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Motherboards Better MB for NAS

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by mr.sh, 2 Jun 2015.

  1. mr.sh

    mr.sh FEAR

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  2. faugusztin

    faugusztin I *am* the guy with two left hands

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    The Q1900 board you have chosen actually has 2 SATA2 from Intel and 2 SATA3 from ASMedia.

    There is also the third option, in a timeframe of a month or so - http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/N3700-ITX/ with the Braswell N3700.
     
  3. Mister_Tad

    Mister_Tad Will work for nuts Super Moderator

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    There's a couple of J1900 boards from Supermicro and also some Avoton boards worth considering for NAS if the number of SATA ports is of concern, they're both a fair bit more expensive than the ones you've picked out though.

    I've got the Asrock Q1900-ITX pulling double duty as server and HTPC and I'm very pleased with it. No experience running any games on it, but it can handle media server/player duties without any hassle, and is entirely passive as a bonus. There are 4x SATA as well, as faugusztin points out.

    What sort of low-res games are you meaning - retro 2D sort of stuff or more recent 3D games?
     
  4. mr.sh

    mr.sh FEAR

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    I dont want spend a lot of money for this. I think about 70-100e.
    I already have a 3x SATA III (4Tb) HDDs and need another. I have both DDR3 types and psu, also. I was thinking about put in to my older nvidia 560.
     
  5. faugusztin

    faugusztin I *am* the guy with two left hands

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    For mechanical hard drives, your SATA version absolutely doesn't matter. Even the best mechanical hard drives are barely breaking speeds of SATA1, they are nowhere near limits of SATA2, SATA3 is just a dream far away for mechanical drives.

    Q1900 is pretty fine for most of the NAS tasks, the only thing it has issues is live transcoding of HD content (SD content is doable at ~80% load on all 4 cores, in MediaPortal, via ffmpeg i think).
     
  6. mr.sh

    mr.sh FEAR

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    And what about the graphic?
    I will like to play on it some games such is: HL2, Portal, Minecraft ...
     
  7. IvanIvanovich

    IvanIvanovich будет глотать вашу душу.

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    I just build a super tiny secondary machine around the GIGABYTE GA-B85M-DS3H with a cheap Pentium G3220. I crammed it into a LIAN LI PC-Q01B along with 12GB of memory, an intel Pro dual nic, 2x SSD and 2x 1TB SSHD. Its actually a pretty decent performing machine considering I only cost about $140 as I already had some parts about to re-use for it. It may not be passive... but it's plenty quiet. Intel HD graphics are likely enough for the games you listed. If not it does have a full proper 16x pci-e slot.

    Otherwise... if you want to up your budget considerably and have storage options into the future I can't recommend the Asrock E3C224D4I-14S enough. It's what I am using in my actual home server, along with 5x 4TB, 2x 5TB and 4x 60GB SSD as cache for the array housed in a Lian Li PCQ26.
     
    Last edited: 2 Jun 2015
  8. mr.sh

    mr.sh FEAR

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    I was thinking about separate CPU and MB but it will increase the budget.
    Primary I want this as a NAS for movies, music and ...
    I dont want to power on my primary PC if somebody wanna watch movie or ...
    For games it will be use just few times when we like to have lan play.
    As I write it before my budget is around 70e max 100e. I already have DDR3, HDDs, PSU, case and older nvidia 560.
    Right now we have three PC and TV with DLNA in home, so question is what if two of them need diferent file? What choice is best?
     
  9. IvanIvanovich

    IvanIvanovich будет глотать вашу душу.

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    I don't know the prices for you locally... but Pentium or Celeron can be had here for under $50 very easy, and the Gigabyte motherboard I mentioned is about $40. If it's like for like USD to EUR you should be in target.
    Otherwise, perhaps look in used market for some decent similar 1155/6 or 7 series stuff?

    The J1900 isn't terrible for a NAS use, but it's harder to find it on a decent motherboard with more than 2 sata and better than pci-e 4x. Most of which have either one or the other, or are made by biostar, or cost at least as much as a decent 1150 motherboard+Pentium combo.
     
  10. faugusztin

    faugusztin I *am* the guy with two left hands

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    J1900 with more than 2 SATA and PCI-E x4 can't exist - J1900 has 4 PCI-E lanes in total. Once you add a SATA controller and use 1 or 2 PCI-E lanes, you are left with 2-3 lanes. Q1900-ITX divides it between the SATA controller, mPCIe and PCI-E x1.

    By the way, a Q1900-ITX, 4GB DDR3L, TV card, 2TB Samsung M9T 2.5" drive, 80W picopsu combo uses 14W at idle from socket. Just to give you a rough idea.
     
  11. Digerati

    Digerati Minimodder

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    What are you using now for your NAS?

    I repurposed my old XP as my NAS and it works great for that. I just blocked it's Internet access in my router.

    In this way, I kept my perfectly good, but old system in service as my backup server and mass storage device, and out of the landfill.

    If you do something similar, you can concentrate your efforts (and money) on building a system more dedicated to gaming, instead of storage.
     
  12. mr.sh

    mr.sh FEAR

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    Richt now I dont have NAS. I need to start my regular PC.
     
  13. Digerati

    Digerati Minimodder

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    Okay. What are you using right now for a computer? You could use it as your NAS.

    My concern is a NAS is most commonly used to store backups of other computers as they are great for that and people need a decent backup policy that is easy to use. Turning an old computer into a NAS is easy and a great use for older computers.

    The title of this thread is "Better MB for NAS" but a NAS does not need anything fancy. Just a network connection and lots of disk space.
     
  14. mr.sh

    mr.sh FEAR

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    I want it small, so that is reason for ITX.
    I already have some HW. I need just MB and CPU.
    It will be for storage of movie, photos ...
    I just think it could have better GPU on PCI for some times.
     
  15. Digerati

    Digerati Minimodder

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    Okay. But it would be better to have the GPU on the PCI Express (PCIe) instead of PCI. Though they sound similar, they are totally different. But note there are many decent ITX boards with integrated graphics you might consider. With very small cases, heat can really be an issue and with integrated graphics, you can get buy with a smaller PSU too.
     
  16. mr.sh

    mr.sh FEAR

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    I mean it PCIe. I don't even know PCI1 graphics card.
    Most of time it will be disabled, but when I will need more powerful GPU I will turn it on.
    There will be four 3,5" HDDs.
    I will use one of my older PSU 450W.
     
  17. Digerati

    Digerati Minimodder

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    Not PCI1, just PCI - the very old standard that was used before AGP, which was years before PCIe. Many motherboards still support PCI for legacy support of old expansion cards. There are still many PCI cards available too. But again, PCI must not be confused with PCIe. The slot connections are totally different and are not compatible.

    What? You cannot just turn on and off a GPU. Please explain what you mean, and are trying to do.
     
  18. mr.sh

    mr.sh FEAR

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    You can turn it off in bios.
    You catch me in to the words. I know the difference between PCI, PCIe1 and PCIex16.
    I think all know which PCI I mean.
     
  19. Digerati

    Digerati Minimodder

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    No they don't. Some may, but neither you nor I can assume you and everyone reading does.

    And I am not trying to "catch you in the words" but because a simple missing letter or added number can represent totally different hardware devices, that can result in bad advice, misunderstanding, or even damage. So it is important to be on the same page when discussing technical information - especially when there may be a language barrier too.

    So please don't take my desire to ensure understanding personally. I don't want to give you bad advice any more than you want to get bad advice.

    Not all BIOS Setup Menus allow you to disable and enable PCIe slots at will. You typically can enable/disable integrated graphics, but not always slots.

    But also, graphics integrating is a huge operating system function and responsibility. When you enable/disable a card, in effect, you are installing and uninstalling major hardware components during boot - a most critical time for the OS. I think you are setting yourself up for major corruption so I would urge you to keep current backups - just in case.
     
    Last edited: 10 Jun 2015
  20. mr.sh

    mr.sh FEAR

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    Ok

    For OS Its not big deal. I had test it for more then one year and it work correctly. I had instaled both GPU drivers. All you need to do is switch it on before OS will boot.
     

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