Level one certification: MSI H57M-ED65

[Ken R.]

I realize this board might not be on the top ten list of popular boards but I thought I'd go ahead and post a level 1 certification application anyway since I've been happy with how things turned out and somebody might have one laying around like I did and want to use it.

 

System:

 

Newegg - MSI H57M-ED65 LGA 1156 Intel H57 HDMI Micro ATX Intel Motherboard

 

G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3

 

Intel Core i3-540 Clarkdale 3.06GHz 4MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 73W Dual-Core Desktop Processor BX80616I354

 

KINGWIN LZG-550 GOLD 550W ATX 12V v2.2 / EPS 12V v2.91 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply

 

(2) Data Seagate Barracuda LP ST32000542AS 2TB 5900 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive -Bare Drive

 

(1) Parity Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARS 2TB 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

 

an old WD5000AAKS with too may hours for a cache drive.

 

I started out with an old supermicro 750 case but I've since changed to a bit smaller midsized case of no import.

 

Nice features about the MB (besides it's performance which has been flawless) are that unlike ASUS board you can lock in the boot USB device and not have to worry about adding drives changing the boot order. It has two PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots and two PCI Express x1 slots - no PCI Slots, 7 SATA connectors and one PATA connector for that odd IDE drive you have laying around. One thing to watch for in BIOS is you have to remember to set both controllers to AHCI as one controls the first six SATA ports and the other controls SATA number 7 and the PATA port. I am using the on-chip i3 video when I have to put it on a monitor.

 

 

The attached syslog does not include the original parity calculation as I didn't save it but it does have the nocorrect parity check.  I've had <two> dirty shutdowns caused by using the stop array button on unMenu - I don't know why but if I used the stop array button I loose all ability to access the server, both locally and remote. The stop array button on unRaid works fine as does the powerdown scripts (as long as I haven't used the unmenu stop array).  So far I've had no parity erros even with the dirty shutdowns.  As you can see I'm getting fair performance on the parity check, and networking performance is good also to both the cache drive (60-70+!) and data drives (30 to 40 Mbps).

 

I am running unMenu, unRaid-Web, Sabnzbd, SickBeard, and sometimes couch potato.

 

 

syslog-2010-12-15.txt

[Ken R.]

Just wanted to add I've maxed out my plus lic and onboard sata controllers (7 drives) with no problems.  I'm really happy with this MB.

 

parity device: pci-0000:00:1f.2-scsi-1:0:0:0 host1 (sdb) WDC_WD20EARS-00MVWB0_WD-WMAZA1084194

disk1 device: pci-0000:00:1f.2-scsi-3:0:0:0 host3 (sdd) ST32000542AS_5XW19HLN

disk2 device: pci-0000:00:1f.2-scsi-0:0:0:0 host0 (sda) ST32000542AS_5XW1K5B8

disk3 device: pci-0000:02:00.0-scsi-1:0:0:0 host7 (sdg) Hitachi_HDS5C3020ALA632_ML0220F30EB3YD

disk4 device: pci-0000:00:1f.2-scsi-5:0:0:0 host5 (sdf) Hitachi_HDS5C3020ALA632_ML0220F30E91VD

disk5 device: pci-0000:00:1f.2-scsi-4:0:0:0 host4 (sde) WDC_WD1001FALS-00J7B1_WD-WMATV4406662

cache device: pci-0000:00:1f.2-scsi-2:0:0:0 host2 (sdc) WDC_WD5000AAKS-00TMA0_WD-WCAPW4637359

[Ken R.]

System is still working like a champ with no problems - I keep thinking of upgrading to 5.0 but why fix what isn't broke I guess.