Looking to build out a pair of machines that will be backup targets for a small business that we’re supporting.
It’s purely a backup target, so performance isn’t really needed.
I’m already set on using 16TB drives - but where I’m getting stuck is motherboard / CPU selection.
I’d ideally like full ECC support. The AsRock rack motherboards suit this need, but are typically quite expensive and are very limited on cooler compatibility (at least the ones I’ve used have been.)
I’ve been eyeing some of the other AsRock Ryzen boards, but ECC support seems to be hit and miss with those.
I’d prefer something that can fit in a desktop-sized case or smaller, so no E-ATX.
I’ve gotten to the point with this where I’m considering just recommending some TrueNAS Mini appliances.
I’ve pretty much given up on ECC and consumer CPUs again for the moment. The AsRock Rack boards are expensive, and worse yet, they haven’t exactly been bug free–my AsRock Rack board for banshee downstairs was afflicted with the randr firmware bug that caused kernel lockups in WireGuard and other applications for MONTHS on end, after the vast majority of the consumer boards had long since been patched.
I still think ECC ought to be the standard for everybody and everything, personally. But with the market in the state it’s in right now, I’m back to just using ECC on builds with “server-grade” CPUs, and sighing and going with non-ECC for my eg Ryzen 9 5950X builds.
Given what this is being used for I’d much prefer to have the ECC to not.
What boards have you been going with of late for your “server-grade” builds? I know Supermicro sells server grade motherboards but I don’t have much experience with them.
I haven’t built anything in a while, but last used a Supermicro X11SSH-F with a Xeon E3-1260L v5 for my NAS box. I don’t remember exactly what I paid, but I thought it was reasonable at the time. I haven’t had any issues with it and Supermicro seems to be much more on top of security updates (and send out email alerts for them), which is much more than I can say for the AsRock Rack board I also have.
They’re not cheap, but I’ve considered using the 45Drives HL8 and HL4 as backup targets, although on further inspection, it looks like if you go with their stock mobo/cpu you won’t be getting ECC.
I agree, that is disappointing. But real world, the impact of ECC is maybe avoiding one lockup or crash every couple of years.
So real world, as pissed off as I am that Intel managed to create a segregated market for “server RAM” so they could juice their own pockets on “server CPUs,” I’m still stuck with issues like the extra slow firmware upgrade cycle on ASRock rack heavily outweighing the benefits of its ECC support.
Almost always super micro. I’ve occasionally done some random project with a gigabyte or Asus server board, but when the supply chain and pricing permit me to be, I’m generally a supermicro guy by preference.
What are your thoughts on the conversations about how with some of the extra correction built into DDR5 that ECC might not be as needed for many of the borderline uses as it was?
Personally, if I find I am having to take extra time to consider if ECC is appropriate for a build, that pretty much means it is and I need to budget for it.
“The error correction built into DDR5” is ECC, because (from what I’ve been given to understand) DDR5 raw error rates are high enough that ECC isn’t really optional anymore.
The major difference between the ECC on consumer DDR5 and the ECC on DDR4 and earlier “server grade” RAM is largely that (to the best of my knowledge) consumer DDR5 will not report errors to the system, so you don’t get a notice in your logs whenever an error is detected and/or corrected (just like consumer hard drives don’t bother to let the system know when their onboard ECC detects and corrects an error it sees in the raw data coming from its media).
I’ve recently built two 7950x systems in AsrockRack B650D4U boards. I like the mATX form factor, I like the IPMI. The number of on-board usb sockets is : 1, so plan accordingly. Plan to follow the QVL for ram. Both systems I built have 128G of ECC unbuffered.
Ive built a few servers with the Asrock Rack RomeD8-2T motherboards, but that’s prolly well outside your range. I like the IPMI support on the Asrock AMD boards more than the Intel boards.
