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 Post subject: New Hardware NL M2
PostPosted: Fri Mar 05, 2010 10:35 pm 
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I have a buddy who likes the idea of my NAS and wants to build one for himself using NL M2 64bit

I'm looking for hardware recomendations to give him. He's looking at running Raid 1 with 2 2TB Drives or Raid 0+1 with 4 1TB Drives. He says it will be kept in a small area so heat is a little bit of a concern so he'll want it cool.

What should he be looking at for MB, CPU, Raid Card. He'd like to find a MB that would support GB onboard nic but can buy a card if but a lot of the boards only have one PCI slot and a lot of the Raid Cards will use that slot.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated. I'll be helping him build it.

Lance


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 Post subject: Re: New Hardware NL M2
PostPosted: Sat Mar 06, 2010 2:36 am 
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Just keep in mind that the more drives you have spinning, the more heat you will have to deal with.

As far as the processor is concerned just about any of the modern ones will work just fine. There are a number of low power versions from Intel and AMD that should fit the bill. For the motherboard, that will be determined by the processor. For a RAID card there are a number of LSI/3Ware, Promise, and Adaptec cards that should work for you. Again, the card will depend on the needs and the motherboard. Don't skimp on the power supply and get a well designed case. Heat is a drive killer.

Mike


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 Post subject: Re: New Hardware NL M2
PostPosted: Sat Mar 06, 2010 8:41 am 
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Mike,

Yeah I had tried to find the P4/MB combo you had given me in another post but they were gone obviously since it was ebay. I saw a bunch of intel Atom processors/mb's but wasn't sure if the onboard nics were supported by NL as most of those boards only have 1 PCI slot which would go to the raid card. I have a 3Ware PATA card in my NL box but I know he wants an SATA PCI card So I was going to look for a PCI version for that card for him just didn't know if there were any pitfalls to the card.

I was looking also at running 5400 drives in there to help too.

Lance


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 Post subject: Re: New Hardware NL M2
PostPosted: Fri Mar 12, 2010 5:53 pm 
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Joined: Sun Oct 22, 2006 12:36 pm
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I may have a buddy who has a Celeron 430 laying around that I can have to possibly build a new NL M2 64bit Box. What motherboard would go best with this? i'd like one that has as few issues as possible and I want it to run Gb NIC either through an extra NIC in a PCI slot or onboard. Also I need video so would either need to get video onboard or through external card as well as a PCI slot for my Raid card.

I think the 430 is an LGA775 and there seem to be lots of boards out there but wasn't sure if there were some that were better than others for NL.

Thanks

lance


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 Post subject: Re: New Hardware NL M2
PostPosted: Fri Mar 12, 2010 6:29 pm 
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Location: Up State NY in the USA!!!!
I like either the Intel MBs or server hardware. Though this is not necessary to having a good, stable, NAS, it can't hurt either. There are dozens of boards out there on Ebay and at your local computer store. I would be looking toward PCIe devices for any plug in cards personally unless you are looking at server hardware in which case there will be allot of PCIX based boards and cards.

Mike


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 Post subject: Re: New Hardware NL M2
PostPosted: Sat Mar 13, 2010 8:10 am 
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Yeah I know you mentioned the D845EBG2 board to me before. I found BOXDG41RQ as an LGA775 board and had onboard Gigabit and onboard video....I haven't located with NIC chipset is on there but it might be a good board. Are there any LGA775 boards that can be recommended as playing well with NL and have onboard video.

I would like to find one with PCI-Express for my raid card (I havent' bought a new one to work with SATA yet so I could go PCI or PCI-E but need to find a Mobo to match if that is the case. Would this board (which has PCI-Express be able to handle NL and support a PCI-Express Raid Card?

Lance


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 Post subject: Re: New Hardware NL M2
PostPosted: Sat Mar 13, 2010 1:07 pm 
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Robertsonland wrote:
Yeah I know you mentioned the D845EBG2 board to me before. I found BOXDG41RQ as an LGA775 board and had onboard Gigabit and onboard video....I haven't located with NIC chipset is on there but it might be a good board. Are there any LGA775 boards that can be recommended as playing well with NL and have onboard video.

I would like to find one with PCI-Express for my raid card (I havent' bought a new one to work with SATA yet so I could go PCI or PCI-E but need to find a Mobo to match if that is the case. Would this board (which has PCI-Express be able to handle NL and support a PCI-Express Raid Card?

Lance


Here is the board.

http://www.intel.com/products/desktop/motherboards/DG41RQ/DG41RQ-overview.htm

It uses of all things for the NIC a Realtek RTL8111D. LOL Intel makes great NIC chips and they integrate Realtek on their MBs. Go figure!

Mike


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 Post subject: Re: New Hardware NL M2
PostPosted: Sat Mar 13, 2010 3:42 pm 
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Joined: Sun Oct 22, 2006 12:36 pm
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HA! That is funny...Ok..so if I have an intel nic here would there be another reason to stay away from this board? Do you suggest a PCIe card for the raid card too?

Lance


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 Post subject: Re: New Hardware NL M2
PostPosted: Sat Mar 13, 2010 5:19 pm 
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Robertsonland wrote:
HA! That is funny...Ok..so if I have an intel nic here would there be another reason to stay away from this board? Do you suggest a PCIe card for the raid card too?

Lance


To be honest, go with what you can get for a reasonable price. In the past I would have strayed away from Realtek NIC based cards but not so now. They have reached a level of maturity where there is very little difference in performance against other NIC chips from the likes of Broadcom, Intel, National Semiconductor, etc. The nice thing about this chip is that it sits on the PCIe bus controller and so it will not eat PCI bandwidth that the RAID card will be trying to use. I would go for the board if it has what you need. Likely the performance of any of the RAID cards, Either PCIX or PCIe are going to be fine for your needs. If you already have the PCI card then I see no reason for change provided it meets needs. If you can get the board and memory for cheap and the processor for free, then I would expect that the performance would be adequate. It is likely though that you will not see above 50MB/sec on the gigE network no matter what because of the RAID card. Most all RAID cards are not going to have the horse power to crunch the ECC of a RAID5 stripe at high speeds. But I digress as this would be for another thread.

Mike


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 Post subject: Re: New Hardware NL M2
PostPosted: Sat Mar 13, 2010 6:31 pm 
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Mike,

If I go with new hardware I'm going to change the Raid card as the one I have only does IDE drives and I want to move to SATA to get either Raid 1 or Raid 0+1 with a 2TB array. Right now I have Raid 5 on 4 500GB drives but from all I read Raid 5 isn't "all that great" anyway. So the Raid Card prolly would be "new" to me either way just to move to SATA. I never know if I could use the PCI 16x slot for a Raid card or not.

Is the RTL8111D Handled by NasLite..I see RTL81XX in the reference guide but it seems to go with the RTL8139 chipset in most mentions.

Lance


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 Post subject: Re: New Hardware NL M2
PostPosted: Sat Mar 13, 2010 8:29 pm 
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Location: Up State NY in the USA!!!!
PCIe will drop back to the bus width of the card plugged into it. IE it will drop back to 4X if that is the card you put in it.

RAID5 is OK performance wise but requires a fair bit of horse power to perform. It also has a significant I/O overhead for the drives involved in the array that will effect the overall performance of the Logical drive.

Mike


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 Post subject: Re: New Hardware NL M2
PostPosted: Sat Mar 13, 2010 8:41 pm 
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Joined: Sun Oct 22, 2006 12:36 pm
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Ok, so if I have a PCIe 16X slot, then a PCIe 4X or 8X raid card should work fine in there then? That is a good thing to know.

So you think this board with the Celeron 430 would be an ok solution to get this running. I'll prolly go with a 3ware PCIe card like the 9650SE-4LPML (though I thought I saw some problems on 3ware cards on here, i'll need to check that out) or go Adaptec...is any one better than the other? I'll prolly go with 4 1TB Green Drives from Samsung (I heard the WD's have issues in raid) with a 0+1 Raid setup or get 2 2TB drives and just run Raid 1.

50Mbs would be fine as I only stream movies and stuff and just want the speed for copying files. I don't do a lot of intensive file movement to my box.

Lance


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 Post subject: Re: New Hardware NL M2
PostPosted: Sat Mar 13, 2010 8:53 pm 
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Location: Up State NY in the USA!!!!
The 3ware cards did have issues, pretty sure that they got them worked out.

I hate Adaptec, customer service sucks. They do have a good UI for their cards though. Kinda one or one the other, not a big difference. RAID0, 1, 10 are all low power. The new WD drives have some BS about RAID going right now but it involves the higher performance drive line. Look it up.

Mike


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 Post subject: Re: New Hardware NL M2
PostPosted: Sat Mar 13, 2010 9:02 pm 
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Joined: Sun Oct 22, 2006 12:36 pm
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Ok, I have a 3ware now and it performs pretty good from what I can tell for what it is. So I'll just stick with those...

So would you say i would be safe with the above board, 2 GB of ram and the Celeron and using the Intel NIC (or if the onboard nic works, go that route)?

Lance


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 Post subject: Re: New Hardware NL M2
PostPosted: Sun Mar 14, 2010 2:29 am 
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Joined: Sun Apr 02, 2006 9:05 pm
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Location: Up State NY in the USA!!!!
Robertsonland wrote:
Ok, I have a 3ware now and it performs pretty good from what I can tell for what it is. So I'll just stick with those...

So would you say i would be safe with the above board, 2 GB of ram and the Celeron and using the Intel NIC (or if the onboard nic works, go that route)?

Lance


I don't have experience with that board but I would feel confident that it should work for you. The on board NIC is the real question in this since there have been a number of times that the NIC chipset has been listed as supported and still not worked. Luck of the draw.

Mike


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