Or you get a HBA and keep adding drives, or whole new vdevs. Until, indeed, it’s time to upgrade the drives in a vdev (you can do it one at a time, but won’t get the extra space until the last drive is replaced).
So plan well, start with big drives. And, most importantly: Keep your precious SATA ports! Mirrorring boot is NOT necessary. Small NVMe are cheap. M.2 or PCIe x1 slots are great for boot. Or USB adapters if you have to. Anything that doesn’t waste a SATA port.
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That sounds already much better, I never worked with such a board so I have some questions.
Can I power it with a normal ATX power supply? How do I install truenas if there is no integrated graphics? would the vga output work regardless?
I think the manual should have accurate descriptions for the headers. If I conclude from appearance only, USB2/3 and USB4/5 are USB 2.0 headers, and USB8/9 is a USB 3.0 header.
The cable I’ve posted goes for the USB 3.0 header. USB 2.0 cables are ok (for boot pool) too.
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Yes, you can use a normal PSU for the board.
The board has BMC/IPMI. You connect the management LAN to your home network and access the board via a browser as if you are sitting in front of it.
Or connect a keyboard and a monitor to the vga output and use it.
I have to admit that this board has more sata ports and better pcle slots.
I think I will use it and return the stuff that already arrived. Thanks again for the suggestion.
Even the nvme cards I can keep using if a wish, 2 with bifurcate and 2 in the PCIe 3.0 x4. Still one slot left for the GPU. Then I could use a usb A to 2.5 Gbe adaptor. That will result in 8 HDD what exactly would fit the fractal 804.
Only the CPU I am not sure about, I looked at some benchmarks and I think about Intel Xeon E-2134 -17 or Intel Xeon E-2136.
Intel Xeon E-2136 seems to have quick sync or goes this task now to the GPU? Intel Xeon E-2136 might be more power hungry?
The board will not enable the igpu. That is a limitation.
I have to admit I am considering upgrading my x10 to this board just to get rid of the hba. I am just short of 2 drives 
Realistically speaking ryzen will probably beat that old xeon and consume less power but you get a server class motherboard with ipmi. Do you need all the cpu power ryzen offers? It is just a trade off 
Careful with the cpu. You need Intel® Xeon® processor E3-1200 v6/v5 (lga 1151 1st revision). Check the supported cpu list if you are not sure (or ask here).
ah I see, so for example Intel Xeon E3-1280 V6 would work? Does that need a bios update? I compared it to a N300 which is in a lot cpu+mobo NAS combos so I think its not overkill?
which board is that?
Its TDP us above what the motherboard specifies. I personally would use it. Can someone more knowledgeable advice please?
Reality is ut is overkill for a bunch of containers and storage but why not?
I am using a supermicro x10sll-f with xeon e3-1231 v3 and 32GB DDR3 ECC RAM.
Plenty of power for my containers and storage.
Does it matter? You can easily do it via IPMI
Hi again, just a quick update.
just to be sure I opened a ticket with support and sadly it wont work:
"The motherboard doesn’t support manual bifurcation settings, you can’t use a dual M.2 adapter card on the board, or at least, only 1 drive will be detected.
Aside from this, most NVMe drives also won’t work as boot drive on this motherboard, at least, as far as i can check the NVMe Firmware Source option under Advanced → PCIe/PCI/PnP Configuration is missing. You can check to be sure, if there you need to change this to “AMI Native”. If not there the board will very likely not boot from NVMe. "
Now I am considering ASRock > X570M Pro4
8 sata ports and nvme boot support. Second hand price looks ok.
let me know if you have a better idea
unless I would use the USB headers once I am upgrading from 6 hdd to 8 hdd.
how difficult is it to move over your boot pool? Why does the documentation not recommend this ?
Not true. It works with AOC-SLG3-2M2
No idea about other cards.
I do not know but if you have doubts then Ryzen will do fine 
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support also confirms this now:
It appears BIOS 2.1 added bifurcation and the NVME Firmware Source options to this BIOS, though the manual has never been updated with the information.
You should be able to set Slot 7 to x4x4 under Advanced-> Chipset Configuration → System Agent (SA) Configuration → PEG Port Configuration.
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Hi again,
It was my bday recently and I could choose a case for 100 euro on ebay.
This changed my build quite a bit:
Case: Fractal Define R6 White Tempered Glass usb-C
I choose it mainly over the 804 for sound damping and easier to work with.
MoBo: Asrock x570 Tachi - 160 euro on ali express - more power efficient vrm.
PSU: ASRock Steel Legend SL-650G 650W ATX - 99 euro
Memory: 2*8gb kingston DDR4 non-ecc from storage
APU: AMD Pro 4650G - 135 euro
Cooler : Thermalright Phantom Spirit 120 ( also for my bday)
Total: 395 euro
Dual boot: Kingston NV3 NVMe PCIe 4.0 500gb (74)
HDD: 9 refurbished Toshiba 2TB ultrastar 7K3000 enterprise (310 on ebay)
Storage total: 384 euro
I have been thinking about raidz2 and a upgrade plan.
I could have a 5 or 6 drive in raidz2 and a separate “upgrade” vdev with either a 2 way, 3 way or raidz1 with 3 drives.
The plan would be to just buy 2 or 3 bigger drives migrated the raidz2 data over and reset the raidz2 back to 4 drives. When I run out of space once more then I just need 4 drives to upgrade the raidz2 pool. Then gradually expand it back to 5 or 6 drives. Would that work?
Didn’t fully get your upgrade masterplan. And to me, 2TB HDDs are not a good idea in the first place.
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Do you say that due to the power usage? according to the datasheet it uses less than 1W during standby/sleep modes. Or are there other reasons?
upgrade masterplan
1 Vdev raidz2 6x2TB + 1 vdev 2 way mirorr > 8+2 TB
When I run out of space I buy 2x 10TB and migrate the data.
I wipe the 2 TB disk and recreate a vdev raidz2 4x2TB
1 Vdev raidz2 4x2TB + 1 vdev 2 way mirorr > 2+10TB
next time I buy 4 times 6 TB drives
1 Vdev raidz2 4x6TB + 1 vdev 2 way mirorr > 12+10TB
then I can add 2 more 6TB drives to the raidz2 when I need it > 24+10TB
(in total I have 8 sata ports on this board)
They are (usually) just not cost-effective. Especially if you take into account the cost of drive bays.
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AFAIK, mixing the VDEVs of different layouts is not a good idea. The apparent caveat is that you get pool redundancy equal to the “worst” VDEV redundancy.
The less apparent con is the performance. I’m not really sure, but perhaps you also get the worst of both worlds – worst sequential performance and worst IOPS.
It’s not about mixing layouts, but I think you should read this doc.