Motherboard choice for Fileserver.

A

ATWindsor

Weaksauce
Joined
Feb 1, 2010
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Does anybody have a recommendations when it comes to a motherboard for a fileserver with a raid-card? It must support Xeon E3v3, I am looking at a Asus P9D WS, is that a ok choice? Having dual intel gigabit is a plus, but it would be nice with more sata-ports. Is there any upside with going with a server-card instead of a workstation-card?
 
ATWindsor said:
Thanks a lot for the suggestion, I am bit skeptical to the lack of ports though, I want something which is flexible for some years, so only to expansion slots is a bit on the low side :(
Click to expand...

Consider what your real life expectations are for the computer.

What is your application for this computer?
Do you see yourself needing more then 2 PCI-E slots?
It has built-in video, are you looking at adding a discreet video card?
Do you see yourself needing more then 14 hard drive ports?

Even if you use 4 of them for system drive and optical drives, that still leaves 10 for mass storage. 6TB drives on the near horizon, and they will continue to grow (especially as solid state takes over).

Do you see yourself exceeding the natural growth of storage?
 
westrock2000 said:
Consider what your real life expectations are for the computer.

What is your application for this computer?
Do you see yourself needing more then 2 PCI-E slots?
It has built-in video, are you looking at adding a discreet video card?
Do you see yourself needing more then 14 hard drive ports?

Even if you use 4 of them for system drive and optical drives, that still leaves 10 for mass storage. 6TB drives on the near horizon, and they will continue to grow (especially as solid state takes over).

Do you see yourself exceeding the natural growth of storage?
Click to expand...

My application is a fileserver.
- Yes, I already have a controller-card, and I can see me adding 1 or 2 more or a 10 Gb network-card in the future.
- No i don't need discreet video.
- I already have more than 14 hard drives. But 14 ports on the motherboard is enough.

My experience so far in life is that I use more and more drives in the fileserver as time progresses, and hard drive cost/storage increase is slower than it was (although so is the growth of filesizes for many applications)
 
Hi Guys,

Looking at doing a similar build. Theres lots of good DIY NAS/File Server examples on this forum its awesome :D

I too am torn between selecting a older X9 based (Ivy socket 2011) for more RAM + expansion options, Or a cheaper X10 based (Haswell socket 1150)

Here is my projected initial X10 build:
  • Intel Xeon E3 1220 v3 3.1GHz Quad
  • Supermicro X10SL7-F
  • Kingston 2x8GB 1600MHz DDR3 ECC
  • Corsair 650w PSU
  • Antec Twelve Hundred Case w/4x3.5-in-3x5.25" Bays
Cost without drives ends up around 1.5k, I was thinking 6xWD 4.0TB Red in RAIDZ2 for the initial ZFS Pool.

Interestingly you can pick up a Synology 12 bay NAS (Dual core w/2GB RAM) for about the same price.

Alternatively X10 Build (Rather than X9SRL-F, X9SRi-3F :) ):
  • Xeon E5-1620v2 3.7GHZ +$50
  • Supermicro X9SRi-3F (14 Sata ports also, 2xSATA3, 4xSATA2, 8xSAS) +$200
  • Kingston 2x8GB 1600MHz DDR3 ECC
  • Corsair 650w PSU
  • Noctua NH-D14 SE2011
  • Antec Twelve Hundred Case w/4x3.5-in-3x5.25" Bays
Ends up being a more expensive though ($300-$800 more at most) but you get 8 DIMM slots and higher capacity dimms (Up to 512GB) more PCIe slots (better expandablity) a higher idle watt too. Finding the Supermicro board and processor (UP E5-1xxx series) has proven the most difficult task.

What do you guys think.
 
If you do go with the X10SL7-F, note that 8 of them are from the onboard LSI 2308 and the other 6 from the PCH. Unless you're going to do JBOD you can't combine all 14 to create one RAID volume.
 
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