mITX home server

[fr500]

I'm looking on opinions on what board to use to have 6 SATA ports and a current gen Quad or Six core CPU on a mini ITX system (gonna be using a Lian-li PC-Q08 that I already purchased for my home NAS before I went for a QNAP appliance)

I think only choice now is Zotac H55. There is an improved version with support for usb3 but I don't trust Zotac so much for this task, this is gonna be a small home servers for some domains I'm currently hosting on my ex-office (I used to work on an ISP)

I'm gonna be running Ubuntu 10.04 and VMware Server (or KVM if testing goes well) to host my Spamtitan appliance and a Zimbra server. The web sites will be likely hosted directly on the Ubuntu OS. Virtualization is a good choice for reliability and disaster recovery, could move the VM's to another PC quickly and get everything working in the worst case scenario. I already have a home iSCSI NAS solution for backups and storage so I'd use that for an added layer of reliability.

I think I may give up 2 bays and get 4 WD Black 2TB HDDs and use the H55N-USB3 with an i7 860 and an 8GB DDR3 kit and a cheap silent video card. I'm gonna be using DMraid so raid support is not required.

I'm curious about going AMD route. The J&W 890GX looks great, has got dual NICs and everything but I still don't know how many SATA ports it has. No big deal since it's got integrated graphics and I could get a supermicro card to support more drives I'd like to get it with a 95w 6 core but those can't be found anywhere yet (1035T or 1045T or even 1055T 95W)

Any opinions?

 

[NichoTL]

How about the intel H57? At least you can have RAID 5. 860 is probably overkill IMHO.

 

[rhansen5_99]

I think you could get 5 drives with the gigabyte 1156 m-itx, 4 internal and 1 esata
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128448

Im not sure if the intel board has the turbo boast worked out with the i5 chips. If you truly want a 6 core solution you are probably on the right track with the lower power amd's.

Shuttle does have a x58 barebones with dual pci express slots with 4 sata
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856101093
but the cost is ridiculous ... its not an itx but the next size between matx

 

[fr500]

I'm thinking I'm going the gigabyte and 4 drives for now, I could get the Intel H57 but local retailers do not carry that board so I would have to import, warranty is important in this scenario.

The i7 860, yes it might be overkill but I prefer to have spare computing power, who knows maybe my little home business grows

The antispam appliance is pretty CPI intensive due OCR and the virus scanners, I have 2 cores of a Xeon E5450 assigned to that appliance on the servers I meantioned before and it's usually at 80% usage at the morning on weekdays.

Good thing 4GB DDR3 dimms are not as expensive as DDR2 used to be so I will go for a good 8GB kit

The internal USB headers? are those USB2.0 or USB3.0?

 

[bastage]

Sounds like your asking for way more horse power then you need. It also sounds like you have a fairly high budget. This being said I would look for an Athalon II x4 600e (or 605e) as there 45w quad cores & Either the J&W mITX board (if you can get it since it sounds like your not in the states & I have yet to see it here) or the new Asus mITX am3 board. Then you can throw in a sata card of your choice & call it a day.

 

[mrmylanman]

I'm getting a Xeon L3426 personally, but I plan on using it for more than just being a server. Quad core, 8 threads and still only uses 45W. They had it on Newegg but it recently went away. I found it elsewhere, for cheaper too (but it's still $311). For the power usage though, I think it's a great processor. Should be able to make that rig damn near silent.

Problem with that for your use though would be the lack of video. So I'd just suggest getting a Clarkdale chip and an H55/H57 board and throw a RAID card in the PCI-e slot. Probably the best bed for a home server.

 

[bastage]

I'm getting a Xeon L3426 personally, but I plan on using it for more than just being a server. Quad core, 8 threads and still only uses 45W. They had it on Newegg but it recently went away. I found it elsewhere, for cheaper too (but it's still $311). For the power usage though, I think it's a great processor. Should be able to make that rig damn near silent.

Problem with that for your use though would be the lack of video. So I'd just suggest getting a Clarkdale chip and an H55/H57 board and throw a RAID card in the PCI-e slot. Probably the best bed for a home server.

Thats another strong recomendation.. Though that chip is about 2x the cost of the AMD's I recomended It would do an awesome job it your budget allows.

 

[mrmylanman]

Thats another strong recomendation.. Though that chip is about 2x the cost of the AMD's I recomended It would do an awesome job it your budget allows.

I was thinking long and hard about the ASUS board and going AM3, but ultimately decided against it for the more SATA ports the Gigabyte allows, but for home server use, the AMD route might be preferable (you're also not limited in the onboard video department whereas you are in the new Intel boards), so that'd make it easier to go RAID card.

 

[bastage]

I was thinking long and hard about the ASUS board and going AM3, but ultimately decided against it for the more SATA ports the Gigabyte allows, but for home server use, the AMD route might be preferable (you're also not limited in the onboard video department whereas you are in the new Intel boards), so that'd make it easier to go RAID card.

thats the whole reason I would go with AMD if I was trying to get a mITX server. All the Intel ones you can do require no better then a dual core because you have to use a clarksdale CPU to get the onboard graphics from the h5x series. Ultimately though If the OP really wants a x6 for this then he can always build the server with something else cheap for now & later upgrade when the low TDP x6's are available.

 

[mrmylanman]

I heard the 6 core Phenoms have a propensity to kill motherboards because of the strain they put on the MOSFETs, even if they fall within the TDP range the motherboard is rated at. Perhaps that's just a loud minority, and who's to say that won't be a non-issue by the time the low-TDP ones show up anyway. Something that has bothered me about them though.

 

[bastage]

I seem to remember you (or someone else here) mentioning that here. But I havent seen that or heard about it elsewhere. Then again if people are putting these into older am2 & am2+ boards that support them after a bios update then who knows since there boards werent made for anything of the sorts.

 

[mrmylanman]

I saw some reviews and some posts in the AMD subforum about it. It seems like MSI boards have the toughest time with it from what limited research I did, so it's possible it's just MSI's problem.

 

[fr500]

Yes maybe it's too much power for now, I don't really have a tight budget constraint right now, moving my own customers from some spare servers I had for free at my previous job to my house. Also I want to use the spare PC-Q08 I bought. The Xeon is way to expensive considering I would have to import it, also electricity here is dirt cheap (I do care for pollution though but most of our energy comes from hydroelectric plants), maybe the Xeon is way to go for silent cooling though.

I already have a redundant Internet connection all I care for is too much noise and space. Moving the antispam appliance is what worries me the most as it's pretty taxing at peak hours. The 8 threads on the 860 could prove very useful here. I'm talking about some 30 domains, 1600 users and 100-300 msgs passed/minute (a lot more are received but only avg 100 are passed)

When the J&W board and the low power x6s appears I might consider them again, now I think it's an H55N-USB3, 4 WD Caviar Black 2TB HDDs with software RAID and a cheap silent GPU, maybe a passive ATI 5550 or a 7600gt I have lying around. I might use the spare horsepower to transcode my DVD collection on idle time .

Can anyone recommend a low power 8GB (2x4GB) ddr3 kit? Also a silent PSU, 450/500w should be more than enough. What about a heatsink, I don't want an H50 for 24/7, something that can cool an i7 860 (probably a bit undervolted/underclocked at the beggining) with tolerable noise. Also I'm quite restricted to buying from Amazon since I don't have an US bound credit card.

 

[NichoTL]

Performance-wise, how is mdadm compared to intel hardware RAID? With the Gigabyte, you could quite possibly use a i5 655K boosted to 4GHz, use its integrated graphics and instead have a hardware-RAID card in the PCIE slot. OK only 4 threads but super fast ones and a real RAID solution (more than 4 drives if needed) that doesn't burn CPU cycles...

 

[Dangman]

Also a silent PSU, 450/500w should be more than enough.

Well there are very quiet 450W to 500W PSUs but they have an absurdly high price IMO:
$110 - Nexus NX-5000 R3 530W PSU

SPCR Review:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1012-page1.html

Though if you're fine with just "quiet", then I recommend this PSU over the Nexus:
$50 - Corsair 400CX 400W PSU

SPCR Review:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1008-page1.html

Performance-wise, how is mdadm compared to intel hardware RAID? With the Gigabyte, you could quite possibly use a i5 655K boosted to 4GHz, use its integrated graphics and instead have a hardware-RAID card in the PCIE slot. OK only 4 threads but super fast ones and a real RAID solution (more than 4 drives if needed) that doesn't burn CPU cycles...

Well pretty decent performance actually. IIRC, the MDADM RAID performs just as well if not better than some true hardware RAID cards out there.

 

[bastage]

Yes maybe it's too much power for now, I don't really have a tight budget constraint right now, moving my own customers from some spare servers I had for free at my previous job to my house. Also I want to use the spare PC-Q08 I bought. The Xeon is way to expensive considering I would have to import it, also electricity here is dirt cheap (I do care for pollution though but most of our energy comes from hydroelectric plants), maybe the Xeon is way to go for silent cooling though.

I already have a redundant Internet connection all I care for is too much noise and space. Moving the antispam appliance is what worries me the most as it's pretty taxing at peak hours. The 8 threads on the 860 could prove very useful here. I'm talking about some 30 domains, 1600 users and 100-300 msgs passed/minute (a lot more are received but only avg 100 are passed)

When the J&W board and the low power x6s appears I might consider them again, now I think it's an H55N-USB3, 4 WD Caviar Black 2TB HDDs with software RAID and a cheap silent GPU, maybe a passive ATI 5550 or a 7600gt I have lying around. I might use the spare horsepower to transcode my DVD collection on idle time .

Can anyone recommend a low power 8GB (2x4GB) ddr3 kit? Also a silent PSU, 450/500w should be more than enough. What about a heatsink, I don't want an H50 for 24/7, something that can cool an i7 860 (probably a bit undervolted/underclocked at the beggining) with tolerable noise. Also I'm quite restricted to buying from Amazon since I don't have an US bound credit card.

Keep in mind that you can get the Athalon II x4 605e 45w that should be jsut as cool as that xeon for about half the xeons cost which puts it ALOT cheaper then the 860. & Much cooler running. Then you have the flexibility of having the pcie slot available for a sata card..

If you do still go with an 1156 build check out the xeon 3440.. Its a bit lower clocked then the 860, but a heck of alot cheaper here in the us (dont know about where you are)

 

[rhansen5_99]

Crucial has a 2x4gb 1.35v kit @ 1600mhz for $419, http://www.crucial.com/store/partsp...t2kit51272bw1339&zmac=40&zmas=1&zmam=13262493

In looking on google shopping you can get these in the $335 ballpark, but not familiar with the resellers.

If you are going with an i3, tomshardware has an interesting article about the qpi buss limiting performance with ddr3 speeds above 1333mhz. I do not think the i5's have the same issue.