Hello there, i’m looking to upgrade my 10 years old NAS/server. I already have the HDD and the case. But i have difficulties to chose motherboard, PSU, CPU & RAM.
So far i’m looking for :
AMD CPU, +12 threads
Because it’s already a RAID6 I’m looking for a bunch of SATA ports, maybe a LSI ? Which one ? And 2 NVME slots for the Motherboard.
More than 16GB of ram, IF possible ECC
All of this available in western Europe
I’m aiming for a budget between 600€ and 900€ for those 4 components.
(I do know why i’m aiming at this kind of hardware. But I have stopped being hardware enthusiast like 9 years ago and I really need some help for this)
Have a nice day and a nice weekend :)
(If it’s the wrong place to ask for hardware advises I’m sorry)
Edit to reflect questions :
- 8 SATA ports is a minimum, more is good (that’s why i’m looking at LSI)
- 1Gb/s Network is a minimum, 2.5Gb/s is cool
- The Motherboard should be at max ATX format, not larger
Have a great day
ECC RAM is quite pricey. That could be a stretch.
Random suggestion, but look for a cheap X3D CPU if it’s in the budget, like a 7600X3D or a 5500/5600 X3D.
They’re a nice low TDP out of the box, super efficient, and the cache disproportionately speeds up a few potential NAS specific workloads like encoding. It “hides” the performance penalty of cheap RAM. They’d also perfect for game servers.
…But don’t go out of your way if they’re pricey.
The only AM4 and AM5 motherboards I’m aware of that officially claim to fully support ECC are made by Asrock as their server sub-brand Asrock Rack. They are pricey AF - 500-600 euro for the motherboard alone. As a bonus you get 2x10Gb ethernet + separate ethernet port for remote management, including bios access and a bunch of other goodies.
I used one of those (Asrock Rack X570D4I-2T) for my NAS - it comes with 2 oculink ports, each of which provides 4x SATA.
Unofficially ECC works on many (possibly all) B an X chipset series motherboards as long as you are not using G-series CPU. If you google around you’ll find a bunch of unofficial confirmations from users of specific motherboards that it does work.
E.g. Asus PRIME B650M-R + Ryzen 7600 (non-x) is a good start and will cost you 250-300 euro total. LSI 9300 16I will add 16 SATA ports for another 50-60 euro. 200-250 euro for a 2x16GB ecc kit.
Genuine question, why “non-x” (4th paragraph) CPU ? Is there incompatibility issue with EEC or it’s just because they are kinda high-end CPU ?
Do you have good brand for RAM in mind ?
Do you have good brand for RAM in mind
I usually go with Crucial for desktop RAM, but that’s not a strong preference, but rather good price to performance ratio for the faster memory kits they have. Might not translate to ECC memory.
Thank you for your detailed answers !
7600 has >90% of 7600x performance with a 65W TDP instead of 105W and it’s cheaper. 7900 non-x also has a 65W TDP despite having twice the cores. Both x and non-x can be pushed down to 45W by enabling eco mode in bios. Performance difference between 65W and 45W is less than 5%.
If X variant is very close price-wise to non-X go with X obviously, but otherwise don’t stress about getting the slower one, because for server workloads the difference is very small.
Most boards do support it unofficially, AFAIK.
In my Asrock B650E BIOS (a consumer ITX board), there’s literally an option for enabling/disabling DIMM ECC.
I mention that in the 3rd paragraph of my comment along with info that G CPUs don’t support ECC.
Right.
I just meant to the confirm that I laid eyes on the option in my AsRock BIOS.
What Ethernet speed do you want?
Hi ! Minimum 1Gb/s. 2.5Gb/s is cool
How many drives do you want to use?
Hi ! I already have a 6+2 setup so i need at least 8 SATA
