New build, Kaby Lake, Coffe Lake or Ryzen?


andacey

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Hi,

 

I've been starting to plan out my first-time build to replace some existing kit. Currently, I'm running a Synology DS415+ with 4 WD 3TB Red drives for media storage while I have a horribly over-stressed dual core Mac Mini that's running Docker for Mac with Plex Media Server, Sonarr, Radarr, Jackett, SABNzbd, Transmission, plexcleaner, muximux, nginx, and openvpn client containers. The Mac mini is also running Plex Media Player and is the one Plex player I run, although I'd like to have the option for real-time transcoding when I'm travelling, which the mini simply can't keep up with. Aside from that, during repair jobs or unrar operations, I find that video playback often starts to stutter and drop frames, sometimes getting quite unresponsive. Basically, I know the current build is trying to do too much without enough power, and I'm also not getting the best Network I/O to the NAS, not to mention Docker to OS X has I/O issues as well (I've solved some of these by using Docker volumes for most of the containers, but it's still problematic when I operations copy to the NAS).

 

So, with that in mind I started planning a new server and when I found out that unraid 6 had Docker support I realized I should be able to replace my NAS as well as the mini with 1 new box. Originally I was thinking of getting a Chromecast or a Nvidia Shield for the Plex Media Player, but the NAS is currently located quite close to the TV so I could just run HDMI straight to it.

 

At first, I was excited about the number of threads I could get with a Ryzen 1700 or 2700 (not interested in the X versions as I'd like to keep power consumption lower) but it doesn't look like there's great availability for boards that either come out of the box with enough SATA ports or offer many slots for adding a storage adapter in the mATX or ITX footprint since I'd need to put a video card in if I wanted to run Plex Media Player on this box. I've pretty much landed on the Fractal Desing Node 804 for the case so that's limited me to mATX at the biggest.

 

What I'd like to do would be to move the 4 Red drives I already own over to the Unraid box, while adding 1 or 2 SSDs for the cache to run containers and possibly a VM for Plex Media Player. My current NAS is nearly completely full so I was planning on adding 1 or 2 8TB Red drives to expand the storage. That would put me at a minimum of 6 drives to start, and as many as 8.

 

The 2nd option I considered was a Xeon E3-1245 v6 and the Asus P10S-M WS motherboard. That would get me 8 SATA connectors to start, and with the onboard graphics, I'd be set with my current, and immediate drive plans. Plus I could use the 8x slot later if I ever wanted to go above 8 drives.

 

The 3rd option I considered was to get a Coffee Lake i7-8700. That would bump me up to 6 cores, 12 threads which would be quite a nice bump in performance for running multiple containers as well as a VM, and the CPU price is similar. The big advantage I see here is that I could also get away with a much cheaper motherboard, but it seems that I'd likely be limited to 4-6 SATA connectors at best.

 

Any thoughts or recommendations? I'm figuring I'm going to go for 32gb of RAM, my mini runs 16gb and sometimes gets a bit stressed with everything I throw at it. I was figuring I'd go for a Corsair 750W PSU, I know I could get away with less but I'm always a firm believer in paying a bit more for more PSU than you need, and I wanted something a bit more efficient.

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1 hour ago, HellDiverUK said:

Well, I'd have to argue with Squid, I ran a R5 1600 for a month or so, and it was as stable as the Intel machines once C-states were disabled.  My only reason for going back to Intel was idle power consumption, which was more than double on the AMD compared to the Intel i5. 

 

Very interesting the power consumption issue. Do you have numbers?

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Fair point about power consumption, I imagine that if C-states are a problem on Ryzen then that's going to mean you can't realize as good a power savings when idle if you're down to disabling them or having an unstable system.

 

I think I'm ruling out Ryzen for another reason altogether though. With only 16 free PCI-e lanes I'm typically seeing boards that offer 1 x16 slot. With no onboard graphics (unless I go for an APU, and then I'm losing the cores that were so appealing) I'm going to have to tie up that x16 slot with a video card, at a minimum during the build, but if I want to run Plex Media Player on this box too then that means I'm stuck with the GPU tying up that slot. That means I'm pretty much tied to the number of SATA ports on the board, and that seems to typically be 4. That would mean at best I could migrate over all of my existing drives, but not have any available ports for a cache pool or further expansion.

 

I'm running into similar problems with Coffee Lake, the thought of a 6 core CPU with Hyperthreading is really tempting but again I seem to be able to get 6 SATA ports as well. At least with the integrated graphics, I could use the x16 slot for a SATA card so that's still viable, but the cost of that card might outweigh any savings I realized on the motherboard.

 

Based on that, I'm really thinking that the Xeon 1245 v6 paired with the Asus P10S-M WS might be the best option. That gives me 8 drives out of the box, so I'd be able to use 2 SSDs for a cache pool along with 6 3.5" drives, taking my 4 from my existing NAS and then expanding from there. Plus, I'd still have free slots for any future expansion. The only major downside seems to be 4 cores as opposed to 6.

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13 hours ago, HellDiverUK said:

My Ryzen board has 8 SATAs - 6 from the chipset, 2 from the SOC.  

 

Guessing it's not mATX then? I've not found any mATX Ryzen boards that can do that many SATA ports. Given that I want graphics that I can pass to the VM that's running PMP (probably just the embedded image) it sounds like Intel may be the better solution for the mATX form-factor.

 

If I go for the E3-1245 v6 then I can get the 8 ports I want on the board easy but it's a bit more of an expensive build, but I do also gain ECC support as well. Coffee Lake gives me more cores, and a cheaper motherboard but then I lose ECC support and I'd need a board to get the SATA ports I need. Unless there's a mATX board with 2 M.2 slots and 6 SATA ports that don't get disabled by the M.2 slots. Then I'd have a great SSD setup and could still run the 6 3.5" disks I'm planning as a starting point.

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I may have just answered my question about Coffee Lake. I realized I was misreading some motherboard specs that were saying they'd disable the SATA port if the M.2 port was in use, on some that's only an issue if using a SATA M.2 key. I did some digging and found the Asrock Z370M Pro4, that has 6 SATA ports and 2 x4 M.2 ports. I'm still reading through the manual now, but am I missing anything? That seems like it'd let me get 2 M.2 SSDs for my cache pool, and then put the 6 3.5" drives I'm planning with no expansion card needed. Plus, I'd have 12 threads to work with off the i7-8700. Aside from losing ECC is there any other downside I'm missing here? Obviously, the 2 M.2 drives would be more expensive but I'm willing to pay the difference for the massive increase in performance.

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No, you're not missing anything.  NVMe (or the defunct AHCI PCIe SSDs) won't use up a SATA port.

 

I'm running a NVMe SSD for my cache (an old 950 Pro 512GB), and have all 6 SATAs available on my TUF Z370-Pro Gaming board.  I tried a Maximus Hero Z370 board which has 8 SATA and they all worked along with two NVMe SSDs.

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So another case of, "tell me if I'm crazy". I'm debating between the Fractal Design Node 804 or the Silverstone DS380. The Node lets me run with mATX but is a lot bigger. I know about the airflow issues with the DS380, but assuming that I use a skirt behind the drives and upgrade the case fans then it seems like a really nice small footprint.

 

Now here's the downside, if I go to mITX then I can't for the life of me find a 300 series chipset on a mITX board with 6 SATA ports and 2 M.2 slots. But then I realized that there is still an unused x16 slot since I'm only planning on using the onboard graphics. So are any of the PCI-e cards that add an M.2 slot and a couple of SATA ports worth looking at? I'd really like to run 2 M.2 drives for my cache so that I have some data protection there, and if I could get up to 8 SATA ports then at least I'm good if I ever do want to max out the drives in the DS380.

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The CS381 does look tempting. I'm trying to go as small as possible so that's where mITX has some appeal. I doubt I'm going to go above 6 3.5" drives, and if I use M.2 for the 2 SSDs then I can get a pretty small case, but as I said, the combination of 6 SATA and 2 M.2 in mITX seems to be impossible to find. I realized that the better option might be to go for a board with 2 M.2 and then put a SATA expansion card in the slot. I think I'd discounted that option earlier because it would mean having to buy that expansion card day 1 since I know I'm going to start with 5 drives for sure starting out (the 4 in my existing NAS plus 1 new 8TB parity drive). I was kind of hoping to avoid buying a 2nd 8TB right away in order to spread out the costs a bit more and that's where hot-swap bays would be really useful, but with the tight cases I'd really like to at least have the bays all wired up so that adding a new drive would just be a simple matter of adding the drive and not having to disassemble the whole case.

 

If I was willing to go all in right at the beginning then the Node 304 could be ideal. It's nice and small and doesn't hold anything more than what I need with my reqs. I realize I'm deliberately sacrificing later expansion, but with 8TB drives available now I really don't see the need to go above 6 any time soon. I'm running fine with 4 3TB Reds at the moment other than sometimes filling it up and having to make some decisions on what gets cleared away. If I add in the 2 8TB drives to that mix then the extra 12 TB of storage that will net me is going to last a very long time, and I would have the option to later swap out the 3TB drives as needed.

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21 hours ago, HellDiverUK said:

Just be aware many 8TB drives lack the mounting holes required to properly mount in a Node 304.

 

Ooh, that's a thing I could have easily overlooked, thanks! Honestly, while mITX is really tempting, and the Node 304 is probably the perfect case for what I want to do in that form-factor, but the issues with finding a mITX board that meets my needs are putting me off. I could get exactly what I want if I was willing to sink in the costs for an x299 board, but then I'm spending a lot more money on the hardware. Alternatively, if I did stay with Coffee Lake then there's an Asus ROG mITX board, but it's about twice the cost of the Asrock mATX board that I'm looking at, plus I'd still need to add an expansion card to get enough SATA ports. It seems like my options are mITX and spending way more money in one way or another (possibly also adding in extra power demands as well), or go for mATX with the only downside being that the Node 804 is much larger than I need.

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Ha, I know this is going to sound like I'm flip-flopping, but that's because I'm nearly ready to buy and I'm just doing last minute sanity checks. I did a quick check on the dimensions of the Node 804 and it's way bigger than my current NAS. I knew that I'd have to go bigger, especially just for holding more drives, but this was a massive increase in size that likely wouldn't fit where I wanted to put the NAS. The Node 304 is still bigger but much closer in size and should be fine. That led me to look at board options again and I realized that the Asrock Z370M-ITX/ac is nearly perfect except for the lacking 2nd M.2 slot. I'd done a bit of searching before, but I just stumbled across this adapter, https://www.scan.co.uk/products/lycom-dt-120-m2-ngff-ssd-host-adapter-card-pcie-30-x4-22x80-22x60-22x42mm-for-pc-mac-linux?v=c which seems to be perfectly suited, and really cheap. That's a much better option than going for a more expensive mITX board to get the 2 M.2 slots and then be left having to use the PCIe slot for more SATA ports. The only remaining thing is to double check if the WD Red 8TB drives I'm planning on buying can be mounted in the Node 304.

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Sweet, I'd contacted Fractal Design about mounting larger HDs in the Node 304 and they said they've recently released new adapters and sent me this link, https://www.fractal-design-shop.de/navi.php?a=1116. I've also seen some info suggesting that there are newer brackets that were released for the 304 and maybe in newer production models, so I might be good either way but at least I'm not going to be absolutely stuck if I order the 304 and find out that wasn't accurate.

 

I'm now just down to finalising some details on which PSU to use and then I should be pulling the trigger.

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22 hours ago, luisv said:

I recently built a system with that board and case, specs in my signature.  Cable management was initially a little frustrating, but managable.  If you have any build questions feel free to PM me.

1

 

Thanks for the offer. Parts should be arriving on Tuesday (sadly, I missed the cutoff to have them delivered for the bank holiday weekend. I ended up switching to the H370 version of the board since I'm not going to be overclocking and it was slightly cheaper but also offers more USB 3.1 ports if I need them. It looks like the layout of the board is nearly identical.

 

Looking at your photos, it looks like you're going for a similar plan as me, I'm going for a Noctua tower cooler and replacing the case fans with Noctua PWM fans. I really like the idea of labelling the drives on the brackets, will have to steal that idea. I didn't order the exact model of M.2 to PCI-e adapter I'd linked earlier as it was out of stock, I'm getting a Silverstone version instead which I'm 90% certain is the identical board but with Silverstone branding. That will let me run 2 500gb 960 EVO M.2 cards for the cache. For the PSU, I was looking at Corsair but then started looking at the size of the PSU and for smaller options. I've opted for a Seasonic 850W Focus Platinum. It's overkill for the power I know, but I wanted to get a Platinum rated PSU if possible. It's also smaller than the Corsair PSU, it's not much but I figure every millimeter will count in this case so short of going for SFX it seemed like a good idea.

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  • 2 weeks later...

So far the build is going quite well. I had some delays on the parts, but once everything showed up it wasn't too bad getting the initial parts in and booted. I've copied over nearly the entire contents of my old NAS, filling my 8TB drive in the process. I've now pulled one of the 3TB drives from the NAS and am waiting for it to preclear so that I can add it to the array and complete the copy. Yes, this is a little bit sketchy running the NAS with no redundancy, but there's nothing that's irreplaceable that's left if I do suffer a drive failure before I get the last stuff copied over. Once that's done I'll be able to properly install those 4 drives and get myself up to a very nice 20TB array with another 500gb of cache. I know I'm going to have to redo some of my cable management once I install the drives, but with the modular PSU, it's pretty easy to unplug from the PSU and reroute those cables in a more sensible layout.

 

The x4 PCI-e to M.2 card worked flawlessly and showed up fine in the BIOS. Being close to the big vent on the side it's also staying nice and cool, although I am still running with the case open so I don't have any final temperature data yet. The M.2 card on the motherboard is not quite so lucky, I'm going to see how it fairs with the case closed in case that helps some air to flow closer to it rather than just rising out of the open top. At one point, after doing some heavy copying and a mover operation it did get up to 47C so that's a bit toasty given that ambient was only around 21C at the time. If it still spikes in temperature once everything is assembled then I'll probably look into an M.2 heatsink to keep it a bit cooler.

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You need to start worrying at 85C for a M.2 SSD.  My 950 Pro runs at 55C idle, for example.

 

You can apply a thick heat pad to the SSD, I used one from a dead NUC that I stuck between the M.2 and the motherboard in my main machine, basically uses the motherboard as a bit of a heat sink.  Works pretty well for free.  

 

Another option if you have a single sided SSD is to use a strip of copper tape to spread the heat.  Stick it to the back of the SSD where there's no components.  I used copper tape designed for keeping slugs out of plant pots, it's super cheap in DIY or garden stores, and has enough adhesive on it to be insulated from the SSD.

Edited by HellDiverUK
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Good tips. I knew that 47C wasn't too much of a concern, but it did get flagged from the default temperature warnings. My only concern was that this was with the case open so I'm going to keep an eye on it once I close things up since the other M.2 on the PCI-e adapter was still running at a nice 21C, it definitely highlighted that's an area of the board that's not getting any airflow at the moment.

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With an open case, some of the more flush comps might be getting LESS airflow than in a closed one.  Remember, the fans aren't drawing properly with the case open.  I ran into that a few builds back and obsessed about it for a while before closing it up, then saw the drives warm by a degree or two and the MB sensors drop by up to 10 degrees.  Air will flow in the unrestrained path, in a small open case that often negates the effect of the main system fan on items down by the motherboard.

 

Not saying it /will/ change, just advising to plop the case lid on and run a parity check for an hour or two before you make any conclusions

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