LGA1150 MB For An Easy Life!

Right, I've been through a few hoops at this stage with my proposed unRAID build. First I went and bought the E5 2670 v1 with 64GB ECC RAM (64Gb. Kit NT8C72C4NG0NL-CG : Nanya 8Gb. 2Rx4 PC3L-10600R (8 x 8GB)) from Natex and then decided it would be too powerful (and power hungry for my needs). Secondly I bought an i7 6700 with 32GB DDR4 RAM and then read that Skylake is a bit of a pain in the backside with grouping of PCIe devices, proposed iGPU passthrough over the next few months etc. So with that I'm sending the Skylake kit back to Amazon and looking for an easy life.....

That easy life seems to be a Haswell based i7 (4790 non-K) or E3 1246. I'm concerned at the 84w max power draw here but hopefully it'll be much less when the system is idling (90% of the time I'd guess).

So I need a motherboard. It needs to have VT-d obviously and 2 x16 PCIe slots (although they don't need to run at x16) and an x4 slot (3 x16's would do) for a discrete GPU, my Dell PERC H200 card (x8) and an I350 T4 quad NIC (x4).

Machine use will be unRAID for an 18TB media pool, VM for a Windows workstation (with Emby & Yadis) and probably a docker for Deluge. When iGPU passthough comes along I might also run a Blue iris VM (although at that stage I could very well have a dedicated machine for it)

I guess I'm looking at a Z97 (Asrock Z97 Extreme6) or something like the Asrock C226 WS (non + but might run 32GB of the ECC DDR3 I already have)? Bonus points for a board where I can actually use the RAM I already have but doesn't need to be in ECC configuration.

Doing the numbers....

• By sending back the Skylake kit, going with the i7 4790 (Extreme6 + 32GB ValueRAM) will cost me an additional £12.
  
• By sending back the Skylake kit, going with the E3 1246 (C226 WS plus using 32GB of my current RAM if it's compatible) will cost me an additional £10.
  

Don't really want to go X99 due to expense and no on-board CPU iGPU....

I guess to answer my own question, I think the RAM I have is registered which the C226 WS doesn't accept. So I'm back looking at the 4790....

The 4790 is a great chip, I run it in one of my desktops.  You have a broad array of motherboards that support it as well, including the ASRock Z97 Extreme6 you mentioned which does support VT-d from what I can tell.

Yeah thanks. Think I'll stick with the 4790 and extreme6......

You want an easy life and you've chosen AsRock?  Mmmkay.

I'd be looking for a decent motherboard, from Asus, MSI or Gigabyte (particularly their UltraDurable series).  AsRock aren't close to a sure thing in my experience, even their workstation and server boards are hit and miss.

You want an easy life and you've chosen AsRock?  Mmmkay.

 

I'd be looking for a decent motherboard, from Asus, MSI or Gigabyte (particularly their UltraDurable series).  AsRock aren't close to a sure thing in my experience, even their workstation and server boards are hit and miss.

"hit and miss" in what way?

You want an easy life and you've chosen AsRock?  Mmmkay.

 

I'd be looking for a decent motherboard, from Asus, MSI or Gigabyte (particularly their UltraDurable series).  AsRock aren't close to a sure thing in my experience, even their workstation and server boards are hit and miss.

"hit and miss" in what way?

If you get a good one, they work great.  If you get a bad one, your heart will be broken.  I've had maybe a dozen AsRock boards, and I think 8 of them either never worked right, or failed early, or some part of them stopped working.  I've finally wised up and now don't buy AsRock boards, they're too much like hard work.

Counterpoint though, I have had great luck with Asrock boards. I have been running the Z87 variant of the Extreme6 for 3 years like a champ in my main unraid box. I have build a couple for friends too, and they have also worked well. If you like a board's specs, I think you can ignore individual people who say they are bollocks, and only pay attention when MANY people say the same thing.

Got the Z97 Extreme6 up and running today. Looking good so far

the Xeons were too powerful or too power hungry.

the Xeons were too powerful or too power hungry.

I guess you can never have too much power but I wanted a relatively efficient system. My i7 4790 and Z97 Extreme6 are running at 45w so far.