Plus: C5000 does not come with as many SATA ports as C3000 (to put it mildly…).
Xeon D-2100 (X11SDV) has quite high idle power. Xeon D-1700/2700 is not as bad, and comes with 25 GbE onboard BUT most X12SDV boards come with a new heatsink design which is closed at the top 
and thus strictly designed for cooling in 1U servers with screaming 40 mm fans blowing front to back : No easy conversion to cooling models for the higher and/or larger chassis one would use for storage servers.
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Yeah, the easy 12 ports on full-loaded A2SDi boards are a killer feature for NAS usage. Look no further than the TrueNAS Mini 4…
After looking around for the 2C-7TP4F, I stumbled into a used 7TP4F (the the Xeon D-1537 non “2C” version) for $500.
This seems like a killer deal, but I want to pull myself back a bit and ask: do I need this? I know apples-to-apples comparison is $400 vs $500, but what more things could I do with this more capable hardware? I wasn’t planning on running too much on this box, but perhaps I can think about more things.
It feels like a no-brainer but I want some outside opinions or suggestions.
Finally: Cooling. I don’t think the power bump will matter, though it does seem like these boards run hot, especially the SAS controller. The fix seems to be pointing a fan direct at board, but I wonder if anyone here has first-hand experience.
Constantin, do you a board from this line in an ATX case? If so, how have you dealt with the heat?
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8 core, 16 threads.
You can run more than a couple of VMs. And plenty of services.
I have 16 threads on my 304 build (see signature for links)
I use two of them for a pfsense VM using the two gigabit lan ports.
Then the rest are used by TrueNAS and my docker jail. The biggest user there is my jellyfin server, where I have enough cpu to use cpu transcoding for a number of simultaneous users.
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The build report looks awesome! Thanks for taking the time to write things up.
I would like to learn more about running other services. And not needing a standalone n100 media pc is nice.
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The big difference between the 2-core D-1508 and the D -1537 is cores and clock speed. There is a 10W TDP difference as well but unless you use all the cores all the time, I doubt the heat nor the power will be all that different.
I found my D-1537 board to be VERY finicky re memory. As in find the EXACT spec down to the last digit in the SKU from the approved hardware list or the system would only recognize two out of four DIMMs.
I did not have any luck running the ZoneMinder or whatever CCTV package in a jail. Running blueiris in a windows VM was unsuccessful as well. It could very likely be my inexperience that was the issue. But I got the sense that the 1.7GHz cores made it too easy to miss an event due to being overtaxed.
Heat wise, I replaced the CPU HX with a Cu version and an active cooler. I also added a bunch of fans and some tape to direct air flow, etc. See here. This was not necessary, it was just a design goal to have the system run relatively quietly but cool to maximize lifespan. Without scripts, the CPU rarely cracked 40* C, the HDDs hardly ever got above 30* C.
No issues with heat, and I subsequently adopted @stux script which makes the fans a lot quieter. FAN1-4 on the motherboard is dedicated to the CPU and rear case fans, FANA runs the three fans cooling the HDDs, FANB powers the little fan I strapped to the HBA.
The primary reason I advocate the -2C- version of this board for file server use is price and clock speed (which helps SMB) in my pokey 1VDEV system with a little sVDEV it gets up to 400MB/s sustained write speeds. So the slower clock of the D1537 doesn’t seem to be the limiting factor re: transfers.
Maybe I will find more uses for the cores when I have to move to SCALE. in the meantime, they lie fallow.
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Very good to know.
I’m less certain this could be the case, but i don’t have a hardware background. What other things were you running that taxed the processor so much. What was happening that led you to expect you were missing events?
TIL. I hadn’t realized SMB performance dependended on single-thread clock speeds.
Does this mean that the -2C- model has an edge for handling 10Gbe transfers? Or is the Xeon D architecture better suited for that?
Is there any price that would make a Supermicro X10SL7-F motherboard with a Xeon E3-1231V3 worthwhile? I have a possible line on this as well.
it’s quite a bit older (Q2 2014) and has an 80W TDP. but the motherboard spec would satisfy my most immediate needs.
I love that the other boards have 10Gbe, but I’m still running HDDs, so probably wouldn’t max out any time soon.
Just exploring all options!
Big issue with that board is it doesn’t have much memory expansion, and has only a little bit of PCIe expansion.
Benefit is it has a built in 8i SAS controller + SATA ports.
TDP is irrelevant; what matters most is idle power.
X10SR7 takes UDIMM in limited capcity, has 14 SAS+SATA ports and PCIe slots for adding a SFP+ NIC, and high clocks for serving SMB to few clients .
X10SDV takes RDIMM in possibly large capacity, can have high cores for multiple VMS/apps. Mini-ITX boards are limited to 6 SATA port and a single x16 slot for adding either a HBA, a SFP+ NIC or 4*NVMe (unless you mess with bifurcating risers/cables…); Flex-ATX boards have two x8 slots for both a HBA and SFP+, and may already come with a HBA and/or SFP+ but these -7TPnF boards are the most sought after and carry a matching price tag.
For a basic SMB NAS with limited memory needs but 8-14 drives (no less, no more), a X10SR+CPU kit under $200 may well have an edge over a $500 X10SDV-2C-7TP4F.
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I’m referring to ZoneMinder and BlueIris re: events, ie they couldn’t do what they were supposed. For ZoneMinder it was hard to see what the cause could be since ZoneMinder runs natively on TrueNAS and nothing obvious stood out. It would miss people walking right through a frame.
Despite dedicating 4 (?) cores, the VM for BlueIris would operate much of its time in the 100% CPU used state meaning it couldn’t handle the image processing. That in turn meant it couldn’t capture simple stuff like movement or even record everything in SD.
I have a dedicated computer now for BlueIris and the program uses very little CPU and a lot of RAM. So it could very well be the ongoing software development and better settings in the meantime that allow my rig to record in HD and note when people / animals / etc enter a frame.
SMB is single threaded per user so if you have a large number of users, more cores are your friend. For SOHO file server-only setups, few cores are usually needed. But even my pokey 1,7GHz CPU is not the bottleneck re: a single VDEV system with a sVDEV. It’s the pool that limits my sustained large-file writes to about 400MB/s.
The main reason I love the D15xx series of CPUs is that they have a lot of PCIe lanes that allow the board designer to have a lot of fun re: expansion cards, NVME, mSATA, etc. unlike the challenges by the same designers when dealing with the atom series and its very limited PCIe lanes.
I wanted a board that could handle a lot of potential tasks and which had room for future expansion, if I needed it. Size was not a factor since my a76 case can swallow anything. With onboard HBA and SFP+ those expansion slots can go to something something, whatever it will be.
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Coincidentally, STH has just posted a review of an Atom P5000 board, namely A3SSV-16C-SPLN10F:
25 GbE onboard—sweet, but you’re not going to saturate that with spinning rust.
Then the I/O is seriously underwhelming: 6 SATA ports… and merely SATA-2 at that—good enough for HDDs, not for SSDs. Various M.2 slots, all of which are PCIe 2.0 x2—boot only, no L2ARC or SLOG here. PCIe 3.0 x8 and x4 slots—to add a much required HBA for use as a NAS.
tl;dr This last gen Flex-ATX Atom board has less I/O than a mini-ITX X10SDV, and much of that I/O is of a lower spec than on the X10SDV. It is not suitable for all-NVMe arrays, and cannot make full use of its 25 GbE link with spinning rust. Stay with A2SDi or X10SDV.
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It’s quite bizarre, really. SATA 3 Gb/s ports were phased out from the standard PCH in 2014/2015, with Haswell-EP and Skylake, respectively.
I get reducing the I/O a bit, since these are going to end up mostly inside routers, switches and similar things, not as much inside servers. I would get a single PCIe 2.0 lane for the BMC. The only other consumers I can imagine for those lanes are gigabit NICs, i.e. the I210 and I350, but that doesn’t make it less insane to me.
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Dual 25gbe and 8x 1gbe AND QAT.
This is a router. With a tonne of ram. Maybe the disks would be used for cold storing the cache in ram.
Haven’t done the math. Maybe you need that much ram to run dual 25gbe windows large enough 
Still a great little board
When mine got hit by lightning a few years ago, I did a motherboard survey… and ordered another.
Insurance covered it.
Even with extended design lifetime, it’s gotta be getting close to EOL.
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There’s a slew of “Datto” cast off boards all over eBay right now, and they all seem to be Xeon D-1500s, which would be great for your usecase.
Some examples, no experience to any of these sellers:
DATTO AsRock (D1541D4U-2T8R) Motherboard, 32Gb, Xeon D-1541 (Used) | eBay
Datto SIRIS 3 Professional S3-P1000 Xeon D-1541 2.10GHZ 48GB RAM No HDDs | eBay
PassMark - Intel Xeon D-1541 @ 2.10GHz - Price performance comparison (cpubenchmark.net)
Considering the board these use looks very similar to this board, which is selling for $1000 still, I say it looks like a good deal.
ASRock D1541D4U-2T8R uATX Server Motherboard | eBay
ASRock Rack > Server Motherboard > D1541D4U-2T8R
IIRC there was a rebadged Gigabyte Xeon-D board out there too.
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its $125. Im leaning 7tp4f for upgrade path, but feel the price differential.
The D15xx series of Xeon chips gave designers a cornucopia of PCIe lanes, such that using anything less than a flex ATX board will likely waste some of them. Depending on the use case, that’s entirely OK.
I’m happy with my pokey D1537, it will not break speed records but the board can address 22 SATA drives at once, hold a decent SLOG, has two PCIe 3.0x8 slots, on board SFP+, etc. The newer boards seem to be focused on other markets, some of it flash.
Atom boards definitely have their use cases but for NAS’ they tend to feature too few PCIe lanes to handle a decent number of drives, a SFP+ connection, etc. For the small cost delta relative to the D15xx series I don’t get the benefit but I see a lot of compromises being made (for NAS applications).
Bottom line, the market in general is shifting away from storage outside of data centers (who frequently design their own motherboards). HDDs have a lifespan associated with them no different than wired headphones did for the iPhone. At some point, they will be designed out of the product.
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While iXSystems seems to have had a good corporate relationship with Asrock Rack, a lot of folk who bought asrock found the post sale support to be virtually nonexistent. A few of them got help via social media but at best it was super uneven.
Contrast that with my excellent experience with iXSystems or SuperMicro. The former with the c2570 board in the miniXL (replaced multiple times due to avr54 bug) and the latter with some post sale questions. SuperMicro and iXSystems will always get my business first as a result.
That said, if the board is only $150-$300, then a failure won’t sting as much.
Fair enough. I’m not going to pretend to prefer Asrock over Supermicro. Actually if I had to pick a platform it’s Cisco UCS 
This is like the old here’s 3 things, pick 2.
Price
Speed
Support
Pick two.
For the price here? We’re talking about a fantastic server platform for less than the cost of a consumer platform at this power target, I haven’t seen a better deal
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