CPU/Mobo Low power CPU/Mobo with more SATA ports

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Marcus Fenix

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I am using a Gigabyte J1800N-D2h(Braswell Celeron 2.41 GHz dual core) Mini-ITX in my download rig/NAS but lately I am thinking that I need a different mobo as the Braswell ones have only 2 SATA ports.
Do you guys know if any such CPU-mobo combo is available separately.
I tried searching for this CPU i3-5010U in amazon india and aliexpress but no standalone mobos are available.Has anybody bought a U series CPU/mobo combo?
 
There was a an awesome combo (atom though) Mi NAS 25. I missed buying it, and AFAIK only @srikanthuk has it. 6 SATA - 2 via Intel and 4 via a Marvel controller plus dual Intel gigabit. Plus had full xpenology support and a x1 slot as well.
 
Hey @Marcus Fenix

I would suggest to go for a low power CPU board with x4, and get a M1015 - if you want, I have one, crossflashed to a HBA as needed for FreeNAS. @cyberwarfare can also help out.

If you are in Mumbai, I can give mine for testing with the mini SAS to SATA convertors. Its an awesome piece of hardware, being enterprise grade.

I would advice against those SATA expanders. You can import the M1015 for like 100 usd plus 20 usd for the sas to sata convertors.
 
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vivek.krishnan said:
Hey @Marcus Fenix

I would suggest to go for a low power CPU board with x4, and get a M1015 - if you want, I have one, crossflashed to a HBA as needed for FreeNAS. @cyberwarfare can also help out.

If you are in Mumbai, I can give mine for testing with the mini SAS to SATA convertors. Its an awesome piece of hardware, being enterprise grade.
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Thanks a lot for the suggestions vivek.krishnan.That is a pretty elaborate setup that you guys have.However my budget is 25k for mobo+HDD...:(
12.5K out of that will be for the WD Red 4 TB alone.
This adapter is 14k along with which I would need a new mobo/RAM as well as the HDD so it is a tough choice for me.
http://www.amazon.in/IBM-Serveraid-M1015-Controller-46M0831/dp/B0034DMSO6

I mostly use for rig for downloading and surfing via remote connection so FreeNAS compatibility is not an issue for me.
My media consumption is entirely driven by my XPS13 and a Vega S95 Telos Android TV box which natively supports HEVC so Plex transcoding is a non issue for me as well.

My basic needs are a semi capable low power CPU/mobo combo with DDR3L laptop RAM which is capable of running Windows 10 smoothly with Kaspersky 2016 and a few Chrome tabs and a manageable amount of storage.I have 2 WD Red 4 TB drives as of now but keeping in mind my media hoarding rate I am assuming that I will have to scale up to 16 TB in the near future.
 
Actually, it has nothing to do with FreeNAS only. I am not actually in favour of the Marvell controllers unless very cheap. 1.5k for 2 ports is expensive, when considering for about 4K you were getting 6 ports with an Atom setup. Compared to that, a M1015 controller crossflashed to non RAID @ 6K is cheap. Additionaly 1K - 1.5K for the mini SAS cables gives you a setup which can run 24x7 with data corruption, plus RAID (not the fake raid variety) if you ever need it.

Even now, you can get a AMD Brazos board for 4K with 4 SATA ports, which is a decent price.

Optionally, look for boards with 4 or more sata ports in the H81 set.
 
What OS will you be running? FreeNAS, if so, then i dont recommend that setup. Hell i just spedn about 47k on the cpu, ram and SM board for my FreeNAS setup. And its smooth as butter.

However, if you are not going the FreeNAS way, then you should be okay with the j1900
 
cyberwarfare said:
What OS will you be running? FreeNAS, if so, then i dont recommend that setup. Hell i just spedn about 47k on the cpu, ram and SM board for my FreeNAS setup. And its smooth as butter.

However, if you are not going the FreeNAS way, then you should be okay with the j1900
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Nah mate.No FreeNAS for me.This is just for some internet browsing and SMB shared drives on Windows 10.

I have upgraded to GTX 1070 on my main rig and got an XPS13 on top of that.So I am pretty poor to consider a robust upgrade.:(

BTW what CPU do you use and is it used for Plex transcoding?
 
Marcus Fenix said:
Nah mate.No FreeNAS for me.This is just for some internet browsing and SMB shared drives on Windows 10.

I have upgraded to GTX 1070 on my main rig and got an XPS13 on top of that.So I am pretty poor to consider a robust upgrade.:(

BTW what CPU do you use and is it used for Plex transcoding?
Click to expand...

Im using the Xeon 1230v5 with 16gb of ecc ram and the SM x11ssm-f-o. I use a fair amount of transcoding on plex and will also be using docker/ virtualization on FN10 when its available.
 
I would opt for 4TB or lower. It does not make sense from the reliability standpoint view - 6TBs are new and you never know what happens down the line....
 
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