Apologies for the late reply. I appreciate the input. I’ve almost settled on a system and will be posting the details shortly either in a comment or in the original post; however, I can’t determine how to edit the original post. It seems to now be locked to edits.
Apologies for the late reply. I appreciate your input. Yes, I did not mention the drives as I’ve already decided on WD Plus NAS drives which my current iXsystems Mini uses. They’ve been fine, aren’t really that noisy, and are going on almost five years with no issues. I’m currently attempting to match my current system with just a bump up in performance. I think I’ve decided on the final component set and will be posting these either in a comment on in my original post, if I can figure out how to edit it. It seems to be locked to editing at the moment.
I’d like to thank everyone for their input. I’ve currently decided on the following components.
- Supermicro CSE-721TQ-350B Compact Mini-Tower Chassis 350W Power Supply
- Supermicro A2SDi-8C±HLN4F Motherboard (Intel Atom C3758 8-core)
- Intel Optane Memory M10 16 GB PCIe M.2 80mm (Boot drive)
- Western Digital 4TB WD Red Plus NAS Internal Hard Drive HDD - 5400 RPM, SATA 6 Gb/s, CMR, 256 MB Cache, 3.5" -WD40EFPX (4 configured in RAIDZ2)
- A-Tech 64GB Kit (4x16GB) DDR4 2133MHz PC4-17000 ECC LRDIMM 2Rx4 Dual Rank 1.2V Load Reduced DIMM 288-Pin Server RAM Memory Upgrade Modules (A-Tech Enterprise Series)
- Samsung EVO 250GB or 500GB SSD (2 configured in RAIDZ for VMs and LXCs)
I’d like to know what everyone thinks of this system. Thanks.
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Sounds very affordable and it should run quietly and not rob your power bill. Those little atoms are frugal. I’d prefer a mirrored boot drive although if you’re backing up the config regularly, it’s trivial to replace when it gives up.
All things considered it sounds like an appliance and I hope it runs like one. One little suggestion. If you can find about 110 in the couch cushions, throw in an Intel a310 for transcoding duty. It’s a great little card. I think mine can handle 4 4k streams in nearly real-time. If you have no use case for that, cool.
Can an Arc A310 be powered from the x4 PCIe slot of an A2SDi?
The issue is not data bandwidth but power: This scales up with lanes, and since the A310 is fully bus powered I suspect it really needs x8.
A little googling suggests it would work in a 4x slot but not pcie 3. Not super familiar with this board but I was dead on the mark about this being an appliance, didn’t realize it was using a SOC for the cpu. Oh well.
Why not PCIe 3.0? Backwards compatibility is a thing.
Update: I’ve decided to change out the Supermicro A2SDi-8C±HLN4F for the Supermicro A2SDI-H-TF-O. The latter is basically the same motherboard except that the LAN ports are 10Gb instead of 1Gb. This is in a slight effort to near-future proof it.
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Thanks for the reply. Yes, I do backup my config file regularly. Down the road, I may consider adding an extra 16GB drive for boot mirroring.
Thanks for the suggestion on the graphics card. That’s another thing that I may consider down the road. Currently I use Plex as my video server. I’m about to move over to Jellyfin. I’ve not had transcoding issues with Plex. It may very well be that there’s no transcoding happening at all, actually. It may be that all of my clients can natively play all of the formats currently in my library.
Well, it looks like it’s back to the drawing board. I called Supermicro to inquire as to why the A2SDI-H-TF-O has no cpu fan. In a small enclosure such as that of the 721TQ-350B, I’d much rather a cpu fan. Apparently, the A2SDI-H-TF-O cannot accommodate one. In addition, they told me that that motherboard would not work in the 721TQ-350B, anyhow. They also said that Intel will be ceasing support in 2028 for the Atom cpus that come with Supermicro’s motherboards starting in A2. For that chassis, their support suggested the A3SPI-8C-LN6PF which also doesn’t have a fan and only supports five SATA connections. I need eight. Support also suggested the X11SDV-8C±TLN2F which would sufficiently work for all my needs; however, it utilizes a 65W Xeon chip. My current 4-core Atom is at 35W the latest 8-core Atoms are at 45W. I’m a little hesitant about going with the Xeon. I’m not sure my use cases require such a high-powered cpu. I will mainly use this thing as a NAS.
Put a 40 mm fan (Noctua NF-A4x20 is a favourite) on the A2SDi-H-TF and call it a day.
A2SDi boards are still the best choice for NAS, as the newer generations just forgot to pack enough SATA ports. X10SDV boards (or MJ11-EC1), with 6 SATA ports, also fit nicely in a 721TQ.
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Thanks for the Noctua fan idea. I wonder if finding longer bolts to go through both the fan and the heat sink would be a possibility or even strapping the Noctua to the heat sink with some wires.
On a separate note, I am concerned, though, about what Supermicro has told me about the CPUs on their A2 boards, that Intel will cease support in 2028. I may be leaning towards the board with the Xeon D-2141I for this reason; however, a thermal design power of 65W is a hog compared to that of the Atom C3758 at 25W on the A2SDI-H-TF-O. Expressing my concern to Supermicro elicited the “oh, but you’ll get much better performance with the Xeon,” even though I told them that this would mainly be a NAS and only a minimal media server. The newer Atom C5325 on the A3SPI-8C-LN6PF has a TDF of 41W. Maybe it will take finding some non-Supermicro mini-ITX with the C5325 which meets my needs such as >= 8 SATA ports, etc.
No metal wires!
Two strips of tape on the sides and you’re done. It is not about shipping the built server, is it?
TDP is the wrong metric: You should look at idle power, not maximal load.
But, yes, D-2100 is absolutely terrible in this respect, with idle power higher than a D-1581 at full load.
Please report if you find one! I do not know of such a board, and it seems that C5000/P5000 was just not designed with NAS in mind…
I know you meant 2028, but why concerned? It isn’t like the CPU will fail on that date. If you bought it now and it is still running next year, it is probably a good bat that the CPU will continue to work long after your hard drives have been replaced 5 times.
If you just want something newer, that is understandable, but if you like the motherboard with that being the only exception, well…
The only downside I can see is the price of it is way too high for me. And if you do plan to use 10GbE, buy it now or at least have a plan in place to make it happen later. Do you buy with 10GbE ports built in?, Add-in a card? Do you have the slots you need?
Yes, I did mean 2028. I’ve since edited. Supermicro seems to think that having no BIOS updates after 2028 is a big deal.
If the absence of BIOS updates isn’t a big deal, the A2SDI-H-TF-O is what I’d buy for the 10GbE, otherwise I’d buy the A2SDi-8C±HLN4F which is basically the same board but with 1GbE and a CPU fan. @etorix has offered up a CPU-fan solution for the A2SDI-H-TF-O, however.
The vast majority of computer users do not update the BIOS once the computer is operating correctly. In fact manufacturers recommend to not update the BIOS unless you are having a problem. I’d have to say that I’d bet practically everyone in these forums would update the BIOS and BMC to the latest version before setting it up as an operational server.
Just saying.
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In particular… Supermicro
BIOS updates are the manufacturer’s responsibility by the way. What is meant is probably that Intel will not provide microcode updates after 2028—assuming that Intel still exist by then. Fair enough. I doubt there would be a hidden bug requiring a microcode update in ten year old Atom C3000.
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Thanks for the reply. It’s made me less reluctant to go with one of Supermicro’s A2 motherboards. In fact, the direct response from Supermicro’s tech support is “A2 series is not going to last long (estimate to EOL in 2028), once EOL, there will not be any firmware update unless something critical.” I think that I can live with that. The motherboard should give me at least 10 years.
BIOS updates are the manufacturer’s responsibility by the way.
Yes, you are correct. I misspoke when I stated that Intel would end support in 2028. It’s Supermicro that will be ending support for their A2 boards. The direct response from their technical support is “A2 series is not going to last long (estimate to EOL in 2028), once EOL, there will not be any firmware update unless something critical.” As I stated in my response to @joeschmuck, I think I can live with that and that the board will probably work well for me for 10 years or so.
On a different subject, I’d been delaying any purchase as I was getting conflicting advice from Supermicro as to whether the A2SDi-8C±HLN4F and the A2SDi-H-TF are compatible with the 721TQ-350B chassis. They initially told me that there would be no compatible IO shields for the boards. After I pressed them on the subject, stating that the two are listed as being compatible with the 721TQ-250B (the former iteration of the 350B), they finally acknowledged their mistake, admitting that the two boards would indeed ship with 350B-compatible IO shields as the only difference between the two chassis is the power supply.
At this point, I’m leaning towards the A2SDi-8C±HLN4F. I’m not sure that the 10GbE LAN ports offered with A2SDi-H-TF over the 1GbE are worth the extra effort of coming up with a cooling solution. What are your thoughts in this regards? Thanks.
“Cooling solution” means having some airflow in the case, so for the price difference it may be worth going for a -TF.
What’s wasted is getting a 12-port C3758 in a mini-chassis for 4 HDDs only, and possibly 2 SATA SSDs. If you’re happy with 1 Gb/s, downgrade to a C3558 (A2SDi-4C-HLN4F)—minding that there are then some flexible I/O shenanigans, it’s either 4 SATA ports and the x4 slot or 8 SATA and no PCIe.