Hello, Im currently having some issues trying to find a new motherboard that will work with my UnRaid server config. I have been looking at supermicro, but dont think i need to get anything new from them. here are some links i was looking at or thought might do....

 

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Core/G45/C2SEE.cfm

 

http://www.amazon.com/SUPERMICRO-X7SBE-Motherboard-SATA-300-Ethernet/dp/B000YNT9MS/ref=pd_sim_e_6

 

http://www.amazon.com/Supermicro-Add-Card-AOC-SASLP-MV8-controller/dp/B002KGLDXU

 

 

As well looking at

 

Intel Pentium Dual Core E5300 Dual Core Processor LGA775 2.6GHZ 2MB 800FSB 65W Retail Box

 

Gigabyte GA-P43-ES3G ATX LGA775 P43 DDR2 PCI-E16 PCI-E 5XPCI SATA Audio GBLAN Motherboard

 

As well right now im using an Intel MicroATX board, its expansion is to the max,

 

PCI 1 = gigabit LAN

PCI 2 = Promise SATA TX400 (4 port SATA)

 

so I am at my max drives (Onboard Sata = 4 || Promise controller = 4 || for a total of 8 drives.

 

Even a older P4 Intel board would do, I want to take my array to 12 drives. any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.... thanks !

Hi bombz.  I'm guessing you have checked out the compatibility page but if not here it is: http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Hardware_Compatibility#Motherboard

 

I'd get a motherboard with 6 sata ports but that's just me.  My sig has the one I'm using.  unRAID only uses one cpu core so extras are not utilized so save money on that if you want to.  Currently most Gigabyte boards have a feature referred to as HPA which saves a copy of the bios on a hard drive and this must be turned off for unRAID.  Usually it can be turned off or disabled in bios.  If HPA is active it may modify one of the hard drives under unRAID control which would be destructive to data.  Be sure to understand it's implication before using/buying a Gigabyte board.

 

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=UnRAID_Topical_Index#HPA

 unRAID only uses one cpu core so extras are not utilized so save money on that if you want to.

This statement is misleading.

 

unRAID needs very little CPU if you are just serving files.  A multiple core CPU is a complete waste.  However, if you are transcoding files on the fly, or running add-ons such as Virtual PCs (VirtualBox/VMWare) the other cores in the CPU will help.

 

As an example, here is a screen-shot of my server when it was in the process of reconstructing a disk and serving 4 different ISO images from the disk being re-constructed.  The CPU is a 2.26GHz Celeron  and it is about 70% idle.

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=578.msg3754#msg3754

 

Joe L.

Thanks for the responses, Im looking for motherboards that maybe current users are using ? anything that can be recommended ... that sucks about the gigabyte HPA, it seems like the perfect board !

Thanks for the responses, Im looking for motherboards that maybe current users are using ? anything that can be recommended ... that sucks about the gigabyte HPA, it seems like the perfect board !

The most current BIOS on Current Gigabyte boards has the "feature" disabled by default.  Those would work fine.

 

Slightly older ones have it enabled by default and let you disable it.  It is a time-bomb waiting for the CMOS battery to die, and the feature to be re-enabled on the next boot as the BIOS enables the default values.

 

Older than that are those that do not let you disable the HPA feature at all.  Avoid for unRAID (or any RAID)

You may also find this useful:

 

Recommended Builds

yes i have seen all those links, they once again are all MicroATX board, i stated i did not want micro atx :-/

Many new uATX have a PCIe x16 and a PCIe x1 slot and 6 x sata ports with onboard gigE and onboard video (for setup/maintainance).

 

Put the card you first linked into one of these boards and you support up to 14 drives. Add another 2 SATA card into the PCIe x1 slot and you support 16 drives. Add your Promise controller and you are at 20 drives.

 

Not sure what your future, future requirements are since you posted your future requirement is 12 drives which is dirt simple to accomplish with many mATX boards out there.

 

Peter

 

I just bought the BioStar A760G M2, reason i bought it was because it was in the recommended boards / build lists. The board has 6 on board sata ports, as well i am going to add 2xpromise tx400 (4 port pci/sata) cards to the PCI bus, allowing me 14 drives. I hope it works, i have not setup the board yet.

 

Going to use a AMD Sempron 140 (2.7ghz) and if anyone can let me know, being that i will have to a max of 14 drives, should i use 1GB or 2GB of DDR2 ram

 

Thanks !

Instead of 2GB DDR2 buy two of these:

http://www.costcentral.com/proddetail/HP_Memory/450260S21/Q37260/

for the same price as a single stick regular DDR2 and you will thank me later...

 

Biostar motherboards support ECC DDR2 RAM and you are getting them at firesale (aka last summer) price

 

Just do not post it outside of these forums.

 

 

I appreciate the link, and info, I do work at a computer store so i get cost / wholesale

 

would kingston / mushkin be ok ---- speed, type ?

bcbgboy13 --- you posted, purchase 2x2GB sticks, your saying you recommend 4GB of ram for the UnRaid server, i think thats a bit extreme, your thoughts ?

The Promise TX4 will work fine for unRAID with that board (I'm currently using one), but understand that it will bottleneck your drives during parity checks or anytime multiple drives are being accessed.  If you want to avoid these bottlenecks, you will need to avoid using the PCI bus at all.  The SuperMicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 works well in the PCIe x16 port on this board, will give you 8 ports, and has no speed bottlenecks.  It is also much more expensive and requires special cables, see the recommended builds section of the wiki for links.

 

In my opinion, any RAM is fine.  I use the basic budget kingston stuff that is linked on the recommended builds page.  I have no problems with it.  ECC RAM is supposed to be better for server applications like unRAID, and $30 for 2 GB is a great price, but I personally don't think it matters much.

 

As for the amount of RAM, that depends on how you want to use your server.  I recommend buying a single 2 GB stick (not 2 x 1 GB).  That way you can always upgrade to 4 GBs in the future if you wish buy just adding another stick.

 

If you plan on using your server basically stock, 1-2 GBs is fine.  If you want to run torrents, or VMs, or anything sort of 'fancy,' then the extra RAM will help.

bcbgboy13 --- you posted, purchase 2x2GB sticks, your saying you recommend 4GB of ram for the UnRaid server, i think thats a bit extreme, your thoughts ?

 

All I am saying is having extra memory is never a bad idea especially when you can get 4 GB ECC DDR2 for the same price as regular 2GB DDR2.

 

Hey if you are not pressed do not buy now at all as summer is the slow season and the price of the DDR2 should drift down a little bit...

you guys ROCK !!!! thanks for all the responses --- the super micro card i may order / purchase, i like the sounds of it, and you said it works on that BioStar board with no issues ! thats fnatastic.

 

as for using my server for pulling data from more then one drive, its mainly used for media / streaming / storage (by me) so im going to think about it... thank you so much!!

More ram will come in handy when you have something like cache_dirs running for caching your files... someone correct me if I'm wrong.

 

I've been hoarding that HP deal for a while now but never bought any of it lol.