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I am re-building my ZFS array with consumer parts. GIGABYTE GA-X150M-PRO ECC Kingston 16GB ECC DIMM KVR21E15D8/16 Pentium G4600 CPU Toys arrive in a couple of

by watersb 10y ago

I am re-building my ZFS array with consumer parts. GIGABYTE GA-X150M-PRO ECC Kingston 16GB ECC DIMM KVR21E15D8/16 Pentium G4600 CPU Toys arrive in a couple of days. Total outlay was $220. When I first built my storage box, in 2009, the AMD CPUs all supported ECC DRAM, but I could not find a motherboard-chipset-BIOS setup that would actually implement it.

guitarbill 10y ago
I think that's why so many people go with the older HP microservers. Super cheap, nice form factor, just add ECC RAM and HDDs.
- ploek 10y ago
  Yes! I'm dreading the day when my N36L dies. So far I've only had to replace the PSU fan. And it's weird that no other manufacturer has anything like it. Compact case, not too noisy, houses 4 disks, runs FreeNAS.
  - theevilsharpie 10y ago
    Supermicro has a number of servers with a similar form factor. The closest to a classic HP Microserver is the SuperServer 5028A-TN4, although that one uses the Atom chips that have been recalled. There's also the much more powerful SuperServer 5028D-TN4T. They also have a bunch of older models whose names escape me, but can be found by searching for "supermicro mini tower".
    - ploek 10y ago
      That looks promising, thanks for the tip!
- rwg 10y ago
  I have an HP MicroServer N40L that I bought several years ago, and it's almost a doorstop now. Its CPU (dual-core 1.5 GHz AMD Turion II Neo) is slow and doesn't support AES-NI. It maxes out at 8 GB of RAM (16 GB of RAM if the stars align and it likes the RAM you bought). It has one GigE port, and SATA ports are limited to 3 Gbps (SATA II). Expansion is limited to an eSATA port, USB 2.0 ports, a low-profile PCIe 2.0 x1 slot, and a low-profile PCIe 2.0 x16 slot. It's okay as a NAS that mostly sits idle and occasionally serves up unencrypted data at GigE speeds or less. For more demanding tasks, it's woefully underpowered.
  - fb03 10y ago
    That'd be adequate for a simple nas (samba/dav) and maybe running a 24/7 torrent client with a simple web interface but that's it, yeah. Still, a box is a box :P
  - lightedman 10y ago
    Underpowered? With that much hardware I could run 32 Q3 and UT99 servers at once without blinking.
  - guitarbill 10y ago
    I have one of those. Finding the RAM is pretty easy, I'm running 16GiB of ECC RAM. Cheap, too, because DDR2 if I remember. You can put a NIC in the PCIe slot. The SATA ports are fine for spinning disks. You can use the drive bay which is also SATA. Of course it always depends on the use-case, but for most people at home it's sufficient. I use it as a Minecraft and media server.
B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
> AMD CPUs all supported ECC DRAM, but I could not find a motherboard-chipset-BIOS setup You sure? Around that time I plumped down a Phenom X4 and ECC RAM on an ASUS board, and I thought it supported ECC - the chipset was AMD too.

by watersb 10y ago

guitarbill 10y ago

I think that's why so many people go with the older HP microservers. Super cheap, nice form factor, just add ECC RAM and HDDs.

ploek 10y ago
Yes! I'm dreading the day when my N36L dies. So far I've only had to replace the PSU fan. And it's weird that no other manufacturer has anything like it. Compact case, not too noisy, houses 4 disks, runs FreeNAS.
- theevilsharpie 10y ago
  Supermicro has a number of servers with a similar form factor. The closest to a classic HP Microserver is the SuperServer 5028A-TN4, although that one uses the Atom chips that have been recalled. There's also the much more powerful SuperServer 5028D-TN4T. They also have a bunch of older models whose names escape me, but can be found by searching for "supermicro mini tower".
  - ploek 10y ago
    That looks promising, thanks for the tip!
rwg 10y ago
I have an HP MicroServer N40L that I bought several years ago, and it's almost a doorstop now. Its CPU (dual-core 1.5 GHz AMD Turion II Neo) is slow and doesn't support AES-NI. It maxes out at 8 GB of RAM (16 GB of RAM if the stars align and it likes the RAM you bought). It has one GigE port, and SATA ports are limited to 3 Gbps (SATA II). Expansion is limited to an eSATA port, USB 2.0 ports, a low-profile PCIe 2.0 x1 slot, and a low-profile PCIe 2.0 x16 slot. It's okay as a NAS that mostly sits idle and occasionally serves up unencrypted data at GigE speeds or less. For more demanding tasks, it's woefully underpowered.
- fb03 10y ago
  That'd be adequate for a simple nas (samba/dav) and maybe running a 24/7 torrent client with a simple web interface but that's it, yeah. Still, a box is a box :P
- lightedman 10y ago
  Underpowered? With that much hardware I could run 32 Q3 and UT99 servers at once without blinking.
- guitarbill 10y ago
  I have one of those. Finding the RAM is pretty easy, I'm running 16GiB of ECC RAM. Cheap, too, because DDR2 if I remember. You can put a NIC in the PCIe slot. The SATA ports are fine for spinning disks. You can use the drive bay which is also SATA. Of course it always depends on the use-case, but for most people at home it's sufficient. I use it as a Minecraft and media server.

B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago

> AMD CPUs all supported ECC DRAM, but I could not find a motherboard-chipset-BIOS setup You sure? Around that time I plumped down a Phenom X4 and ECC RAM on an ASUS board, and I thought it supported ECC - the chipset was AMD too.