Hello!

 

I'm going to build my first unRAID Plus rig and I would appreciate your thoughts and comments.

 

Motherboard

Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L (rev. 2.x)

http://gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3134

Well, it's one of the cheapest mobo I can buy in my neck of the woods and from what I've read it looks like a rock-solid motherboard (at least for normal desktop PCs). It's impossible to find rev. 1.x (the one with Realtek NIC) but Atheros AR8131 is supported in the latest UnRAID version, right?

 

Processor

Intel Celeron E3300

Cool, power-efficient, cheapest available

 

Power Supply

Corsair VX 450W (CMPSU-450VX)

http://www.corsair.com/products/vx/default.aspx

Single +12V rail (max. load: 33A), proven manufacturer, cool, quiet, 80 Plus certified.

How many drives it can handle? I'm not going to use more than 6 in foreseeable future, but beyond that – who knows? ;-)

 

Disks

3 x WD20EARS (1 for parity and 2 for data)

1 x WD10EARS (data)

1 x Samsung Spinpoint F3 500GB 7200rpm HD502HJ (cache)

I know I should buy them from different sellers.

 

RAM

2 GB DDR2 800MHz RAM in one stick – is it enough? I want to install an add-on that keeps file listings in RAM so XBMC won't spin up all drives whenever I open it.

 

PCI-Express 1x card with two SATAII ports based on Silicon Image Sil3132 chipset.

 

Please, tell me what do you think about it? :-)

Do not buy this motherboard it uses HPA and cannot be disabled. I use it in several desktops where it works fine, but for unRAID it is the wrong solution. Everything else looks fine.

What is HPA?

What is HPA?

 

Search this forum for HPA.  It means that the motherboard will backup the bios by making a small partition on one of the hard drives (random) and copying the bios to it.  That usually ends up being the parity drive.

Once that has happened then your parity disk is worthless and if a data drive fails you will lose the data.  

 

As far as I can tell, ALL GIGABYTE MOTHERBOARDS have this DualBios (HPA) feature.  Some like yours is ENABLED by default meaning don't even think about using the motherboard..  You are guaranteed to lose data if a drive fails.  Even if you disable it, because eventually the bios battery will die and bang, there goes your parity drive.

I see. Well I was hoping to use the GA-EP45C-UD3R for my new setup but I guess I have to find a new board to use. How do I know if it has made a copy? Or does it always? Or maybe it can be disabled but I am not find an option for it in the manual and I have to wait until I get home tomorrow to take a look at the system.

I see. Well I was hoping to use the GA-EP45C-UD3R for my new setup but I guess I have to find a new board to use. How do I know if it has made a copy? Or does it always? Or maybe it can be disabled but I am not find an option for it in the manual and I have to wait until I get home tomorrow to take a look at the system.

 

This link may help get you started.  If you have HPA partitions there are folks here in the forum who will help guide you on removing them.  Just ask if you need help selecting a different motherboard.  Lots of folks like to help out.

FWIW, Gigabyte, by adding the HPA feature to their boards have ruined them for any type of raid setup.

I see. Well I was hoping to use the GA-EP45C-UD3R for my new setup but I guess I have to find a new board to use. How do I know if it has made a copy? Or does it always? Or maybe it can be disabled but I am not find an option for it in the manual and I have to wait until I get home tomorrow to take a look at the system.

 

This link may help get you started.  If you have HPA partitions there are folks here in the forum who will help guide you on removing them.  Just ask if you need help selecting a different motherboard.  Lots of folks like to help out.

FWIW, Gigabyte, by adding the HPA feature to their boards have ruined them for any type of raid setup.

 

Not really, just make sure your battery never dies.  Preventative maintenance...

Wow! Thanks for all your comments – unRAID has a great community! 

 

I've done a proper research this time and found Asus P5QL-CM http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=KO1Q2EGHFX3qBo5U&templete=2 – it's a little bit more expensive and has more power hungry chipset (G43) but it supports 6 SATAII ports out-of-the-box and has Realtek NIC.

 

What do you think? Do Asus boards have problems similar to Gigabyte's HPA?

It looks like it should work. Asus boards do not have the HPA feature so you should have no problems there. It looks like it is a quite old board and is difficult to find, if you've found a good price then I think it is worth a try. Have you done a search on the forum? It appears others have tried the board and I didn't see any complaints, but it has limited use. Most people are swinging towards AMD as the 775 boards become harder to find since there isn't a real cheap 1156 chip yet. Since I use 775 boards for all the computers in my house I wanted to do the same with unRAID. It sounds like you may be in the same position.

Yep, that motherboard looks fine.  The Corsair 450W is a great PSU, I used one to power my unRAID server for a long time (and I currently use the same one to power my desktop).  It has 33A on a single +12V rail, so that means that it can support up to 16 green drives, or 10 7200rpm drives, or a mixture thereof.  If you are just starting with 6 drives, you'll be fine for a good long while.

 

One warning about the PSU though - several months ago Corsair released a batch of bad PSUs that had the problem of squealing under load.  I'm fairly sure the 450VX was one of the bad ones.  So if your PSU makes any annoying noises when you start using it, return it to Corsair or the reseller immediately.  Corsair fixed this problem fairly quickly, but I'm sure there are still a few bad ones floating around.  Chances are you'll be fine, but I figured I would warn you anyway.  If you want to avoid even the possibility of running into one of these bad PSUs, then consider buying Seasonic or Antec NEO ECO instead.  Corsair also now makes a 430W PSU that has no reported squealing problems and you may find cheaper than the 450VX.  It won't support quite as many drives, but still plenty for your set up.

 

Also remember to install jumpers on all your EARS drives before using them with unRAID.

 

2 GB of RAM is generally enough, but the more RAM you have the more cache_dirs can help keep your drives spun down.  I would start with 2 GB and see how it goes, then you can always add a second 2 GB stick later if you need more.  They don't have to be a matched pair, and dual channel vs single channel is fairly negligible in unRAID.

Since I use 775 boards for all the computers in my house I wanted to do the same with unRAID. It sounds like you may be in the same position.

 

Yeah, I'm an Intel guy ;-) Where I live the cheapest socket 1156 combo is 40% more expensive than E3300 + Asus P5QL-CM.

 

And thanks for the heads-up, Rajahal – I won't have any problem with returnig vx450w and my unRAID won't be a mission-critical server, so I think I'll stay with this model.

They don't have to be a matched pair, and dual channel vs single channel is fairly negligible in unRAID.

 

That's a cool tip.  So using  1GB stick + 512MB stick should work?  Nice way to use up sticks just laying around.

They don't have to be a matched pair, and dual channel vs single channel is fairly negligible in unRAID.

 

That's a cool tip.  So using  1GB stick + 512MB stick should work?  Nice way to use up sticks just laying around.

 

Absolutely.  In the first version of my server, I just plugged in whatever sticks I had laying around, which I think was two 1 GB sticks and two 512 mb sticks, all different brands and speeds.  unRAID recognized them all.  I later ended up removing all of them and replacing them with a single 2 GB stick to save power.  I'm considering installing cache_dirs soon, so in that case I'll probably go back to stuffing as much RAM in there as possible.