CPU/Mobo for home file server

FreeBaGeL · Post by **FreeBaGeL** » Sat Apr 17, 2010 7:06 pm

I'm putting together a file server for home use. Main uses are streaming media and storing large files that I use when video editing for a hobby/small side job.

I already have an antec 1200 case, the hard drives (Five 2tb wd green eads drives), and the PSU (500w 80 plus cert). I plan to get this Areca card [newegg.com] and run the drvies in Raid-5. Windows 7 will be the OS.

So next up is the CPU/mobo. I've done some research and picked out these two combos:

AMD Athlon II X2 240 Regor 2.8GHz
ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO AM3 AMD 785G HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard

or

AMD Sempron 140 Sargas 2.7GHz 45w single core
GIGABYTE GA-MA785GM-US2H 785G HDMI Micro ATX Motherboard

Obviously, the second combo with the Sempron uses less power and is cheaper ($110 vs. $160). The question is, will it be powerful enough for what I'm doing (should be, but wanted to make sure) and will the micro atx board even fit in the full atx Antec 1200 case? Also, will the power/noise savings be noticeable or negligible, since the price difference isn't a big deal?

Also, if anyone has other suggestions besides these two combos, I am open to them as well.

washu · Post by **washu** » Sun Apr 18, 2010 8:06 am

Unless you are really going to pound on it, why not just get an Intel board with RAID 5 and save a ton of cash by not getting the Areca?

Contrariety to popular belief, the on-board Intel raid is quite good and more than adequate for a high-end home server. This article shows that the Intel raid is much better than other onboard solutions and easily holds it's own with a high-end LSI SAS raid card in most situations.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ich ... ,2374.html

As for CPU power, pretty much anything you can buy today is more than enough for a home file server. Either of those AMDs will be fine. On the Intel side I have a e5200 in my server and it's way overkill. The cheapest Celeron you can buy would do fine.

faugusztin · Post by **faugusztin** » Sun Apr 18, 2010 8:19 am

Power difference when using same voltage between Sempron 140 and Athlon II X4 is minimal, so you choose your CPU according to your needs and not by some imaginary TDP rating.

I have a 785G DDR3 board, the power usage at idle was exactly same, because while i was able to undervolt the Athlon II X4 620 to 1.11V, Sempron 140 could go down only to 1.18V. So in the end with 7 of 8 drives sleeping, computer with both CPUs used 62W at idle.

FreeBaGeL · Post by **FreeBaGeL** » Sun Apr 18, 2010 8:46 am

washu wrote:Unless you are really going to pound on it, why not just get an Intel board with RAID 5 and save a ton of cash by not getting the Areca?

Aren't write speeds a lot slower with software Raid-5? I'm going to be transferring some large files back and forth (the source files for video editing) fairly often, so if I'm looking at a difference of 10mb/s vs. 100mb/s that's a big deal.

washu · Post by **washu** » Sun Apr 18, 2010 11:18 am

FreeBaGeL wrote: Aren't write speeds a lot slower with software Raid-5? I'm going to be transferring some large files back and forth (the source files for video editing) fairly often, so if I'm looking at a difference of 10mb/s vs. 100mb/s that's a big deal.

Lots of software raid-5 implementations have slow writes, but not all. The Intel RAID while not as fast as the expensive LSI card can still write way faster than even a gigabit network.

For example in the tom's link above, the LSI had an average RAID-5 write at 451 MB/s while the Intel at 431 MB/s. Still plenty fast. The AMD and NVidia boards barely cracked 30 MB/s.

The trade off is a bit more CPU usage, but unless you have something else for the server's CPU to do then it really doesn't matter.

I have 6 x 1.5 TB WD greens on my Intel ICH10R in Raid-5 and by far the limiting factor on write speeds is the gig network.

FreeBaGeL · Post by **FreeBaGeL** » Sun Apr 18, 2010 1:53 pm

washu wrote:
FreeBaGeL wrote: Aren't write speeds a lot slower with software Raid-5? I'm going to be transferring some large files back and forth (the source files for video editing) fairly often, so if I'm looking at a difference of 10mb/s vs. 100mb/s that's a big deal.
Lots of software raid-5 implementations have slow writes, but not all. The Intel RAID while not as fast as the expensive LSI card can still write way faster than even a gigabit network.

For example in the tom's link above, the LSI had an average RAID-5 write at 451 MB/s while the Intel at 431 MB/s. Still plenty fast. The AMD and NVidia boards barely cracked 30 MB/s.

The trade off is a bit more CPU usage, but unless you have something else for the server's CPU to do then it really doesn't matter.

I have 6 x 1.5 TB WD greens on my Intel ICH10R in Raid-5 and by far the limiting factor on write speeds is the gig network.

So if you're copying a large (say 4gb) file from your server to another computer on the network, what is your actual write speed?

Gigabit tops out at around 125mb/s I believe so is that what you're getting?

washu · Post by **washu** » Sun Apr 18, 2010 2:49 pm

FreeBaGeL wrote: So if you're copying a large (say 4gb) file from your server to another computer on the network, what is your actual write speed?

Gigabit tops out at around 125mb/s I believe so is that what you're getting?

125 MB/s is the absolute max in theory. In reality you'll never get that when you factor in overhead.

I get about 90-100 MB/s in the situation you describe, reading from an SSD on my desktop and writing to the Intel Raid-5 on the server. That's pretty good for cheap onboard NICs (realtek) and not using jumbo frames.

FreeBaGeL · Post by **FreeBaGeL** » Sun Apr 18, 2010 3:41 pm

washu wrote:
FreeBaGeL wrote: So if you're copying a large (say 4gb) file from your server to another computer on the network, what is your actual write speed?

Gigabit tops out at around 125mb/s I believe so is that what you're getting?
125 MB/s is the absolute max in theory. In reality you'll never get that when you factor in overhead.

I get about 90-100 MB/s in the situation you describe, reading from an SSD on my desktop and writing to the Intel Raid-5 on the server. That's pretty good for cheap onboard NICs (realtek) and not using jumbo frames.

What about when writing from the server to the SSD?

washu · Post by **washu** » Sun Apr 18, 2010 5:18 pm

FreeBaGeL wrote: What about when writing from the server to the SSD?

About the same. 90-100 MB/s is about as fast as my network goes without further tweaking.

FreeBaGeL · Post by **FreeBaGeL** » Sun Apr 18, 2010 5:29 pm

Cool, I think I'll give that a shot then. Probably better to go for the athlon II card then I guess, since now I'll be using CPU cycles?

What motherboard are you running? I couldn't find mention of ICH10R in the newegg specs for either of those boards I listed. Or is that only on the intel boards?

EDIT: nevermind I see that it's only on intel boards, I'll check those out.

EDIT2: From most of the reviews I'm reading it looks like read time is good with raid-5 on ICH10R, but most people are seeing write times around 16-17mb/s, which is very low.

washu · Post by **washu** » Sun Apr 18, 2010 6:15 pm

My server's motherboard is a Gigabyte EP45-UD3R. As you found out it has to be an Intel board.

I just benched my RAID-5 with ATTO and got a write speed of 350 MB/s and read of 510 MB/s. Check the dates on the reviews and the drivers used. Intel's older drivers weren't very fast.

FreeBaGeL · Post by **FreeBaGeL** » Sun Apr 18, 2010 6:55 pm

Cool, I'll check out the intel boards/cpus. Looks like the ich10r boards don't have integrated video which is a bummer.

FreeBaGeL · Post by **FreeBaGeL** » Mon Apr 19, 2010 7:57 am

So it looks like ich10r is only on socket lga775 boards? So no i3 or other clarkdale processors with it I guess.

faugusztin · Post by **faugusztin** » Mon Apr 19, 2010 8:12 am

ICH10R is pretty much what is P55/H55/H57 now, as northbridge stuff is in CPU in Core i3/i5/i7 8xx. Just look at boards and if you see RAID support, that means you got pretty much ICH10R. If it doesn't support RAID, then it is a plain ICH10.

I know this is a bit of oversimplification, but it's enough for your situation.