FreeNAS motherboard & CPU help!

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Stevenson

New Member
Feb 3, 2018
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Hello,

May I get some recommendation for a motherboard that can go in a tower case which supports 8 cores, AES-NI (for encryption) and has 10 SATA3 connectors and also support virtualization?
 

Evan

Well-Known Member
Jan 6, 2016
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New or used ?

E5 Xeon of v3/v5 it scalable Xeon would do the trick or a c3000 board, not much else has 10x sata3 that comes to mind. Of course can also get boards with sas adapters.
 

Stevenson

New Member
Feb 3, 2018
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New or used ?

E5 Xeon of v3/v5 it scalable Xeon would do the trick or a c3000 board, not much else has 10x sata3 that comes to mind. Of course can also get boards with sas adapters.
Hi Evan, So kind of you to reply to my thread. New if possible - This is for home system to connect SATA drives and I would like to get the SATA adaptors onboard - may be 8 ports onboard and then two USB onboard so that I can boot off the USBs?

Sorry :( total noob here.... not much HW knowledge...

Thanks in advance..
 

BlueLineSwinger

Active Member
Mar 11, 2013
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How many users? What type of usage are you expecting (e.g., plain files, music/video streaming, virtual machines, etc.)? What's the network look like? Will it be providing only file services, or do you plan to also run containers/apps such as Plex on the same box?
 

Stevenson

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Feb 3, 2018
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How many users? What type of usage are you expecting (e.g., plain files, music/video streaming, virtual machines, etc.)? What's the network look like? Will it be providing only file services, or do you plan to also run containers/apps such as Plex on the same box?
5 users - 2 Plex Streams - Yes, I wold like to do some VMs also. Network is simple home router from BT.
 

Rand__

Well-Known Member
Mar 6, 2014
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5 users - 2 Plex Streams - Yes, I wold like to do some VMs also. Network is simple home router from BT.
Is that VMs inside FreeNas ? Or FreeNas and others as VM inside another Hypervisor (->you'd need a seperate HBA then to pass through to FreeNas).

I'll assume the former, then this only adds RAM requirements.

I'll spare you then lengthy technical discussion that I had just typed ;) and ask for the most important thing - budget?
Board + CPU + RAM (lets say X10SRA + E5-1650v3/v4 + 64GB RAM) will set you back a grand easily (if buying new)
 

Stevenson

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Feb 3, 2018
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Is that VMs inside FreeNas ? Or FreeNas and others as VM inside another Hypervisor (->you'd need a seperate HBA then to pass through to FreeNas).

I'll assume the former, then this only adds RAM requirements.

I'll spare you then lengthy technical discussion that I had just typed ;) and ask for the most important thing - budget?
Board + CPU + RAM (lets say X10SRA + E5-1650v3/v4 + 64GB RAM) will set you back a grand easily (if buying new)
VMs inside FreeNAS

Board + CPU + RAM - 1250 USD.

(Board which can help with AES-NI encryption and also CPU supporting the virtualization)

Thank you Sir.
 

Rand__

Well-Known Member
Mar 6, 2014
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Board does not matter for AES-NI, only CPU.
What about thermal/noise issues? Different room/storage closet or next to you?
 

Stevenson

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Feb 3, 2018
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Board does not matter for AES-NI, only CPU.
What about thermal/noise issues? Different room/storage closet or next to you?
I live in a 2 Bed room apartment with wife and 2 kids - so, don't have a dedicated room to keep it. Thus, I would like to have a fairly silent box. House ambient temperature is never above 25c/77F

Thank you so much!
 

Rand__

Well-Known Member
Mar 6, 2014
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So what case have you envisioned for 10 drives? I assume no rackmount then ...
And any particular reason not to get a board with a HBA or onboard SAS? Would offer many more options than focussing on 10 SATA ports onboard
 

Stevenson

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Feb 3, 2018
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So what case have you envisioned for 10 drives? I assume no rackmount then ...
And any particular reason not to get a board with a HBA or onboard SAS? Would offer many more options than focussing on 10 SATA ports onboard
Sir - I haven't finalized a case - last 3 days wandering on the net to get some clues. I am one sandwich short of a banquet when it comes to the tech on MB, CPU and cases etc - please forgive me.

yes Sir - I am read to go for an add-on card instead of the onboard sata option. would be great if the board has IPMI for remote administration.
 

Rand__

Well-Known Member
Mar 6, 2014
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Alright
So
Small Rack yes/no? Likely not
So regular Case -> why 10 drives? 10 drive regular cases are difficult to find -> 8 is easier, everything below no problem
 

K D

Well-Known Member
Dec 24, 2016
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If it is for a home media server then I recommend a supermicro X11SSL-CF or X11SSH-CTF paired with an E3-12X5 cpu. Start with 32gb ram and then add another 32 if needed.

Plex can use the built in graphics in the E3 for hardware decoding. The board has an onboard HBA and 6 or 8 SATA ports. The heatsink included with the E3 cpu is decent.

If you don't care about hotswap bays then the fractal definite R5 us a small very quiet case with 8 3.5, 2 2.5 and 2 5.25 bays.

I just built this exact setup with an E3-1245 for a friend. I also use a similar setup for my main home server AIO but with an E3-1275 in a rackmount 846 chassis. Its been running solid for several months now.
 
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Rand__

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Mar 6, 2014
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8 drives will allow a large amount of boards in smaller sizes to be used including mATX which allows smaller cases ;)

So next question is - Expansion capabilities.
Do you want/need 10GBe or multiple (more than 2) 1 GBE NICs ? If you have only 2 concurrent users 2 x 1GBe should suffice
More drives in the future? Or will you replace with larger ones if you need more space?

How many VMs do you want to run? What kind of VMs? -> 64 Gigs should be fine if you only have 1 or two smaller VMs
That will allow to pick any recent Intel generation (including E3 v5/6, limited to 64)
If you need more (->128) that still leaves XeonD or C3000, even more (->256) C3000 or Xeon E5
 
Last edited:

Stevenson

New Member
Feb 3, 2018
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If it is for a home media server then I recommend a supermicro X11SSL-CF or X11SSH-CTF paired with an E3-12X5 cpu. Start with 32gb ram and then add another 32 if needed.

Plex can use the built in graphics in the E3 for hardware decoding. The board has an onboard HBA and 6 or 8 SATA ports. The heatsink included with the E3 cpu is decent.

If you don't care about hotswap bays then the fractal definite R5 us a small very quiet case with 8 3.5, 2 2.5 and 2 5.25 bays.

I just built this exact setup with an E3-1245 for a friend. I also use a similar setup for my main home server AIO but with an E3-1275 in a rackmount 846 chassis. Its been running solid for several months now.
does it support encryption and VMs? also IPMI?