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Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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Server and workstation hardware prices typically fall off a cliff about four years after they're released. X399 + 1950X + 128GB RAM combos are selling for ~$800 on ebay now. Hopefully we see the same trend for Ampere.

(edit: typed in the wrong old CPU. Derp).
 
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LunarMist

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I avoided the NADs without ECC. Surely the Ryzen will advance their embedded ones.
That is a hell of a capable platform for this usecase. No clue if they'll ever be reasonably priced on the ebay market some day.

I also like the idea of these types of boards for NAS or other small compute purposes that use the lower TDP AMD mobile CPUs. If they worked with ECC it would be almost perfect for my needs.

 

sedrosken

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Even the Intel N100 is a hell of a platform for low power appliances like NAS, routers, etc. 4 Alder E-cores in a 6W package? They perform roughly the same IPC-wise as Haswell, reportedly. I have one in a little router box I'm running pfSense on now -- the dual-LAN Shuttle mini PC with the Celeron N4000 died mysteriously and I took the opportunity to upgrade, it has 4 i226 2.5GbE interfaces and now I can segregate my network a little without needing a layer 3 switch for trunking VLAN traffic. I wonder what a proper low-power server chip leveraging these cores would look like -- something with, say, 10 or so within a 20W power envelope.
 
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Handruin

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I bought a Beelink Mini S12 Pro for about $145 last October that has an N100 inside with 16GB RAM and 500GB nvme storage and it has worked well so far. I ditched the windows 11 and installed Proxmox on it and host a couple of VMs, mainly one to run my HomeAssistant for my house. It sips barely any power and has been surprisingly stable.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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I'm starting to see 16-port Broadcom 9400-based cards on Ebay for under $200. These are the Tri-mode devices that can handle U.2/U.3/EDSFF disks in addition to SATA and SAS.

I'm terrible at 3D modeling but it seems like I could print a 1U external enclosure out of ABS (~100°C heat resistance) to use since NVMe backplanes aren't exactly a commodity item yet. Just build in wire guides and places to screw drives down.
 

LunarMist

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I thought that the 9500 series was supposed to be used with U.3. The relationships between U.2, U.3 and PCIe speeds are not entirely clear for me.

I'm sure there are plenty of people that will take your basic 3D design and finsh/print it for you. I'm not really a fan of plastic enclosures though.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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I'm sure there are plenty of people that will take your basic 3D design and finsh/print it for you. I'm not really a fan of plastic enclosures though.

I thought I saw support for u.3 in the product brief. It's easy enough to check that, but even u.2 opens up the option to get higher density and endurance drives than consumer stuff.

As for 3D printing, I have access to a maker space. A zillion years ago, I knew how to use CAD well enough to work in two dimensions but 3D breaks my brain. It might be fun to try to work it out. I feel like there's a level of utility there.
 

LunarMist

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No, it is a U.2 HBA. U.3 drives will work on U.2 controllers (at slower PCIe 3.x speeds), but not vice versa. All the pinouts and backenplanes, etc. are what confuses me. It should be possible to connect 4x U.2/U.3 drives or 2x U.2/U.3 drives and up to 8x SATA/SAS if I understand correctly.
9400.png
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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I'd take it. Those Broadcom controllers also top out at 12Gbps, which which is clearly less than ideal for a PCIe gen 4 drive anyway.
 

LunarMist

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I suppose the bandwith to each drive depends on the number in use. The total is limited to 8000MB/sec. due to the 8 PCIe 3.x lanes. Two NVMe woudl max it out. The SAS drives are operating up to 12Gbps, but 8 of those would also take all the bandwidth. I don't know if people use both at the same time or what. I hope you get one and do some testing of it.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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Something mildly obnoxious: Adler Lake Celerons are actually pretty respectable CPUs with extremely low wattage and it's pretty easy to find ITX boards with 2.5GbE and a Celeron N100, probably with a couple m.2 and maybe 4 or 6 SATA ports and an 8 lane PCIe slot. Perfect for a NAS build, until you notice that the platform only supports 16GB RAM. As power hogging as contemporary Intel is, AMD doesn't exactly have anything I'd call ultra low voltage.

Lame.
 

LunarMist

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It's always been like that for Alder Lake-N. That 16GB limitation also sucks for the Windows, but it is supposed to be CHEAP.

Is a Celeron in the 7300 series too highly-powered for your needs? https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...ame/232598/products-formerly-alder-laken.html
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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I was just about to say that as far as I know, nobody is selling the N305 as a barebones motherboard but no, there it is on AliExpress. Looks like getting the upgraded CPU adds about $100 to the system cost AND I'd have to get it from "Tan Lancheng Products Business Department" but that is definitely a step in the right direction. No useful PCIe, but there's enough I/O there that it might be OK.
 

sedrosken

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If it works? Sure. I'm used to being my own support anyway. Now, would I implement this for a client? Hell no. You stick to by the books for liability reasons there.
 

LunarMist

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I was told that NAS should use ECC if possible. I suppose you just test the crap out of it on the MemTest or some such?
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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I was told that NAS should use ECC if possible. I suppose you just test the crap out of it on the MemTest or some such?

Ideally, everything should be ECC. If you're on DDR5, it is.

I've also long-since learned that if an OEM says their platform does something out of line with specs, it's generally true under at least some condition. That might require a particular set of HCL DIMMs, but if I'm doing anything important, I'm doing that anyway.

I think a combination of that i3 N305 motherboard + a 6xSAS + 4xU.2 backplane and some aluminum sheet metal and a little 3D printing could be pretty decent. "Perfect" would have a 10Gb or better NIC and not rely on m.2 to u.2 adapters but we all know that's not going to happen on a low cost or low power platform.
 

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Fatwah on Western Digital
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I'm still weighing my options since I don't particularly want to buy components for Aliexpress. The idea would be a local backup system for a customer who wants that to stay in-house.
 
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