Nas / Home server motherboard.

[RimBlock]

Hi,

I am building a home server based on the NSC-400 4 hot swap bay mITX case. The case takes 4x 3.5" hot swap drives plus up to 2x 2.5" drives.

I have been looking at pairing it with a D2500CC Atom board which has dual NICs but only 2x SATA ports. I can add a mPCIe 2x SATA card but that is still only up to 4 drives. The board has a PCI slot (not PCIe) free.

I have also been looking at the ASRock H77 board with 6xSATA and pairing with a G620 or i3-2120T but it is trying to find the best compromise for the price and power consumption.

Any other suggestions ?. I have no current knowledge of the AMD range so there may be something on that side of the fence which may be of use.

The box will probably run WHS 2011 or FreeNAS / OpenFiler etc.

Thanks
RB

 

[RimBlock]

Always been a fan of this little board from Supermicro, X7SPA-HF-D525, http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/ATOM/ICH9/X7SPA-HF-D525.cfm

Has 6 SATA ports and IPMI/KVM.

That board is nice but it is also very expensive coming in at a higher cost than the Asus and a G620 (thats for the X7SPA-H-D525 so not even IPMI and KVMoIP). It has got dual Intel lan and is built to a higher standard but the Asus has a PCIe x16 (not a x4), uses standard DIMMS rather than SODIMM which is a bit pricier and can upgrade the CPU.

If I can find a cheap supplier it may be a good option though.

Thanks
RB

 

[RimBlock]

If you have not already spent your pennies have a look at the N40L microserver, its not hot swap but for £120 ish after the cash back you get a capable server with 4 drive bays, there's also a 5.25" you can convert to SSD + slimline optical if you need to (silverstone make a bracket).

Yeah, unfortunately not available in Singapore .

Need something with local warranty.

regards
RB

 

[RimBlock]

I bought an Asus P8H77-I together with an i3 a few weeks ago to upgrade my Tranquil SQA-SH box running WHS 2011 the six SATA ports is just what I need. ....I'm using win 8 drivers and beta BIOS which Asus has just released and it's looking good so far. Long way from using it as my production machine but then again there's no rush.

Great, thanks for the feedback.

What about something like an AMD E350/E450 board? Some have 6 sata ports and run passive so zero mobo noise. Should be quite budget friendly, very low power and more than capable of server duties?

This was a thought but what models have 6 SATA. As mentioned, my knowledge of the AMD product range at the moment is severely lacking.

Thanks
RB