Hey there,

 

I am currently building my first NAS but I can't decide which motherboard-memory-combo I should go with. These are my options:

 

1. Supermicro A2SDi-2C-HLN4F with an Intel Atom C3338 (1.5GHz Dual-Core) and 8GB DDR4 for 330€
2. Supermicro A1SRi-2558F with an Intel Atom C2558 (2.4GHz Quad-Core) and 8GB DDR3 for 345€

 

Opting for 16GB RAM would be an additional 100€ for both options. Worth it? I am only planning to use the NAS for storing data. No Plex, VM etc.

 

Thanks in advance

beside for energy consumption, is there any other reasons you fancy these cpus? because I would suggest something easier on the wallet that also offered better performance, if its just for a data server.  

Thanks for your answer, s_mason16,

 

I was looking for ECC supporting motherboards (because if I build a NAS I want to go the extra mile and use ECC) and those were the ones I found. Because - if I'm not mistaken - the board needs a server chipset to make use of the RAM's ECC capability. And those boards + an i3 (for example) all cost around 200€ which is only a couple Euros less than either of those Supermicro boards.

 

But if I'm missing something here, I'm open to suggestions, of course.

 

EDIT: By the way, I live in Germany, so the prices are often a bit higher than those in the US.

Edited January 9, 20188 yr by Guest

ECC support has to be with the CPU as well as the motherboard, not all CPU' support ECC, however many lower cost CPU's do support it as well.

The current Celeron, Pentium, and Core i3 series all support ECC RAM.  The Pentium, in particular, gives you a *lot* more processing horsepower than an Atom at a very reasonable price (here in the US, anyway).

I just searched a bit and the cost for a 1150 or 1151 socket system with a hyperthreaded dual-core and 8GB ECC memory would be a bit over 300€. Maybe 10€ less than what I'd pay for one of the aforementioned Supermicro systems.

44 minutes ago, BottleNo.1 said:

I just searched a bit and the cost for a 1150 or 1151 socket system with a hyperthreaded dual-core and 8GB ECC memory would be a bit over 300€. Maybe 10€ less than what I'd pay for one of the aforementioned Supermicro systems.

 at that point, I guess you have to choose........marginal energy savings vs more performance.    I was thinking the g4400 or similar.

 

 Have you thought about ebay and just getting a cheap xeon setup?

8 minutes ago, s_mason16 said:

Have you thought about ebay and just getting a cheap xeon setup?

Yeah, I have thought about that but for more or less modern components the savings wouldn't be that big so I prefer buying new thus having a little less to worry about.

 

8 minutes ago, s_mason16 said:

 at that point, I guess you have to choose........marginal energy savings vs more performance.    I was thinking the g4400 or similar.

I guess I'll calculate if those energy savings would add up enough to justify the performance loss.

 

Thanks everyone for your help!

That Atom CPU will purely be just for a NAS, it may not be amazing for running additional dockers. Then again I have had my HP N40L microserver running for years as Backup device with at least 6 dockers running just fine.