Searching for a new motherboard

cracauer@ said:
You need to differentiate between registered and unbuffered memory.

The ECC memory that the AM4/AM5 boards discussed so far are taking is unbuffered. It does not come down from big servers, which use registered ECC. Unbuffered ECC is fairly expensive, registered ECC is cheaper used.

To complicate thing, there are Xeons for unbuffered memory and single-socket.
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Yes, all factors to consider. A lot (perhaps the majority) of server grade ECC ram is registered. You need to check what the particular motherboard supports, it will be determined by the chipset they've used, and how they have implemented it on the board.
 
Myself, I do not care if old gear burns more power.

A cost analysis of power vs new equipment costs might show that a very long time is required for break even.

All of mine go auto off at bed time anyway.
 
I'm actually tempted to get one of those Jingsha boards and try building one. It's overkill for what I'm doing at home though, at least, at present. It's interesting to find out what is available nowadays, I haven't looked at the dual xeon thing for a few years.
 
blackbird9 said:
In the UK, we are now paying just about the highest prices for electricity in the developed world, so maybe I'm a bit more cost conscious than I might be elsewhere. Our elec. prices are supposed to be about 4x what the US pays, I think I read recently, although I think that's for industrial elec.
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Google says UK pays 26.11p/kWh. This is lower than *average* California price of 0.35$/kWh. In fact I was paying about 0.60$/kWh. I now have solar panels + battery (mostly due to PG&E being so flaky) and pump energy back into the grid but they don't pay anywhere near what I paid (plus they changed the rules to benefit them....).

If you burn 100W *more* that translates to about 876kWH/year or $219 (@ $0.25/kWH) more you pay.
 
blackbird9
13 / 14th isn't bleeding edge (You have Core Ultra 1 and 2 series) and no sane person would put a 150W+ TDP CPU in a NAS/Gateway (which is what's being referred to) for home usage. The T-series for example were never affected and much suitable in that regard.
..and I can hardware see how getting a "franken board" from Aliexpress with zero support and security updates would be a good idea even if its cheap not including power usage.
A 10 year old CPU with a 120W TDP is hardly a good deal, Passmark isn't the holy grail but it can give you an idea and two are pretty much on par with a single Ryzen 7600 which uses ~1/4 of power and isn't EoL

dr_grid
All AM5 (7000-series and 9000-series) support ECC official, on AM4 it's only the PRO models (officially).
On Intel you have Pentium/i3 (depends on model) and Xeon paired with workstation/server chipset (so no B/Q/H/Z-chipsets).

bakul
Sadly the H4-Plus is out of stuck which could've been a very good contender, neither do ECC but IBECC which is like psuedo-ECC.

In Band Error Correction Code (IBECC) — Zephyr Project Documentation

docs.zephyrproject.org docs.zephyrproject.org
 
Ha, egg on face, I should have read the OP's whole post. Yeah, scrub the dual xeon for your NAS/gateway, you can do that with an N100. 😂 That Odroid box would be ideal.
 
bakul said:
Google says UK pays 26.11p/kWh. This is lower than *average* California price of 0.35$/kWh. In fact I was paying about 0.60$/kWh. I now have solar panels + battery (mostly due to PG&E being so flaky) and pump energy back into the grid but they don't pay anywhere near what I paid (plus they changed the rules to benefit them....).

If you burn 100W *more* that translates to about 876kWH/year or $219 (@ $0.25/kWH) more you pay.
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Wow, cali sounds expensive. I know that my own domestic elec. bills have more than doubled in the last 3 years. Everyone I know has been trying to save money by cutting down what they use. Prices here went through the roof once the ukraine war started. Gas and water, too.

The rate per kwh isn't the whole story either, they also sting us with a 'standing charge' which has also more than doubled. You have to pay that each week before you use a single kwh, just to stay connected.
 
Hi all, and thanks to all of you for your opinions. I have some stuff to research now and I really do appreciate the input. I should clarify the need here.

I had a failure on the current gateway which caused some downtime - luckily it was easy to solve after a good night's sleep. But it did raise the issue that the gateway is about ten years old. It would be good to have a backup ready to go should it fail again. An
even older system here hosts the ZFS raid2-z NAS system.

I may not need ECC on a new system after second thought. I do prefer Intel NICs, thanks for pointing that out. Some PCIe expansion slots will be helpful, especially if the motherboard has only one NIC. I may wind up with 3 NICs ( does anyone still do DMZs for security? ) And this system likely will receive another ZFS raid system. This will be my first FreeBSD system with ZFS for the root; looking forward to BE. I think integrated video/graphic is good for me as I don't want to waste a PCIe slot on that. This will be run as a headless system, and video is likely to be attached only for initial setup and later to debug problems ( like failing hardware ).

I will NOT be playing games so I don't need any fancy graphics, nor will I be running a graphics desktop. No LLM work on this machine, but perhaps a jail or two. I think I can run any VMs I need on a different host.

Since I need a reliable machine I will be buying new equipment. There really isn't any heavy computing going on here, so I do not need a tons of cores, and I think 32 GB of memory should do. It will be powered up 24/7 being a gateway, so that is a vote against the biggest and fastest CPUs. In the future I may deploy a web server, mail server and DNS, also I have a SDR (software defined radio) that I will make available. Still thinking about how to deploy these "services" for the outside. I was lucky enough to register some IPv4 addresses long ago, but I have a lot to think about before those become visible. Security is an "interesting" problem -- lots to learn there.

Again, thanks everyone for your suggestions. I really do appreciate it.
 
Hmm, I should have read your your original post more thoroughly, I completely missed the "gateway" part.
Two suggestions:
1) for a gateway only - buy a secondhand / reburbished / outlet small form factor desktop (like a HP ProDesk in size). Do your homework first - make sure the model you choose has two network interfaces and space for an extra PCIe card if you need three network interfaces

2) for a combined gateway / NAS - buy a small office desktop / minitower / full size tower, put in a cheap sata card if you need extra ports, and extra network cards if needed. As before do your homework - make sure that it has space for the drives you plan on, and that the power supply can handle the load.
(some known brands use non-standard psu's in their office line of desktops, making it hard to repair if the psu dies)

This (obviously) only makes sense if the availability and prices are ok in your local area.
 
I prefer my main system to be separate from a gateway (firewall) machine. The gateway machine should always be uptodate to deal with any security patches but that will often require reboots but other than that it should always be up if you have other machines in your home (likely, if you are streaming video/audio like most people + have phones/laptops/tablets + may be security cameras and what not). The fileserver should be as stable as possible and need not always have the latest updates. Your primary machine need to be only up when you are using it but you may put heavy loads on it. Combining the primary machine + NAS + gateway is asking for trouble as when that goes down, everything goes down (& you have to rely on the phone or tethering to access the internet).

A separate gateway machine need not be very powerful. Plus you can update them all independently.

In general I want my service machines to be install and forget for the most part. Given that suspend/restore on freebsd has never been totally stable, I leave them on all the time.

And it is not a given that a new system would be more reliable!
 
I see the requirement was backup gateway and possible NAS.
I agree so much with Above Post. KISS. Firewall is just a firewall. SSH here has to be fine tuned to allow inside traffic only.
No extraneous servers running. I don't even install a Munin collector because it installs python. I will not have that on a firewall.
Tripwire, dnsmasq and a few other ports... It is an appliance not a toy.

I have Two ISP's and one main firewall. X9SRL with 40G Chelsio.
One ISP connection is configured as DMZ for tarpit and the other is my daily driver. I swap them around.
My backup 'gateway' sits on a shelf incase main one dies.

I have big fileservers and I have little fileservers. Some I turn off when not needed and some run things like Munin and syslog-ng and are multifunctional.
 
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dr_grid said:
Hi all, and thanks to all of you for your opinions. I have some stuff to research now and I really do appreciate the input. I should clarify the need here.

I had a failure on the current gateway which caused some downtime - luckily it was easy to solve after a good night's sleep. But it did raise the issue that the gateway is about ten years old. It would be good to have a backup ready to go should it fail again. An
even older system here hosts the ZFS raid2-z NAS system.

I may not need ECC on a new system after second thought. I do prefer Intel NICs, thanks for pointing that out. Some PCIe expansion slots will be helpful, especially if the motherboard has only one NIC. I may wind up with 3 NICs ( does anyone still do DMZs for security? ) And this system likely will receive another ZFS raid system. This will be my first FreeBSD system with ZFS for the root; looking forward to BE. I think integrated video/graphic is good for me as I don't want to waste a PCIe slot on that. This will be run as a headless system, and video is likely to be attached only for initial setup and later to debug problems ( like failing hardware ).

I will NOT be playing games so I don't need any fancy graphics, nor will I be running a graphics desktop. No LLM work on this machine, but perhaps a jail or two. I think I can run any VMs I need on a different host.

Since I need a reliable machine I will be buying new equipment. There really isn't any heavy computing going on here, so I do not need a tons of cores, and I think 32 GB of memory should do. It will be powered up 24/7 being a gateway, so that is a vote against the biggest and fastest CPUs. In the future I may deploy a web server, mail server and DNS, also I have a SDR (software defined radio) that I will make available. Still thinking about how to deploy these "services" for the outside. I was lucky enough to register some IPv4 addresses long ago, but I have a lot to think about before those become visible. Security is an "interesting" problem -- lots to learn there.

Again, thanks everyone for your suggestions. I really do appreciate it.
Click to expand...
If 1Gbe is enough, https://www.ebay.de/itm/116282051745 and you're done :-)

If case you want some kind of confirmation, I (and also dch@) run Asus X670E-CREATOR which is basically the B650E-E but with more PCIe lanes because of the X670E chipset. This model is EOL and replaced by ProArt X870E-CREATOR WIFI which is more or less identical but I can't justify the price tag at least for your use case. My box runs pretty much what you're asking about and also runs Poudriere, has 128Gb of ECC RAM (before the AI craze) and have been chugging along for more than a year now. Given that it does a fair bit of compute intensive tasks (mainly Poudriere) I opted for a Ryzen 7900 (non X) due to TDP and efficiency.
 
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dr_grid said:
Hi all, and thanks to all of you for your opinions. I have some stuff to research now and I really do appreciate the input. I should clarify the need here.

I had a failure on the current gateway which caused some downtime - luckily it was easy to solve after a good night's sleep. But it did raise the issue that the gateway is about ten years old. It would be good to have a backup ready to go should it fail again. An
even older system here hosts the ZFS raid2-z NAS system.

I may not need ECC on a new system after second thought. I do prefer Intel NICs, thanks for pointing that out. Some PCIe expansion slots will be helpful, especially if the motherboard has only one NIC. I may wind up with 3 NICs ( does anyone still do DMZs for security? ) And this system likely will receive another ZFS raid system. This will be my first FreeBSD system with ZFS for the root; looking forward to BE. I think integrated video/graphic is good for me as I don't want to waste a PCIe slot on that. This will be run as a headless system, and video is likely to be attached only for initial setup and later to debug problems ( like failing hardware ).

I will NOT be playing games so I don't need any fancy graphics, nor will I be running a graphics desktop. No LLM work on this machine, but perhaps a jail or two. I think I can run any VMs I need on a different host.

Since I need a reliable machine I will be buying new equipment. There really isn't any heavy computing going on here, so I do not need a tons of cores, and I think 32 GB of memory should do. It will be powered up 24/7 being a gateway, so that is a vote against the biggest and fastest CPUs. In the future I may deploy a web server, mail server and DNS, also I have a SDR (software defined radio) that I will make available. Still thinking about how to deploy these "services" for the outside. I was lucky enough to register some IPv4 addresses long ago, but I have a lot to think about before those become visible. Security is an "interesting" problem -- lots to learn there.

Again, thanks everyone for your suggestions. I really do appreciate it.
Click to expand...
I got completely the wrong end of the stick earlier when I was woffling on about the dual xeon board!

You could pretty much do what you want with an N100 mini pc, like a Beelink or mnisforum. There are lots of different types, I'm sure I've seen them with two nic's. Or you could get an actual NUC which I think Asus took over the business from intel, although they are quite pricey. https://www.asus.com/displays-desktops/nucs/all-series/

Beelink Mini PC N100(4C/4T,up to 3.4GHz),12th Alder Lake,Mini Desktop 12G LPDDR5 RAM 512G M.2 SATA SSD,Mini Computer 4K Dual HDMI/2.5G RJ45/Wifi6/BT5.2 : Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

Buy
www.amazon.co.uk
though you won't get any pci-e slots. But everything else is there, you can get them with 32GB ram. You'll need to check for whose nic they use, the gmktek one I've got has an intel nic. The nice thing is everything is self-contained, small size, very low power, you don't need to build anything. Or that one that was suggested earlier. I've been happily using N100 mini-pc's the last few years now, for home systems, works a treat. It's worth a look, anyway. Although prices have gone up a lot in the last couple of years, but they have for everything else, too. I was sceptical when they first came out, but after getting a couple and using them, I'm a convert.
 
blackbird9 said:
I got completely the wrong end of the stick earlier when I was woffling on about the dual xeon board!

You could pretty much do what you want with an N100 mini pc, like a Beelink or mnisforum. There are lots of different types, I'm sure I've seen them with two nic's. Or you could get an actual NUC which I think Asus took over the business from intel, although they are quite pricey. https://www.asus.com/displays-desktops/nucs/all-series/

Beelink Mini PC N100(4C/4T,up to 3.4GHz),12th Alder Lake,Mini Desktop 12G LPDDR5 RAM 512G M.2 SATA SSD,Mini Computer 4K Dual HDMI/2.5G RJ45/Wifi6/BT5.2 : Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

Buy
www.amazon.co.uk
though you won't get any pci-e slots. But everything else is there, you can get them with 32GB ram. You'll need to check for whose nic they use, the gmktek one I've got has an intel nic. The nice thing is everything is self-contained, small size, very low power, you don't need to build anything. Or that one that was suggested earlier. I've been happily using N100 mini-pc's the last few years now, for home systems, works a treat. It's worth a look, anyway. Although prices have gone up a lot in the last couple of years, but they have for everything else, too. I was sceptical when they first came out, but after getting a couple and using them, I'm a convert.
Click to expand...
Thank you blackbird9, I have seen those Beelink mini desktop units and think that would make a fine FreeBSD desktop here in my office. Small form factor, enough computes to run a graphic desktop, two HDMIs. I may do that someday further down the road.
 
My xeons were all freebies.
My lodge brother offered them to me instead of sending out for disposal. All are high end medical systems in premium cases with hot swap drives and ECC.

I have zero cost in them so power consumption during working hours is a non issue. Here n Sacramento we have SMUD instead of higher priced PG&E.

There is a lot to be said for intel NICs as they are so well supported.
 
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