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ASRock C226 WS - Server / Workstation Socket 1150 Motherboard £144.10 Delivered @ LambdaTek
£144.10Lambda-tek Deals
Fabulous motherboard for building a rock solid home server based around FreeNAS (16GB of ECC RAM is recommended when using ZFS).
This board is the cheapest I could find which supports both ECC RAM and 10 x SATA III ports to be able to build a decent sized RAID.
asrockrack.com/gen…0WS
Model: C226 WS
ATX 12''x9.6''
Single socket H3 (LGA 1150)
Supports New 4th and 4th Generation Intel XeonE3-1200 v3/ Core™ i7/i5/i3/Pentium/Celeron Processors (Socket 1150)
4-DIMM DDR3 1600/1333 ECC & UDIMM, max. 32GB
2 x PCIe 3.0 x16, 1 x PCIe 2.0 x4, 3 x PCIe 2.0 x1, 1 x PCI
6 x SATA3 by Intel C226 support RAID 0,1,5,10
4 x SATA3 by Marvell 9172 support RAID 0,1
2 Intel i210, support Dual GLAN
6 USB 3.0 ports (4 rear + 2 via header)
10 USB 2.0 ports (4 rear + 6 via header)
This board is the cheapest I could find which supports both ECC RAM and 10 x SATA III ports to be able to build a decent sized RAID.
asrockrack.com/gen…0WS
Model: C226 WS
ATX 12''x9.6''
Single socket H3 (LGA 1150)
Supports New 4th and 4th Generation Intel XeonE3-1200 v3/ Core™ i7/i5/i3/Pentium/Celeron Processors (Socket 1150)
4-DIMM DDR3 1600/1333 ECC & UDIMM, max. 32GB
2 x PCIe 3.0 x16, 1 x PCIe 2.0 x4, 3 x PCIe 2.0 x1, 1 x PCI
6 x SATA3 by Intel C226 support RAID 0,1,5,10
4 x SATA3 by Marvell 9172 support RAID 0,1
2 Intel i210, support Dual GLAN
6 USB 3.0 ports (4 rear + 2 via header)
10 USB 2.0 ports (4 rear + 6 via header)
Groups
Agreed, but I needed more disk capacity and the cases that support 10 x 3.5inch disks also tend to be able to take a standard ATX motherboard.
I'm looking at using this:
amazon.co.uk/Fra…NFO
with something like this to add the extra 3.5" bays:
amazon.co.uk/Icy…3BW
To be able to use ECC RAM you need a compatible CPU:
http://ark.intel.com/search/advanced/?s=t&Sockets=FCLGA1150&ECCMemory=true
The Intel G3258 looks like a good low budget CPU that fits the bill if you don't need loads of processing power. I wouldn't recommend trying to overclock a server CPU though as the key with servers is stability rather than raw speed.
With ZFS in FreeNAS you don't use the hardware RAID anyway, the OS needs to see each disk individually to be able to monitor disk health properly. You are essentially just using them as standard SATA ports.
It's dependent on having a decent chunk of RAM as well, I don't think you need a massively powerful CPU:
http://doc.freenas.org/index.php/Hardware_Recommendations
RAIDZ2 looks like the sweet spot