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Building a Budget NAS! Xeon Motherboard Combo from AliExpress for
Building a Budget NAS! Xeon Motherboard Combo from AliExpress for $167 | Full Setup & Review
#Building #Budget #NAS #Xeon #Motherboard #Combo #AliExpress
“Technically Unsure”
*I think* I discovered an incredible deal on AliExpress—a Xeon Motherboard with CPU and RAM for just $167! In this video, I’m putting together a budget-friendly NAS using this motherboard
We’ll install Ubuntu and TrueNAS Core, test…
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Thank you all for your interest in this video, I heard you all. I'll do a follow up video, will try PCIE bifurcation, try ethernet link aggregation, show power consumption under load and idle, try Proxmox on this motherboard and have TrueNAS and pfSense as guests. Please keep the ideas coming, I'll try everything you all mention here in the follow up video.
just add a bifurcation card to x16,split into two x8 or 1×8,two x4, add an 40Gbe NIC with RDMA ,use it as pure storage backend with 40Gbe cache pool and all can boom fast brainless.
There are real gems on Ali. My old mobo died. They had B75 based motherboards for 43$ shipped. Swapped mobos. Told Windows to reactivate. Boom done! It even has bootable m.2 4x lanes NVMe. Good video! 👍
I just want to confirm that this is a Mini-ITX motherboard, because I might buy it. I see it on Ali-Express as "Home Nas X99 Motherboard Combo LGA2011 C612 for NAS Router Sever 6×2.5GbE I226 10xSATA Support Raid Intel Xeon E5-V3 V4
". The combo comes with 32 Gb of RAM, but it can handle 64 Gb of RAM. If I decide to put in 64 Gb, do you have a link to those RAM cards? The specs say "2x DDR4 DIMM slots, up to 64 GB, supports ECC
".
The reason it takes so long to boot up is the motherboard has to check everything, including all of the hardrives and everything that is hooked up, and then the actual boot takes place.
I spoke to a Marhone Huang with BKHD and he said this board does work with ECC, but it has to be RDIMM or Registered ECC. He really pushed on it being 2400mhz. I hopes this helps PS: The way the conversation went, it doesn't seem like they plan on doing a bios update anytime soon. The latest is what's already on the board dated for December 2023.
I always need to build NAS with xeon processor but not sure with power consumption and stability. Your video provide a lot information.
Thank you.
Its a 12 year old CPU that supports only DDR3
Good price might almost even out the x99 chipset and platforms power usage on that ancient x99 platform and antique Xeon 😅 funny they took ancient c246 chipset and added some modern 2.5 gb ethernet PHYs and then got cheap used dimms and cpu from a hoster datacenter that phased these old platforms out and sold it all on aliexpress 😅
Great video! What would be your thoughts on a system build from the N100 development board from CWWK using the QNASMINI as a case and the ASM1061 controller for SATA ports? It looks to be popular in China. Would love to hear your thoughts and would be kick-ass if you think it merits to be build 🙂 The board can be purchased from T which will be much cheaper.
Thanks for the review, looks like a great board but i have some questions:
ECC RAM working?
Can you install GPU on the x16 slotm
Does this board have display without external GPU?
What is the speed of the nvme?
Which c-state this board using?
It looks like the cooler in your PSU is dead! 💀
I use those hynix ecc sticks in my projects.
They don't include the button cell bios battery because of shipping restrictions afaik
😱 But this board is a full crap, I’ve already seen it, I’m not even sure whether it will be possible to create an acceptable BIOS for it.
I've actually been waiting for someone to do a review on this board. Been watching it for awhile. By the way, you picked up a new subscriber. The only thing I would like to know is what is the greatest sleep state does this motherboard goes into and does it actually support Restore on AC/Power Loss. Also I noticed you didn't test the msata slot (for wifi or dual Coral TPU)
BKHD Industrial Solution makes the motherboard.
Beside the pcie x16 there seems a slot for msata ?
I was looking at this mobo for some time, due having v3 cpu and ram laying around, so glad someone finally took the gamble 🙂
Also very interested in pcie bifurcation, ipmi and overall bios features for pci passthrough in proxmox. Does iommu groups separeted properly? Can you passthrough the whole sata controller?
I wonder if they have this with 3x M.2 on the board
I like what I’m seeing, too bad that towers for this type of setup are nearly extinct.
My definition of "fun video"! Thanks for this 🙂
this is cool, maybe they could sell it without the cpu version so i can use a lower TDP xeon ones
BKHD is the brand, thats the manufacturer
Great find. If a proper network link speed could be created, this board would be excellent for a Ceph cluster. I have a few Xeon boards that are 35 watt TDP with ECC and SFP+, but they’re 4x the price.
With all my respect to your work, I have to point out that the review is filled up with empty talking while missing crucial testing points. For example: CPU C and turbo states, idle/load power consumption, VRM temps, smart fan, wake on LAN, restore on power loss, ECC mode were not tested nor mentioned. It's also good to verify Intel ME integrity, BIOS read/write protection, American Mega Trends license for the BIOS supplied, and of course, IPMI if it's even there.
Glad to see others having good experience with this combo. I've been running mine for a couple of months as a TrueNAS Scale server after getting over an initial hiccup of it not fitting in my preferred case due to it being a mini-DTX rather than mini-ITX. I ended up replacing the supplied Xeon E5 2680v4 with an E5 2630v4 as I was concerned about longevity of the VRM's given according to the manufacturers specs the motherboard is only rated for CPU's with a TDP of 90W. If this also concerns you, alternatively there is an option in the BIOS to set TDP limits In APM settings under Socket RAPL config which I've tested and can confirm works. I also ended up upgrading the memory to 2x32GB by purchasing the same model SK Hynix RAM in a higher capacity. Before that I also tried some Samsung 32GB 2666V ECC Memory, however the system would freeze during boot even when forcing the speed down to 2400Mhz. Also in the system is an Nvidia Quadro T400, a 128GB Gen3 M.2 SSD boot drive, 2x 256GB SATA SSD's and 4x Seagate Exos 12TB.
For those asking about total idle power consumption, it's around 70W. There was not a huge difference between the two CPU's I tried at idle and I can't seem to find a way to get below a C6 power states but I think it's due to the NIC's.
finally someone made a video on this
Can the network ports be link aggregated?
Excellent board for a mini-DTX server, which is slightly longer than mini-ITX. What is important is the PCIe x16 slot supports bifurcation x4x4x4 out of the box allowing you to plug an adapter with 4 NVMe discs. Given this 5 NVMe drives are easily installed in the system. Very convenient and VGA output to set up the system with busy PCIe. On the board, apparently, the IPMI controller is a part of which is a VGA output, but there is no remote control itself, possibly due to the lack of software licenses. In general, an excellent compact board for the cheap Xeon E5 now allows you to assemble a compact, relatively inexpensive server with many streams, a bunch of NVMe and SATA and up to 64GB of RAM. This for a home server will last for 5 years, or even longer.
Additional feedback: The board is chic. A few tips below. To select the built-in video or discrete choose in Bios: Intelrcsteup> miscellaneous configuration> Active Video To break x16 slot into other values (bifurcation), such as x4x4x4 for NVMe: Intelrcsteup> io0 configuration> iou0 (PCIe port 2)
SUGGESTION: Make a VENTOY disk for USB3 as fast as you can, with all the ISO files you would need .
PS: I used a 128Mb NVMe with external enclosure because I upgraded to 2Tb ones, and it flies when installing or copying from to the computer.
Anything about Powerdraw in different situations? Idle, SATA Drives attached but in Spindown Mode etc. And it would be great to know, if this Setup is capable of various C-States for Energy saving.
What about the SATA-Connectors? Are there Portmultipliers used? Or is every SATA-Port connected to it's own Controllerchannel? The fairly "slow" Reading-Speed of your fast Dataset sounds to me a bit like there could be Port Multipliers.
I may ask for too much but maybe it's good opportunity to make : "BKHD-C612NP-21 Part II" video with couple more test.
Mainly with power consumption, it's quite interesting how does it handle C-states and show it in powertop.
Also test with some ProxmoxVE and Unraid (i suppose that Unraid will work just fine if the Ubuntu work without any problem).
The next case is Aspeed AST2400 controller, it should be a IPMI controller and support remote console for management for this mobo but it also may just use integrated graphic which is pretty poor even compare with some intel desktop processor integrated graphic.
This mobo with some low voltage/TDP Xeon E5-2650LV4 might keep the power consumption in reasonable values – I living in Poland where currenty electricity bills is highest in whole Europe 🙁 So power efficiency is extremely important for people making HomeLAB in my country.
Could you use this as a NAS and a PFsense router since your have this 2.5g slots? If so, how would your do it? And would it be worth it?
the time control word is the brand of the board.
Great video. Thanks for your hard work.
While I on one hand love these Frankenstein Chinese Xeon motherboards I would do a lot of testing before I trusted one for a NAS. Miyconst has done a lot of testing of these kinds of boards over the years and I've messed with a few myself and when they work they are generally okish but compared to Super Micro or Asrock Rack you don't get anything like the support (on an old chipset) or reliability, keeping in mind my current NAS runs a V2 CPU in a Tyan board so it's not like I'm against running older hardware.
While you do get ECC support you could realistically get some newer hardware second hand for about the same cost and lower TDP but for this particular board the lack of PCIE lanes would be a deal killer for me, that said if it does work for your use case less than $200 for the mb/cpu/ram isn't bad at all assuming it's stable.
Also if you hunt around ebay you can find x99 motherboards for some insane prices sometimes, I have 1 I picked up for $30 (supermicro) but like you mentioned you wont get M.2 onboard or other modern IO.