hardware upgrade worth while?

[VFRLuke]

hello guys,  I've had my unraid box running for quite some time and I ended up buying the budget build hardware way back when v4 was current.  It's the AMD semperon and biostar Mobo in the old outdated recommended hardware wiki.  I also have 2G of ram.

 

Fast forward to present day, I've got my box out of the closet and I'm going to be doing some drive upgrades and I'm wondering now that since I've upgraded to v6, is this hardware adequate?  I'm pretty much just using it as a NAS but I was maxing out the CPU doing a couple of preclears.

 

I have my old gaming machine that can be canibalized for parts.  Asus P8p67 pro board, I5-2500k cpu, 8G of ram.  The board doesn't have on board video, so I might have an old junk video card I can put in there to set it up and get it to boot.

 

Would it be worth the effort?  any noticable performance gains on just using it as a NAS or should I just leave well enough alone until I have the need for more features?  I don't have much interest in virtual machines or anything, but I'm sure there are some cool plugins.  I have no problem buying the proper hardware if there's a reason for it, but I have this stuff collecting dust.

 

Thanks in advance,

Luke

[tdallen]

3 minutes ago, VFRLuke said:

It's the AMD semperon and biostar Mobo...  2G of ram....  I've upgraded to v6, is this hardware adequate?

Hi - Unfortunately, the answer is "barely..."  You can run basic NAS functions, but your parity check times are really going to suffer with a single core CPU.  And you should forget about the modern plugins and Dockers (Dockers are preferred) with that system.  The upgrade to the i5-2500k would be well worthwhile.

[VFRLuke]

thanks...this project just keeps getting bigger...  

[French-Guy]

Hi

Looks like we have the exact same config: Sempron LE-1100 and Biostar mobo, with 2GB Ram......something I purchased with V4 as well, 8 years ago maybe

I did a parity check a few weeks ago, and it took forever (more than 2 days for just a 2TB parity drive !)

 

I missed a good deal at Microcenter on a FX-8320E + Asus mobo with 6 SATA, for $50 ...............Too bad, I will have to look for another deal

In the mean time, I will make some tests with a X2-250 + 4GB ram that I have sitting doing nothing...won't be night and day though, but should be a little bit faster 

 

[tdallen]

I couldn't find a Passmark entry for the X2-250, but will probably be a measurable improvement.  The X2's look like dual cores with > 1000 Passmarks and 4GB will help.

[French-Guy]

I've found it.....It says 1674 passmark

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Athlon+X2+250

My current one is 436........!!!

 

[tdallen]

Yeah, exactly .

 

The X2 would probably get you back to reasonably functional for basic NAS, maybe a lightweight Docker or two.

Edited December 17, 2017 by tdallen

[French-Guy]

Great.....what would be a good pcie sata card with at least 4 ports, for a reasonable price?

[NewDisplayName]

I had like 2500 passmark cpu and 2gb ram.

 

Changed cpu, nothing changed (to 5500 passmark), also nearly same % used.

 

Changed RAM -> big difference (from 2gb to 16).

 

So i would say, cpu is not so important (if u dont do anything what uses cpu), ram much more important.

[French-Guy]

My board is a Biostar A785GE, which only takes 2 sticks of DDR2 RAM. I have for now 2 x 2gb, so it will be hard to increase (unless I find on Ebay or Craigslsit 2 x 4gb ddr2 for dirt cheap - my mobo is limited to 8gb total)

And the pci express port (for a SATA card) is PCI-E x 16 2.0

http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/introduction.php?S_ID=433#specification

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[tdallen]

A dual core CPU with 1674 Passmarks and 4GB of RAM should run basic unRAID NAS capabilities fine.  Dual core is a big step up.  Quadrupling Passmarks is huge.  And going from 2GB to 4GB is a very big step up.  I wouldn't spend a dime on that system - it's old and slow and not worth an investment.  But if you have it lying around, it will definitely run unRAID better than the 2GB Sempron.

[French-Guy]

I also have a Core 2 duo e6750...Passmark is the same approximately (1,719), but I will be able to install 6GB ram on it with what I already have....May try that one instead actually

[NewDisplayName]

If u can use ram cache in the programs they dont need so hard cpu, i thought bigger cpu would make difference, but besides energy bill, n othing changed

SSD and RAM is important.

[tdallen]

2 hours ago, French-Guy said:

I also have a Core 2 duo e6750...Passmark is the same approximately (1,719), but I will be able to install 6GB ram on it with what I already have....May try that one instead actually

If you have the 6GB of RAM that makes sense.

[French-Guy]

Yes, it will be 2 x 2GB + 2 x 1GB

The only thing is about the onboard network : it died a few years ago, so I added a cheap network adapter (Trendnet or something like that...)

Not sure how it will perform with Unraid...!!! 

[French-Guy]

Just realized yesterday that my Intel system (Core 2 Duo e6750) doesn't have integrated video. It is running with an old card (GT440 I think), that is using the PCI-e 16x slot, plus covers 2 other PCI-e 1x slots..........So I would have to find a dirt cheap old PCI video card, hoping there is no compatibility issue with unraid. It will free up the 4 PCI-e slots

 

On the other hand, if I want to use my other systen (AMD X2 250), it just has 1 PCI-e 16x slot....so just enough to install the 2 SATA port adapter installed on my current server. But I will be then limited to 6 drives total, unless I purchase a SATA card with 4 or more ports

 

Grrrrrr...........................!!!!!

 

 

[NewDisplayName]

i would try to get a cheap cpu with gpu, so u have the pci for raid cards later...

[French-Guy]

My board for the Core 2 duo e6750 is a LGA775 socket....So I doubt I can install this type of cpu. There is no VGA, DVI or HDMI on the back of the card

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-P35-DS3L-rev-20#ov

 

Is there a risk (compatibility wise) if I try to find and install a cheap (less than $10) PCI VGA card? 

I did install another set of 2 modules, and now this PC is running with 8GB (4 x 2GB)

[NewDisplayName]

Unraid does not need GPU, u just need it to start the pc. So any card should work.

hereu find some starting at 20€ https://geizhals.de/?cat=gra16_512&sort=p

[French-Guy]

To increase my Qty of SATA ports, is this a decent option:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/LSI-SAS3081E-R-8-port-Internal-SATA-SAS-3Gb-s-RAID-Controller-Card-w-Warranty/381709868694?_trksid=p2485497.m4902.l9144#rwid

 

With the following cables (x2)

https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=8186

[JorgeB]

37 minutes ago, French-Guy said:

To increase my Qty of SATA ports, is this a decent option:

It only supports up to 2TB devices, look for 9201-8i, 9211-8i, 9207-8i, etc for >2TB support.

[NewDisplayName]

Or -e its extern, but in my country was only option.

[tdallen]

13 hours ago, French-Guy said:

Is there a risk (compatibility wise) if I try to find and install a cheap (less than $10) PCI VGA card?

That's what I run, it's fine.  There's no need to use a valuable PCIe slot in unRAID for a video card.  I used something like this:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA4UB5JC6130

 

[NewDisplayName]

Sorry, We can't find this Item. Please check your Item#.

[tdallen]

Odd, it works from here.  Here's the item description so you can search:

 

ATI Rage XL 8MB/8 MB PCI 3D VGA Video Graphics Card