Hi everybody, I am choosing the motherboard for my very first Unraid nas.

Searching around I have found this mobos that seem pretty good, with many ethernet ports and with Xeon and ECC support.

 

Gigabyte GA X150M PRO ECC

Gigabyte GA X150 PRO ECC

Gigabyte GA X170 Extreme ECC

Asrock X99 Extreme 4 or Extreme6

 

I am on a budget build, so less I spend on mono more I spend on RAM CPU and Hard Drives/SSD.

 

What do you think about them?

 

Br,

Gabe

 

 

EDIT: actually meant many SATA ports

They're all good motherboards, and Gigabyte boards have a history of working well with unRAID.  I assume since you are on a budget that the X150 boards are preferable.  The X150M is a micro-ATX board and the X150 is a full ATX board, does matter?  How many SATA ports do you plan to need?  Also, do you plan to use the M.2 port or SATA Express port?  Note that they commonly share bandwidth with the SATA ports so you have to plan that out with a Gigabyte board.

Thank you very much for the answer. The form factor doesn't really matter, I will put it in a rack mount case. I am not going to use the M.2 or eSATA ports.

For the SATA ports, I don't really know... I'm going to use them for 4 disks + Boot SSD (32GB SanDisk - is it enough?) for now, but I plan to expand with 4 more disks in the next year or so.

 

Also, would you suggest using ECC RAM or not? I know that with OSs such as FreeNAS it's compulsory but what about with this?

 

 

EDIT: I probably haven't explained enough about the SATA ports.

I am now using 1x2TB, 2x500GB and I am going to buy a 2TB WD Red Drive with the server (Unless I don't go with a 3TB)... I think that at maximum capacity 24 TB of disks would be good.

To get 24 TB i would have to use 6x4TB Drives or 8 3TB Drives (would prefer...).

I checked out and it turns out the X150, both ATX and micro-ATX, only have 6 SATA ports. Only the Asrock (but as you said "Gigabyte boards have a history of working well with unRAID") and the X170 have >8 ports...

What would you suggest? What do you think about a X150 expanded with a 4-6 SATA ports PCI card?

 

Thank you again for your answer.

Br,

Gabe

ASRock is widely used with unRAID as well.

 

It's easily possible to add a PCIex (don't get PCI) SATA Controller to your system, adding 2, 4, or 8 disks.  Examples of 8 disk controllers include the Supermicro AOC-SASLP and AOC-SAS2LP, and the IBM M1015 and Dell PERC H310 (the latter two you'd typically buy on eBay, pulled from a server).

 

ECC RAM isn't compulsory like it is for FreeNAS, and you can get away with a lot less RAM for unRAID than FreeNAS.  ECC RAM is still a great idea in any always-on, fault tolerant server and I recommend it.

 

unRAID boots off a USB stick and something like a 16 or 32GB Sandisk (actually, you can use something smaller if you can find it like 8GB) will work well.

 

I wouldn't mess with 2TB disks.  If you're buying new you'll find the best deals per TB on 3 and 4TB disks (I've had great experiences with WD Red).  I recommend going with the largest disks you can rationalize - it's easier to manage a small numbers of large disks than large number of small disks.

Thanks again for your answer, I will for sure buy 4TB Hard Disks.

In conclusion which motherboard do you think is better? If you were me, which would you buy?

 

Gabe

For a server, I'd go with one of the X150 boards - whichever form factor works better for you.  The X170 is a nice board but it's expensive and has a bunch of features that won't get used in a server.

Since you're going to going with a rack mount, by the way - have you considered a board with IPMI?

Thanks for the advice.

What benefits would I have with IPMI? I don't have any experience with it.

 

Br,

Gabe

IPMI is a remote management interface that effectively allows hardware level access.  It's especially valuable to people who run their servers headless.

 

So, for instance - you think you might have a problem with one of the memory chips on your server and you want to run a 24 hour memtest.  That has to run at the boot prompt - the whole unRAID OS isn't loaded yet.  Or you need to make a BIOS change.  Your headless server is running in a closet in the basement without a monitor or keyboard.  What are you going to do?  The traditional approach is to schlep a monitor and keyboard down to the basement and hook them up but a much better approach is IPMI.  An IPMI enabled server has a dedicated LAN port that allows you to remote into it at the hardware level.  You can perform maintenance in the BIOS or before a full OS is loaded.

 

ECC RAM and Xeon support are the first things you'd look for in a "server grade" motherboard.  IPMI and Dual Lan are right up there, though.  These features will cost you more than the X150 boards, but probably not as much as the X170 board.  ASRock, Supermicro, and sometimes Asus have boards with IPMI in addition to ECC and Xeon support.

 

 

Great explanation, thank you.

 

I have thought about it and I think that IPMI is not really necessary for me. I have a wall mounted screen + keyboard + mouse next to the rack and the server room isn't actually in an uncomfortable place to work in.

I am a bit bothered that there aren't two Gbit Ethernet ports on the motherboard but i could easily fix this putting a PCIe card with two or more ports.

 

Unfortunately Supermicro in my country, as in many other european countries, costs much more.

 

I was thinking about buying the X150 ATX, so that I have 1 more PCI slot and also 1 more PCIe x1 slot. Does this make sense?

 

Br,

Gabe