purpose built machines?

Secondly, if it is possible, What hardware would you recommend?

 

Budget wise I was thinking upto around;

 

£150 - MoBo

£230 - CPU

£120-50 - RAM

 

Please let me know what you think my best options are

 

Thanks

 

[ashman70]

I think its definitely possible to combine what you want into a single UnRaid build. I currently have an older Ivy Bridge system with a quad core i7 CPU and 32GB of RAM with an Nvidia GTX 960 2GB, I have Windows 10 installed on an SSD outside of the array and I can play CS GO at full settings no problem. As I don't live in the UK I can't comment on your budget.

[Redstorm]

Thanks for the reply

 

I want to go down the Z170 chipset on the MoBo (unless someone can convince me there is a better route) with maybe a i7 6500K or 4790K CPU - still torn so again, comments welcome

 

But I'm keen to get feedback from people as to the viability of setting up TWO M2 (Gen 3 x4) SSD cards [PCIe / NVMe] in RAID 0 to boot the OS, whic h I presume is the XEN hypervisor as well as storing all the VM's (again, I presume unRAID, Windows, etc) and all the games. Whilst I will probably go for something like 2TB or 3TB green drives for the actual array, which will just be storing my media.

 

Any suggestions on a motherboard?

[garycase]

...  the viability of setting up TWO M2 (Gen 3 x4) SSD cards [PCIe / NVMe] in RAID 0 to boot the OS, whic h I presume is the XEN hypervisor as well as storing all the VM's (again, I presume unRAID, Windows, etc) and all the games. Whilst I will probably go for something like 2TB or 3TB green drives for the actual array, which will just be storing my media.

 

The UnRAID OS boots from your USB flash drive ... NOT from any of the hard drives.

 

And although LimeTech has indicated they're looking into supporting them, I do not believe there is support for NVMe SSDs in the current version, and I have no idea when that support may be forthcoming.    It's certainly true that IF that support is added, an NVMe drive would be a great drive for storing VMs, applications, etc., as it would be an amazingly fast cache unit.    I can't imagine that you'd need to RAID-0 a pair of them ... if there's even support for doing that on your motherboard (which seems unlikely).    An NVMe unit is already 3-4 times as fast as traditional SSDs.

 

 

[Harblar]

I can't comment too much on Virtualizing... I'm still reading up on that myself, but I can say something about M.2. (although it appears as though they may not be supported for VM's at the moment? Bummer...)

 

First off, have you run an SSD (any SSD) as a boot drive before? The speed increase of a typical SATA SSD (say the Samsung 850 pro) over a standard HDD is outstanding. That being said, an M.2 SSD (like the  Samsung 950 Pro) is nearly 4-5 times faster than a standard SATA SSD. Stripe two in a RAID array, and you double that. Sounds good, right? The problem is, you are already well into the area of diminishing returns compared to your investment at this point. Meaning it's faster, but it's also fairly spendy and you really won't notice the speed increase in a real world application (like gaming or OS boot) Example:

 

OS Boot times (not actual, just to illustrate my point)

 

HDD:  60sec

SATA SSD: 30sec

M.2 SSD: 25sec

M.2 SSD RAID: 24sec

 

I ran a SATA SSD for several years and it was amazing. I recently upgraded and went with a Samsung 950 Pro M.2 512GB. I can say I did notice an improvement over my old SSD, but it wasn't nearly the speed boost I saw when I bought my first SSD. For the record, my current cold boot time (from press of the power button to Windows 10 log in screen) is in the neighborhood of 15-20 seconds. Setting up an M.2 RAID might shave a second or two off that, but that's about all.  Not really worth another $350 USD for me.

 

If I were you, I'd get a single M.2 for now (VM support dependent) and put the extra money into a processor/mobo/gpu/etc... If you're looking to game FPS's the extra money for a 2nd M.2 would be much better suited on an upgrade to a GTX960 or 970.

 

Another thing to consider down the line would be a beefier power supply. 650 watt's should handle a basic unRAID server with a fair number of discs just fine, but If you plan on setting up a VM for gaming it could limit you pretty quick on the number of drives or type of GPU you could go with. That's what's next on my list (I'm looking at setting up a VM as a network Render Farm for CG animation, which would mean adding 2 or 3 quality GPU's to my unRAID box). 

[garycase]

Note that an M.2 SSD is NOT necessarily an NVMe device => in fact, the majority of M.2 SSDs sold use the SATA-III interface, and many motherboards with M.2 sockets will only support the SATA devices or, in some cases, PCIe x2 devices -- NOT the PCIe x4 NVMe drives.

 

The comment above is really talking about NVMe SSDs, which require an NVMe-capable M.2 socket.

 

[thither]

I've been looking to build a Z170-based system as well, and have more-or-less settled on this ASRock Extreme 7+ board. Here's a review from Anandtech and the motherboard manual. The specs page says:

 

3 x Ultra M.2 Sockets, support type 2230/2242/2260/2280/22110 M.2 SATA3 6.0 Gb/s module and M.2 PCI Express module up to Gen3 x4 (32 Gb/s)

 

It seems as though enabling the M.2 PCIe slots winds up disabling some of the SATA ports. I'm also pretty confused about what types of drives unRaid will support in these slots - I was also hoping to use them for Windows VM boot drives if possible, or as drives in the cache pool if not. Can anyone clarify?

[Harblar]

Note that an M.2 SSD is NOT necessarily an NVMe device => in fact, the majority of M.2 SSDs sold use the SATA-III interface, and many motherboards with M.2 sockets will only support the SATA devices or, in some cases, PCIe x2 devices -- NOT the PCIe x4 NVMe drives.

 

The comment above is really talking about NVMe SSDs, which require an NVMe-capable M.2 socket.

 

Heh, right you are!  Forgot to mention that. Then again he said he was looking at the Z170 boards and I'm pretty sure most, if not all, of those have NVMe M.2 ports along the PCI-E x4 Lane.

 

I've been looking to build a Z170-based system as well, and have more-or-less settled on this ASRock Extreme 7+ board. Here's a review from Anandtech and the motherboard manual. The specs page says:

 

3 x Ultra M.2 Sockets, support type 2230/2242/2260/2280/22110 M.2 SATA3 6.0 Gb/s module and M.2 PCI Express module up to Gen3 x4 (32 Gb/s)

 

It seems as though enabling the M.2 PCIe slots winds up disabling some of the SATA ports. I'm also pretty confused about what types of drives unRaid will support in these slots - I was also hoping to use them for Windows VM boot drives if possible, or as drives in the cache pool if not. Can anyone clarify?

 

That Is the exact board I just upgraded my unRAID server to. It's been great, so far. Though, if you do get it, stick with the P1.70 UEFI BIOS it comes preloaded with. unRAID version 6 doesn't want to play nice with the latest BIOS and freezes up just after loading bzroot. On the plus side, the Extreme 7+ is a dual UEFI chipped board, meaning you can leave one BIOS default and experiment with new versions on the other. Really handy, when you run into this kind of issue. 

 

Installing an M.2 as PCIe will disable some SATA ports. 2 per M.2 drive installed as PCIe, according to the manual. Meaning if you use all 3 M.2 ports, you will only have 4 remaining SATA ports available for HDD's.  I bought mine for the 10 sata ports (currently have 9 HDD's and a standard SATA SSD so it works perfect for now!) and haven't tried an NVMe drive in it yet (though, as mentioned early, it may not be supported in an unRAID vm yet.) If and when it is supported, I stick to my assessment above and would hold off quite awhile before installing more than one NVMe drive. At least till prices come down to make it worth while for the fast extra storage capacity.

[garycase]

Definitely agree there's no reason to install more than one NVMe drive => indeed, it's debatable whether it's worth bothering with any of them.    While you'll indeed be able to "see" the difference between a traditional SATA-III SSD and an NVMe device when you run benchmarks, it's unlikely you'll "feel" any significant difference. 

 

I installed a SamSung 950 Pro NVMe drive for a friend on his new system, and it works VERY nice ... but didn't really "feel" faster than the SATA-III SamSung on my system.    Certainly not enough that I'm going to upgrade to one [although I MAY "just for the heck of it" use one as the primary drive the next time I build a system  ]

 

I tend to agree with one of the reviewers on Newegg, who had the following thoughts about his very nice SamSung 950 Pro M.2 NVMe drive:

 

"... There is a big problem with this drive. No, not with this drive because it does just what it promises. It’s wicked fast… at least in benchmarks. I’m going from an Intel 530 2.5 SSD to the Samsung 950 Pro. The 530 drive is certainly no barn burner but the problem is in everyday usage the 950 Pro doesn’t seem any faster. I mean programs open quickly but not 3 or 4 times as quickly. The 950 Pro is fast but you really need a benchmark to reassure yourself all those dead presidents were worth it. "

 

"... don’t buy this drive if you are running a recent SSD and expect a sea change because it won’t happen. Crystal Disk Mark says the 950 Pro is 3 times faster than the Intel 530. But it doesn’t seem 3 times faster. Honestly the system responsiveness is about the same. I know the 950 Pro is faster and the benchmarks tell me so but it’s not apparent in the day to day operation of the system."

 

[Harblar]

I can completely agree with that. When I put the 950 Pro into my new desktop it was mainly because I wanted more capacity (my old Mushkin was only 240GB) and I wanted it to look nice on my build.  I will say that I think it's a noticeable improvement over my old SSD, but certainly not a substantial improvement. No where near the perceived boost I (and most people) get one first going from HDD to SSD. Eitherway, if you've never used an SSD for OS/Programs, you can't go wrong no matter what you get. 

[thither]

That Is the exact board I just upgraded my unRAID server to. It's been great, so far. Though, if you do get it, stick with the P1.70 UEFI BIOS it comes preloaded with. unRAID version 6 doesn't want to play nice with the latest BIOS and freezes up just after loading bzroot. On the plus side, the Extreme 7+ is a dual UEFI chipped board, meaning you can leave one BIOS default and experiment with new versions on the other. Really handy, when you run into this kind of issue. 

 

Installing an M.2 as PCIe will disable some SATA ports. 2 per M.2 drive installed as PCIe, according to the manual. Meaning if you use all 3 M.2 ports, you will only have 4 remaining SATA ports available for HDD's.  I bought mine for the 10 sata ports (currently have 9 HDD's and a standard SATA SSD so it works perfect for now!) and haven't tried an NVMe drive in it yet (though, as mentioned early, it may not be supported in an unRAID vm yet.) If and when it is supported, I stick to my assessment above and would hold off quite awhile before installing more than one NVMe drive. At least till prices come down to make it worth while for the fast extra storage capacity.

 

As luck would have it, this board just went on sale at NewEgg for $200 with a $30 mail-in rebate, I've just ordered it.

 

Harblar, just curious if there's a drive/port setup you would recommend for this - like, is it preferable to use the built-in Z170 ports for parity/cache drives versus the ones on the ASMedia controller? Also, thanks for the warning about the BIOS, hopefully an update will become available.

[Harblar]

As luck would have it, this board just went on sale at NewEgg for $200 with a $30 mail-in rebate, I've just ordered it.

 

Harblar, just curious if there's a drive/port setup you would recommend for this - like, is it preferable to use the built-in Z170 ports for parity/cache drives versus the ones on the ASMedia controller? Also, thanks for the warning about the BIOS, hopefully an update will become available.

 

Honestly, I was planning on using all 10 ports from the start, so I didn't do much past plugging them in.  I haven't had any troubles either way, so I don't think it matters a whole lot. If you're at all concerned, start with the Intel ports and work your way down. If memory serves, I set both controllers up as AHCI in the BIOS. Beyond that, unRAID pretty much takes care of the rest.  (highly recommend taking a screenshot of all of your various unRAID config pages before your upgrade.  I accidentally corrupted something in my config and had to do a clean install. Those screenshots were Extremely handy when I had to assign the drive order from scratch!)