Tom's Hardware > Forum > Motherboards & Memory > General Motherboard > Best MB/Processor for DIY NAS Server

Best MB/Processor for DIY NAS Server

Forum Motherboards & Memory : General Motherboard - Best MB/Processor for DIY NAS Server

Tom's Hardware: Over 1.4 million members in 6 different countries available to answer all your high-tech questions. Sign up now! Its free!
Ask the community Add a reply
Word :    Username :           
 
chavey   02-16-2008 at 08:40:30 PM

I'm interested in building a NAS, using a HW-based disk controller like the Areca-1220. I might like to use OpenSolaris/ZFS or perhaps FreeNAS. What would be a good motherboard/processor combination. How much ram? I'd like to have enough HP for the CPU so that it would not be the limiting factor in performance, without overdoing it too much. (I.e. I'd like to get enough performance from the CPU so the overall performance would be limited by the disk contoller and the gigabit ethernet port.)

Thanks for your advise.

Add a reply
Sponsored Links
Register or log in to remove.
chavey   02-18-2008 at 01:02:19 AM
- 0 +

Thanks, did you consider the Athalon vs. Intel Core 2 Duo, or did you just prefer AMD in general?

That seems like a good MB without too much extra stuff that would need to be disabled in a server. I usually use ASUS mb's myself. Do you know if you get 16 (or at least 8) channels from the PCIe x16 slot if you use the on-board video, or will it compete for the same PCIe channels. I understand that some MB's that have 2 x16 slots will share the channels if you use both, so each get x8 electrically, but I don't know if the same need to share would apply to on-board video (which presumably uses PCIe).

Do you know if the onboard lan port does 1G w jumbo frames, or would you disable it and put in a lan card that did?

Reply to chavey
chookman   02-18-2008 at 01:39:47 AM
- 0 +

i believe Col-P-Todd chose that because its probably currently the lower TDP processor at a cheap price.

personally i would go with

e2160 $74
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] tion=e2160

and i recently used this mainboard for a HTPC, but comes with everything that you will need for cheap

GIGABYTE GA-73PVM-S2 $73
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128088

------------------------------ "This thread made me strap on my lolerskates and head for my roflcopter."
 Reply to chookman
col-p-todd   02-18-2008 at 02:15:43 AM
- 0 +

Yes I chose that because ot the low power usage. since it will run 24/7 having a low power system will end up saving alot of money each year.

Not sure how many lanes it has but it does have 10/100/1000Mbps lan speeds.

intel also has some good cpu that with a TDP of 65W but they do not have a good chipset with onboard video, like the AMD 690

Reply to col-p-todd
bobbknight   02-18-2008 at 02:28:04 AM
- 0 +

Wow Areca 1220 raid 6 overkill for a nas. If this is going into a large production area with over 100 users get a board with the ability to have lots of memory. A Cpu with the memory controller built in would be a plus.

For home I would do a nice little raid 5 setup with a cheap celeron and cheap board. Linux would be good here.

Message quoted 1 times
Reply to bobbknight
cptndipshit   02-18-2008 at 02:56:16 AM
- 0 +

I was looking at this Jetway ITX.

JetWay J7F4K1G5D-PB
http://www.newegg.com/product/prod [...] 6813153062

Supposed to be 25w for the whole board, plus your hard drives and ram of course.

Has dual gigabit and hardware mpeg2/4 decode/encryption

Reply to cptndipshit
chavey   02-18-2008 at 03:07:09 AM
- 0 +

bobbknight wrote :

Wow Areca 1220 raid 6 overkill for a nas. If this is going into a large production area with over 100 users get a board with the ability to have lots of memory. A Cpu with the memory controller built in would be a plus.

For home I would do a nice little raid 5 setup with a cheap celeron and cheap board. Linux would be good here.



I planned to use part of the nas to offload the video files I'm storing now on my mythtv server, so I figured I needed a hw-based raid controller to get enough throughput for real-time video capture. I was also going to use it for other files that I'd like to protect against disk failure, but I was only going to do raid5 not 6.


Message edited by chavey on 02-18-2008 at 03:15:11 AM
Reply to chavey
Joe_The_Dragon   02-18-2008 at 03:17:12 AM
- 0 +

col-p-todd wrote :

i,m looking in building a nas and think this is the best combo

mobo
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813131174

cpu
65W
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819103204
45W
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819103204


you can get boards with the same chip set with a x4 and x16 pci-e slot for the same price
the x4 slot is good for a raid card and you can put a low end video card in the x16 slot.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128052
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128043

or a nforce board with tcp / ip offload and teaming.

nforce boards
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813138059

------------------------------ http://www.moola.com/moopubs/b2b/e [...] 4e6a593d-2

http://www.sendearnings.com/?r=JoeDragon
 Reply to Joe_The_Dragon
Ask the community Add a reply
Tom's Hardware > Forum > Motherboards & Memory > General Motherboard > Best MB/Processor for DIY NAS Server
Go to:

There are 955 identified and unidentified users. To see the list of identified users, Click here.

Forum map
Bestofmedia Forum ©
2000-2009 Bestofmedia Group
Page generated in 0.410 seconds
Please mind

You are about to answer a thread that has been inactive for more than 6 months.
If you still wish to proceed, please ensure that your posting is original and does not duplicate or overlap any prior responses to this thread.

Add a reply Cancel
Sponsored links
  • Ask the community now
  • Publish
Ad
Related Topics
See all relatives topics
They won a badge
Join us in greeting them