Hi all,
I am looking at building my next NAS. My current will move to offsite, and the new will be primary. I previously used this motherboard, and was planning to go with that again. Then I saw this one, which seems like a better option. It has a slightly better CPU and a PCIe slot, but can only have 32GB memory max compared with 64GB max on my current.
Am I missing anything or is this a no-brainer to switch to the N100 board?
I wouldn’t buy hardware from Aliexpress as it has a bit of a reputation.
Anyway I would go with the N100 as it supports 3200MT/s memory.
What software are you planning on running? The N100 is a pretty stout chip for my router. Not all file systems need insane amounts of ram like ZFS
That said you may want a full sized pcie slot depending on what hard drives you’re running. At work our raid controllers are gimped by their PCIe interface. Even with regular ass hard drives they will out pace pcie 2.0@x1 speeds since most cheap HBAs are PCIe 2 or maybe 3.
I will be running Truenas scale with ZFS, so will be installing 32GB of memory.
I realize a full size PCI slot would be better, but not really necessary for my application. Both have 6 SATA and two M.2s. I could put a 6 SATA/M.2 adapter in when I need more HDs. I’m really just comparing these two, and I don’t really see any disadvantages to the N100 board.
Why do you need so much ram in your NAS?
ZFS. It can use up as much RAM as you care to give it for caching. So if you are slinging a lot of data back and forth, more RAM is better. Especially if you are using HDDs instead of SSDs.
And bumping up the RAM for caching makes a HUGE difference in performance on a RAM starved system. Going from 16 to 32 gigs almost doubled my read write performance for anything other than tiny files here and there. And overall I/O latency tanked.
Why do you need to cache data? To seed a lot of torrents?
It’s a function of ZFS itself. Data that is to be written to the drives is first written to RAM, then transferred to the drives. One of the benefits of this is that if you are moving a file that is smaller than the available RAM, your transfer won’t appear to be limited to the write speed of the drives.
The N100 only has 9 gen 3 PCI lanes. The board has 4 USB ports (2 x 3.0), 4 2.5G ethernet ports, 2 m.2 slots and 6 SATA connections. They might be using a PCI splitter chip to connect all components, which depending on the type and how it’s used could have a big effect on I/O performance.
EDIT: The N5015 from your previous board only has 8 lanes. What was your max read/write speed on it and did you see anything strange in
lspci?What is the best way to check max read/write speed? Here is the output from lspci. Do you see anything strange?
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Device 4e24 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation JasperLake [UHD Graphics] (rev 01) 00:04.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Dynamic Tuning service 00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Device 4ded (rev 01) 00:14.2 RAM memory: Intel Corporation Device 4def (rev 01) 00:15.0 Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation Serial IO I2C Host Controller (rev 01) 00:15.2 Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation Device 4dea (rev 01) 00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Management Engine Interface (rev 01) 00:17.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Device 4dd3 (rev 01) 00:19.0 Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation Device 4dc5 (rev 01) 00:19.1 Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation Device 4dc6 (rev 01) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 4db8 (rev 01) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 4db9 (rev 01) 00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 4dba (rev 01) 00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 4dbc (rev 01) 00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 4dbd (rev 01) 00:1c.6 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 4dbe (rev 01) 00:1c.7 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 4dbf (rev 01) 00:1e.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Device 4da8 (rev 01) 00:1e.3 Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation Device 4dab (rev 01) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Device 4d87 (rev 01) 00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Jasper Lake HD Audio (rev 01) 00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Jasper Lake SMBus (rev 01) 00:1f.5 Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation Jasper Lake SPI Controller (rev 01) 01:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Silicon Motion, Inc. SM2263EN/SM2263XT SSD Controller (rev 03) 02:00.0 SATA controller: JMicron Technology Corp. JMB58x AHCI SATA controller 03:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Silicon Motion, Inc. SM2263EN/SM2263XT SSD Controller (rev 03) 04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Controller I226-V (rev 04) 05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Controller I226-V (rev 04) 06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Controller I226-V (rev 04) 07:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Controller I226-V (rev 04)
lspcilooks fine, I don’t see anything strange.I usually just use
ddto check write speeds.
I’m running my NAS on a 12 year old motherboard with 16gb of ram the max the board supports. Though I wish I could bump this up now after running this system for 9 years.
I would recommend having a board with at least a PCIe slot so if you ever need more drives you can plug them all into a HBA Card. My board has 3 and I use 2 of them at the moment. One for the HBA card that supports 24 drives and another for a 10gb NIC.
The third I would probably use to add another HBA card if I expand drive quantities.
I’m very happy with my current N5105 board that I linked, even though it doesn’t have any PCI slots. With 6 SATA and two M.2s I should be ok. If necessary I can add a 6 SATA M.2 adapter to get up to 12, which is definitely more than I need. If/when I get 10gbe I would have to upgrade either of these to get those speeds. Although a M.2 PCI riser with a 10gbe card would get me ~7gb so that is also an option.
Any thoughts on these two boards? I don’t see any real disadvantages to the N100 board when compared to the N5105.
Seems like the N100 is your option if you are only choosing between these two. Personally I am in the same both as others here, where desktop hardware is my preference at the moment especially if I can find combo deals for mombo/cpu.
Though my recommendation is to consider a board that would support PCIe for a potential LSI HBA card, stay away from any other sata expansion cards unless you don’t value your data.
If you do ever pick up a LSI HBA card with support for either 8/12/24 drives I would also state to plug the whole pool into this card and not mix and match between onboard SATA connections and the card.
A boot drive can still connect to a SATA connection on the board as it not part of the pool.
On the N100, they say the max support is 16GB RAM. If you were looking for at least 32GB, it may not be an option anymore
It is listed at 32GB, but I’ve seen folks online who have installed more and tested it. Same 16GB limit listed with the N5105 that I currently have. I have 32GB on that and tested it.
Ok, this is good to know!
May I ask why this mobo comes with CPU? I guess CPU can be replaced, but I cant find that one sold independently. I have no experience with this kind of hardware, but seems like it could be cheaper to buy MBO and CPU from local store. But again, im used to desktop components only (kind of), this one could be better value for $
I struggle to find a motherboard and separate CPU that gives me better value that this. Neither of these are perfect but I think that offer plenty for my use as a NAS.
Ah ok that makes sense, thx for explaining
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters NAS Network-Attached Storage PCIe Peripheral Component Interconnect Express SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage SSD Solid State Drive mass storage ZFS Solaris/Linux filesystem focusing on data integrity
5 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 9 acronyms.
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