mini-itx recommendations

[maes]

I've been looking at options to upgrade/replace the hardware of my current storage box and what better place than here to ask for input? Due to certain annoyances and objectives I have mostly settled on two lines of thought.

What I have right now;
Asrock C2550D4I (that I know will soon die to AVR54 and the Marvell controllers have been giving me grief)
16GB DDR3 ECC
LSI 9211-8i in IT mode (recently added because the Asrock's Marvell controllers were becoming more annoying)
NSC-800 case
8x 4TB in Raid-Z2
1x SATA SSD for boot. Recently went from an ancient overstock OCZ Vertex2 that I had used in a previous system to an Intel S3520

What I'm aiming for;
- low(ish) power
- pref x8 pcie slot (for a proper storage card; 9211-8i in IT mode)
- either m.2 (with x4 pcie) or SFP+ (I know the Intel x557 NIC isn't all that well supported yet on Freenas; I have a Mellanox ConnectX-3 I have successfully run off a m.2-to-pcie adapter and would rather stick with SFP+ rather than RJ45 10GbE)

I'm leaning towards Supermicro because of the HTML5-based IPMI and their apparently more solid reputation.

Unfortunately, the A2SDI series, as nice as it looks, only has a pcie x4 slot and most of them only have 2 pcie lanes on the m.2 connector

So far, my most likely options to satisfy all the annoyances and aims (and not cost me a fortune) would be:

- one of the lower-core-count X10SDVs, either with 'stock' active cooling or replacing the heatsink

- a X11SCL-IF with either a something between a compatible Pentium and an i3-8100/8100T, with appropriate fan (it's what I'm leaning towards the most right now)

- maybe the E3C236D2I or E3C246D2I when the latter comes out, again with an appropriate CPU, but I have no idea if the Asrock IPMI is still Java-only.


Another completely different solution would have been to go with a ryzen platform, with a non-APU chip to have ECC support, and somehow adapting one of those basic mini-pcie video card (or one of the new m.2 ones) to the m.2 slot that normally runs the wifi card. The one benefit of that platform, despite the headaches, would be that all pcie lanes I care about (the x8/x16 slot and the m.2 slot) run right off the CPU instead of going through the chipset.

Overall the system will lead a lazy life, being used only for data archival, pxe server and general file/media server (no reencoding).

I'm open to any insight or recommendations.

 

[EffrafaxOfWug]

From where I'm sitting the X11SCL-IF is the most sensible choice. Combine it with a good low profile cooler like the Noctua NH-L9i and you should be able to rev up the CPU without too much in the way of heat/noise. Choices for aftermarket heatsinks on the Xeon-D boards are few, and there's not really any room for a good passive one in your case.

As far as I'm aware ASRock, Gigabyte and Asus all still use a java-based IPMI plugins; this was my primary reason for only considering SM until other vendors caught up.

(Also an NSC-800 user)

As much as I'd also have liked to consider a Zen-based CPU for a home server, the hardware ecosystem just isn't there yet. As I've said here many times, I was hoping the Xeon-D-esqe Epyc 3000 chips would end up in some decent motherboards but so far there's been no traction.

 

[Frozenstitches]

I’m looking at the E3C246D2I. I’m running an n3700 in a ds308b. I’ll probably get that as soon as it’s available.

 

[BlueFox]

Why not the Atom C3xxx boards? You can get them with 12 SATA, so that would negate the need for a separate HBA. Stick your NIC in the PCIe slot (or get a model with 10GbE integrated). None have PCIe x4 M.2, but I doubt you will be able to notice any difference between that and half the lanes.

 

[ullbeking]

Also a U-NAS 800 user!

AND I am also using the ASRock Rack E3C236DI for my living room VM server and I feel like it's one of the best kept secrets in SFF computing, i.e., it comes with IPMI/BMC, the CPU can be changed, RAM can be varied, it's just great. And it's mini-ITX and a proper server!!

Right now it's got a Pentium G4560 in it but I think it will be better served with a low-power Xeon E3.

But now I totally feel I just gotta check out the X11SCL-IF because I love Supermicro boards.

 

[maes]

Why not the Atom C3xxx boards? You can get them with 12 SATA, so that would negate the need for a separate HBA. Stick your NIC in the PCIe slot (or get a model with 10GbE integrated). None have PCIe x4 M.2, but I doubt you will be able to notice any difference between that and half the lanes.

I also looked into those, however the 8-cores-and-up models (that have 12 SATA ports) are fairly expensive compared to the other options. The ones with less than 8 cores only have 8 SATA ports and those ports share lanes with the PCIE slot (8 lanes total, either pcie or sata)

 

[ullbeking]

So @maes, what is your conclusion from that? Is your main constraint to have 12+ SATA ports on-board?

 

[EffrafaxOfWug]

If it's of any help at all, one of my NSC-800's already has an A2SDi-8C+-HLN4F in it, one of the ones with 12 SATA ports (8 of which are exposed through 8643 connectors making cable management much easier). An HBA in this chassis isn't much of an advantage since the backplane doesn't support SGPIO (at least not on mine).

If single-threaded performance and SAS capability isn't paramount, and low power is, then I think it's a plenty good board; if you're happy to use the SATA ports and forego the HBA you've then got the ability to use the PCIe 4x for a 10GbE adapter somewhere down the line (assuming it doesn't run super-hot). Whether this makes economic sense where you live is another story (here in the UK, the A2SDi-8C+-HLN4F would have cost me the same amount as a Xeon-E mobo and CPU and I had no reason to favour the Xeon-E's for this server).

I don't think there'd be any appreciable difference in real-world performance between x2 and x4 for the M.2 slot (the optane in mine only does x2 anyway); 99 times out of 100 it'll only make any difference to synthetic sequential benchmarks.

 

[maes]

So @maes, what is your conclusion from that? Is your main constraint to have 12+ SATA ports on-board?

I would need more than 8 sata or sas ports in total, with no importance if they're on the board itself or on a pcie card. I already have a 9211-8i on hand, so it's not an issue if the mini-itx motherboard itself doesn't have them.

The constraint would be to find a way to have both enough sata/sas ports and at least one 10GbE connection, preferably SFP+. I know the C3000s and Xeon Ds use what's effectively an X557 internally and support for those is, afaik, still a bit dodgy on FreeNAS.

I have a Mellanox ConnectX-3 card that I have already tested, both on the current C2550D4I (temporarily using the Marvell sata ports for the drives) and on my desktop to test the m.2-to-pcie x4 adapter, and it has worked great.

I will likely end up going with the X11SCL-IF. It does seem like the option with the most positives.

If it's of any help at all, one of my NSC-800's already has an A2SDi-8C+-HLN4F in it, one of the ones with 12 SATA ports (8 of which are exposed through 8643 connectors making cable management much easier). An HBA in this chassis isn't much of an advantage since the backplane doesn't support SGPIO (at least not on mine).

I definitely looked into it, but the prices I've seen more or less mean that the motherboard alone would be about as much as mobo+cpu+memory for some of the other combinations. I'll definitely keep it in mind while I hunt for deals before making the actual purchases.

 

[maes]

Annoyingly enough, it seems the X11SCL-IF has no support for PCIE bifurcation.

It's not an essential by a long shot but would have been a 'nice to have' for future-proofing. Just to be extra annoying, it seems the closest equivalents from the competitors (MX11-PC0, P10S-I, E3C236D2I and likely E3C246D2I) do offer PCIE bifurcation.

So it'll be a toss-up between html5 ipmi, or pcie support. Might end up having another look at the X10SDVs again, since those seem to offer bifurcation too even if they're considerably more expensive.

 

[Frozenstitches]

Manuals dropped for the asrock E3C246D2I looks like they are going to be html5.