Unraid on Chinese x99 motherboard


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Hi all

 

I have been using a old core i5 2500 cpu with a gigabyte ud3xp motherboard, 16gb ddr3 with unraid for 10 months. It is a decent system, however the lack of cores in 2500, limits me from running more vm or docker containers. 

 

I am not willing to spend more money to setup a brand new system such as a threadripper system, eventually a personal hobby will need to find a balance.

 

I am a frequent online shopper for China products, and one thing good in Chinese e commerce sites, is their wide varieties of affordable computer components you can find. Below is a system I bought

 

X99-D4 Panshi Motherboard

Xeon E5 2678 v3

32gb Samsung ECC DDR4 RAM

Topup with a cpu fan. 

For about 260 usd

 

The upgrading process is a breeze. And moving unraid to this system is pretty straightforward. There isn't a need to even map the correct parity, data or cache drive.

 

The system is now 2 weeks old, and I hope it will last me for the next 2 to 3 years. 

 

I'm not familiar with hardware stuffs such as vrm or how to determine reliability, but I'm happy to get a past generation 12c/24t system for this price. 

 

Just to share this with other hobbyists that is looking to setup a more powerful home server at a budget. 

 

To understand more about Chinese x99 boards, you can refer to the following 2 links. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by sunbin
Update the broken link
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It's nice to see that there are more who find the Xeon E5 2678 v3 interesting ;)

I am currently using the HUANANZHI X79-ZD3 Rev. 2.0 motherboard with 4x8GB DDR3 ECC Reg. RAM together with a Xeon E5 2650L v2 (10c/20t), 1x NVMe SSD, 5x WD 8TB (My Book).

Power consumption with sleeping HDD array is 45Watt, if all disks are active (with smb transfer) then it is 85Watt. 
Except WoL the system works quite stable, unlike my Ryzen 5 1700 + ASRock Fatal1ty AB350 Gaming-ITX/ac..
I had the PlexHD x79 as in the video below, but there were often starting problems with the HDD array.

But I'm also considering switching to the Xeon E5 2678 v3 with the
HUANANZHI X99-TF or HUANANZHI X99-T8.

Could you please tell us how the power consumption of the Xeon E5 is 2678 v3, in idle and under load? If it is too high I will probably switch to Ryzen in the long run... only ECC RAM is more difficult.

Thanks a lot

 

  • Like 1
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Hi @Reflexion

 

I am relatively new to unraid, and do not know how to grab the information you needed.

Do let me know what is the best way to achieve idle, and how do I grab the power consumption?

Also do advice on how to create load for the test, previously i can create a decent spike just be running clamav on my 4 core core i5, but i don't it will work now.

 

Thanks.

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I simply plugged the unRAID server into an electricity meter & socket (Gosund Smart Wlan socket) and an Android app delivered the measured values.

Tested then the different scenarios/state. 
Once when the array was sleeping and once when data was transferred via smb, all HDDs were active.

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  • 2 months later...
On 7/30/2020 at 9:24 AM, Reflexion said:

I simply plugged the unRAID server into an electricity meter & socket (Gosund Smart Wlan socket) and an Android app delivered the measured values.

Tested then the different scenarios/state. 
Once when the array was sleeping and once when data was transferred via smb, all HDDs were active.

Hi @Reflexion sorry I think I'm unable to provide that test result. I'm short of a electricity meter for the test. 

  • Like 1
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10 minutes ago, kasuke said:

was considering to get a bundle of this chinese things like this one :

https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/4001135866276.html

is this worth it ?

Hi @kasuke

 

I'm not really sure whether it is worth it. I'm have not used the brand mentioned in the link, the panshi brand that I have gotten also seems to be less known within the Chinese market too, in comparison to huanan shown on gamer nexus. 

 

But if you ask me if I will pay the price listed there for the board. I think it might not be the lowest in price. 

 

I search on taobao.com (i am able to read Chinese), there is a similar product, https://m.tb.cn/h.4atdBSW?sm=88b8a1 - it is just a main board, but I believe if u topup for the remaining components to match the spec, it should be lower in price. 

 

Hope it helps. 

 

 

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9 hours ago, kasuke said:

ok thanks, I understand nothing with chinese lol

But my needs would be to load couple of vms and containers (plex, web servers, adobe suite in VM, music etc...) I'm actually running an old gaming pc :

i5-3570k (non OC)

Gigabyte Z77-D3H

16GO DDR3

GTX760

 

Doesn't look a great configuration.

It only has one PCI-E x16 slot so if you need a lot of compute and nothing else maybe.

PCI-E config could be imbalanced with all the PCI-E on one CPU.

 

E5 2660-V3 and 2680-V3 are relatively cheap, a single CPU would be fine as you would have 2.5 - 3x your current compute.

Workstation board such as supermicro X10SLA-F has more expansion options.

E.g. VM GPU, Plex encoding GPU etc.

 

 

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  • 1 month later...

The "Supermicro X10SLA-F" may be higher quality than many chinese made boards just by "Integrated IPMI 2.0 with KVM and Dedicated LAN"... but there is one disadvantage, no REG RAM. and here it will be quite expensive per GB compared to the chinese boards with DDR3 REG ECC RAM. but maybe you will be rewarded with working WoL thanks to the Intel NIC's.
Something that I still haven't been able to do under unRAID on various x58/79 china boards, under Windows no problem but unfortunately under FreeBSD (unRAID)...an extra Intel NIC didn't help me to get ahead.

You just have to consider the pro cont, for yourself.

 

"E5 2660-V3 and 2680-V3" But you don't have an iGPU you have to buy an extra GPU (Gtx1050/Ti, 1060,... ... if it's "only" about transc., not about gaming, a used Quadro P400 would be good too)... otherwise you have to use software transcoding which costs quite a bit of power and heat...  

I myself use Jellyfin,+iGPU transc. with a G4560, whose iGPU is sufficient to run 2-3 streams simultaneously without the CPU hanging at the stop. The cpu is relieved. 
But it always depends on the bitrate and audio track, audio tracks go to the cores, but overall it is an efficient way.

For VMs then rather my Xeons... Intel Pentium G4560+board I think you can get for ~70$/€... sometimes even less. 

 

Edited by Reflexion
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20 hours ago, Reflexion said:

The "Supermicro X10SLA-F" may be higher quality than many chinese made boards just by "Integrated IPMI 2.0 with KVM and Dedicated LAN"... but there is one disadvantage, no REG RAM. and here it will be quite expensive per GB compared to the chinese boards with DDR3 REG ECC RAM. but maybe you will be rewarded with working WoL thanks to the Intel NIC's.

 

The X10SLA-F absolutely does support Registered Ram.

I have the version without IPMI running 64GB 2400Mhz RDIMM (4 x 16GB) which reports as multi-bit ECC in Unraid

The full 64GB was bought new with lifetime warranty (brown box) for £152 / $200 early this year.

Power consumption is 90W idle with 3 installed GPU and 10HDD (spun down)

 

From what I could see, multi-socket boards tend to only support single bit ECC, so one advantage of single XEON CPU is more robust ECC.

 

I do agree that in many cases a desktop CPU offers better performance / cost / efficiency however in use cases where more PCI-E lanes / slots is desired, the E5 Xeons still make sense at used prices. 

 

vs. the China source LGA2011 V1/V2, I'd rather not trust my data to recovered componets and an unqualified BIOS assembled in an untraceable 'factory' with limited, if any support. As a home lab for testing, development, learning etc..... sure why not if it's cheap. 

 

 

 

 

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@Decto you are mixing up SRA and SLA. Despite the close name, it is a completely different product.

 

The SLA is a board with a C222 chipset for E3 Xeons on LGA 1150 and only supports DDR3 Unbuffered ECC UDIMM

https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/X10SLA-F

 

The SRA is a board with a C226 chipset for E5 Xeons on LGA-2011-3 and supports DDR4 Buffered ECC UDIMM

https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/X10SRA-F

Edited by ChatNoir
DDR43 is not yet a thing ;-)
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  • 4 months later...
32 minutes ago, theone said:

Can you post the IOMMU for the x99 board (in the Tools section of unraid)?

 

[8086:2f9a] ff:1e.2 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Xeon E7 v3/Xeon E5 v3/Core i7 Power Control Unit (rev 02)
[8086:2fc0] ff:1e.3 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Xeon E7 v3/Xeon E5 v3/Core i7 Power Control Unit (rev 02)
[8086:2f9c] ff:1e.4 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Xeon E7 v3/Xeon E5 v3/Core i7 Power Control Unit (rev 02)
IOMMU group 11:  [8086:2f88] ff:1f.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Xeon E7 v3/Xeon E5 v3/Core i7 VCU (rev 02)
[8086:2f8a] ff:1f.2 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Xeon E7 v3/Xeon E5 v3/Core i7 VCU (rev 02)
IOMMU group 12:  [8086:2f00] 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E7 v3/Xeon E5 v3/Core i7 DMI2 (rev 02)
IOMMU group 13:  [8086:2f02] 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E7 v3/Xeon E5 v3/Core i7 PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 02)
IOMMU group 14:  [8086:2f04] 00:02.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E7 v3/Xeon E5 v3/Core i7 PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev 02)
IOMMU group 15:  [8086:2f08] 00:03.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E7 v3/Xeon E5 v3/Core i7 PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev 02)
IOMMU group 16:  [8086:2f28] 00:05.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Xeon E7 v3/Xeon E5 v3/Core i7 Address Map, VTd_Misc, System Management (rev 02)
[8086:2f29] 00:05.1 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Xeon E7 v3/Xeon E5 v3/Core i7 Hot Plug (rev 02)
[8086:2f2a] 00:05.2 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Xeon E7 v3/Xeon E5 v3/Core i7 RAS, Control Status and Global Errors (rev 02)
[8086:2f2c] 00:05.4 PIC: Intel Corporation Xeon E7 v3/Xeon E5 v3/Core i7 I/O APIC (rev 02)
IOMMU group 17:  [8086:8d7c] 00:11.0 Unassigned class [ff00]: Intel Corporation C610/X99 series chipset SPSR (rev 04)
IOMMU group 18:  [8086:8d31] 00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation C610/X99 series chipset USB xHCI Host Controller (rev 04)
IOMMU group 19:  [8086:8d2d] 00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation C610/X99 series chipset USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 04)
IOMMU group 20:  [8086:8d20] 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation C610/X99 series chipset HD Audio Controller (rev 04)
IOMMU group 21:  [8086:8d10] 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation C610/X99 series chipset PCI Express Root Port #1 (rev d4)
IOMMU group 22:  [8086:8d18] 00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation C610/X99 series chipset PCI Express Root Port #5 (rev d4)
IOMMU group 23:  [8086:8d1e] 00:1c.7 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation C610/X99 series chipset PCI Express Root Port #8 (rev d4)
IOMMU group 24:  [8086:8d26] 00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation C610/X99 series chipset USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 04)
IOMMU group 25:  [8086:8d44] 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation C610/X99 series chipset LPC Controller (rev 04)
[8086:8d02] 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation C610/X99 series chipset 6-Port SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 04)
[8086:8d22] 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation C610/X99 series chipset SMBus Controller (rev 04)
IOMMU group 26:  [1002:554d] 02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] R430 [Radeon X800 XL]
[1002:556d] 02:00.1 Display controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] R430 [Radeon X800 XL] (Secondary)
IOMMU group 27:  [10de:1380] 03:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GM107 [GeForce GTX 750 Ti] (rev a2)
[10de:0fbc] 03:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation GM107 High Definition Audio Controller [GeForce 940MX] (rev a1)
IOMMU group 28:  [1b21:1182] 05:00.0 PCI bridge: ASMedia Technology Inc. Device 1182
IOMMU group 29:  [1b21:1182] 06:03.0 PCI bridge: ASMedia Technology Inc. Device 1182
[10ec:8168] 07:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 0c)
IOMMU group 30:  [1b21:1182] 06:07.0 PCI bridge: ASMedia Technology Inc. Device 1182
[10ec:8168] 08:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 0c)
IOMMU group 31:  [10ec:8168] 09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 15)

 

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  • 2 months later...

I think the motherboard just died on me, after trying to upgrade unraid's cache pool with a ssd, and some basic dust cleaning.

The PC did power up, but onboard NIC and usb is not functioning.

It lasted 335 days, it failed to reach my expected ROI of 2 to 3 years.

 

*Sad

 

Like to ask for tips on diagnosing the issue

  • Onboard USB is not powering my usb keyboard on boot
  • Onboard NIC is not working, (no orange or green LED)
  • PCIe NIC is not working, (no orange or green LED)
  • Ping test to unraid static address is not reachable
  • CPU fan is spinning (visual)
  • 2x PCIe graphic card fan is spinning (visual)

 

From the above observation, could the motherboard be still alive?

 

Edited by sunbin
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