Anyone have the ASRock Avoton board yet?

http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=MB-C255D4I#

I'm looking at the four core version to keep costs lower and because my servers don't do anything except serve... By the time I spec a cheap Celeron, cheap 1155 board, 8-port SATA controller... I'm about $50 less than the ASRock board, but without the extra gig NIC and ECC RAM. 

Anyone used one of these yet?

Wait.... Six fan headers?  Perfect for the new Silverstone case!!!

Just got one. Transferring files seems to be really slow as well as copying. 10-20mb copying. Had 80-100mb before on q9450. Duno if its network driver or what.

Just got one. Transferring files seems to be really slow as well as copying. 10-20mb copying. Had 80-100mb before on q9450. Duno if its network driver or what.

gads!  a user on the freenas forums reported similar...

Do you know the link to the freenas forum page. Want to see if I can follow it. I am about to just send the board back and call it a day.

Just got one. Transferring files seems to be really slow as well as copying. 10-20mb copying. Had 80-100mb before on q9450. Duno if its network driver or what.

Where you copying to a cache drive or wasnit calculating parity?

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I saw the reference to the freenas forum on yet another forum.  I have been looking for it myself.  If I find it I'll post it.

To cache drive. And copying from the nas was slow as well compared to q9450. Parity calculating at 24MB-40MB compared to about 95-100 with my q9450 setup.

Just got one. Transferring files seems to be really slow as well as copying. 10-20mb copying. Had 80-100mb before on q9450. Duno if its network driver or what.

 

Where you copying to a cache drive or wasnit calculating parity?

 

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Very disappointing to see this performance.    Which version of the board do you have??

Agree.  I hope it's just a firmware issue.  This board was going to be the one for a new unRAID / Xen build. .

I've been running the ASRock C2750D4I mini-itx board for a few days now.  Updated to bios 1.80.  Got it off ebay for $359 USD. It replaced my ASUS c60m1-i. My system consists of a LianLi Q8 Case, one 140mm front fan, one 120mm top fan, Seasonic 400 Watt fanless power supply and two 4GB Samsung DDR3 1600 1.35v non-ECC Memory. Hard drives are WD20EARX (2GB sata3 parity), WD20EARX(2GB sata3), WD20EADS(2GB sata2), ST32000542AS(2GB sata2), WD20EZRX(2GB sata3) and a Patriot Pyro 60GB SSD (cache) They are spread out evenly (every other one) on the controllers. Parity is on 1st ata then the 2 sata2 drives on the sata2 controller etc..  Not sure which spot would be best for parity.

I've been running Xen/unRAID 6 beta3. My parity check was about 70MB/s but not sure how accurate that was since I was using it heavily also.  Due to bad sata cable (I have since replaced them all )or user error (couple of hard power offs) I red balled a disk and rebuild ran @ 90-100MB/s on the WD20EZRX. I will test parity later over night again. Temps have been 36-38 C.

There is a setting for Intel Virtualization Technology in the bios and its enabled. I think it supports VT-x2. I played around with some VM appliances.  Arch and an Ubuntu 13.10 Xfce x86-64 to run a Mythtv Backend Master. I would like to move my XBMC Frontend/MythBackend to a VM Backend and re-purpose the ASUS C60 MB to Openelec frontend. I use 2 HDHomerun Primes Network tuners.

As far as plugins I run Sabnzbd, Sickbeard, UTServer, Apache Web Server, Dropbox, Htpcmanager, apcupsd.

A few thoughts are the boot time is slow. Seems like forever (~30s) til VGA post. I assume its memory checks.  A few times one of the sata2 drives doesn't show in bios but shows up after. I will test more once I get settled in.

Nice to see the board CAN give good performance.  I suspect the BIOS simply needs to be updated on those showing slow transfers.    This may also be a function of whether or not you're using the secondary (non chipset) SATA ports.

The slow POST time is disappointing.  Have you checked the BIOS for a "fast boot" option?

One other thought r.e. the slow transfer times some are seeing with this board.    Are you running the latest stable UnRAID (v5.0.5) or the new v6 Beta?    Several posters have experienced slow times with the v6 Beta ... this may be a function of specific chipsets and/or network drivers.  It'd be interesting to know if you have the same issue with v5.

There's no fast boot.  You can turn off logo and num lock and that's about it. If I wouldn't have read about the slow boot before, I would have thought the memory was incompatible.  I think it's a function of the market it's intended for.

I think it's a function of the market it's intended for.

Certainly seems likely.  A comprehensive POST for a server-class product is a good idea ... and a few extra seconds to boot is no big deal on a system that's typically running 24/7 anyway.

The much more important thing is that you've shown that the slow transfer speeds others have experienced aren't an issue with the board.  Clearly there's some config issue that needs to be resolved for those folks; but that can undoubtedly be resolved.    This still certainly seems like a very good choice for UnRAID.

I'll test more later. Like the write to cache or array. And read.  Also I noticed that if I bonded the nics the VMs couldn't get through.

I'd like to see some power usage stats for these avotons from a kill-a-watt if you guys have one.

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I have one and I'll check.  During rebuild of a drive my ups said about 50-60 watts but there’s an 8 port switch and wireless router and 8" lcd screen attached.

I have one and I'll check.  During rebuild of a drive my ups said about 50-60 watts but there’s an 8 port switch and wireless router and 8" lcd screen attached.

... plus all your drives were spinning to do the rebuild.    I think what we'd all like to know is the idle draw - i.e. all drives spun down.  (and your display turned off)

I have slow read/writes. I use unraid 5.0.5. It happens when I use onboard ports as well as my supermicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 card. This card was giving 80-100mb on my previous mobo/cpu. Bios of the avoton mobo is 1.8 as it just shipped and they had latest firmware. I am thinking of doing a reflash on it. And yes boot time is very long. About 30-45 seconds when first powering on with blank screen as its doing some kind of check. Fast boot is enabled and still does it, I am sure it that part will be fixed eventually  but even if they do not, it is a workstation/server board so you can kind of expect longer boot.

... plus all your drives were spinning to do the rebuild.    I think what we'd all like to know is the idle draw - i.e. all drives spun down.  (and your display turned off)

I was just trying to give a under load value.  I double checked there is no fastboot option under the boot section of the bios. From my ups display I am getting 30 watts but one drive was spinning and I couldn't get it to spin down cause something was accessing it in the house.  When I get a chance I'll attach the Kill A Watt to it alone and spin everything down.  Also I'm half way through a parity check @ 96.7 MB/s.

I have slow read/writes. I use unraid 5.0.5. It happens when I use onboard ports as well as my supermicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 card. This card was giving 80-100mb on my previous mobo/cpu. Bios of the avoton mobo is 1.8 as it just shipped and they had latest firmware. I am thinking of doing a reflash on it. And yes boot time is very long. About 30-45 seconds when first powering on with blank screen as its doing some kind of check. Fast boot is enabled and still does it, I am sure it that part will be fixed eventually  but even if they do not, it is a workstation/server board so you can kind of expect longer boot.

In my experience slow read/writes are most of the time cable issues

last week i added some ram to one of my servers for the upcomming 6 beta 4 and by accident i probably touched a few of my sata cables

i rebooted the server and all disks came up no issues but the day after my auto parity check kicked in and it did parity checks at the speed you are seeing 20-40 mb

as were a few weeks ago i did around 80 mb

so i stopped the check... pushed all cable connecters well on the disks and the mobo and saw one of the cables was a bit in a weird angle so i replaced that cable for any case

after that the parity check went again full speed at 80 + mb

i would check all your sata cables to see if that doesn't make a difference

So running Xen/unRAID 6 beta 3 with no plugins, all drives spun down, even SSD Cache and monitoring for 10-15min the Kill A Watt read from 30.8 - 31.5 Watts.  During boot it was about 50 watts.  See my previous post for system specs. The power supply is a SeaSonic SS-400FL2 Active PFC F3 400W 80 PLUS Platinum Fanless. Also when hooked back up to my CyberPower 850PFCLCD ups, the ups display read 25 watts. Nothing else is connected to the battery side now.

I did some transfer tests on a laptop with SSDs plugged in to the same switch with gigabit full duplex. Writing a 5GB mkv to the SSD cache was 67 MB/s.  However and this was the same as previous mb, reading from a drive or cache was only in the high 40s. This has been a problem for me since unRAID 5rc? I don't remember. But I think I'll look into it more now.

Ya it doesnt. It happens when they are on my raid card that uses sas to sata as well as when its on standard sata wires.

I have slow read/writes. I use unraid 5.0.5. It happens when I use onboard ports as well as my supermicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 card. This card was giving 80-100mb on my previous mobo/cpu. Bios of the avoton mobo is 1.8 as it just shipped and they had latest firmware. I am thinking of doing a reflash on it. And yes boot time is very long. About 30-45 seconds when first powering on with blank screen as its doing some kind of check. Fast boot is enabled and still does it, I am sure it that part will be fixed eventually  but even if they do not, it is a workstation/server board so you can kind of expect longer boot.

 

In my experience slow read/writes are most of the time cable issues

last week i added some ram to one of my servers for the upcomming 6 beta 4 and by accident i probably touched a few of my sata cables

i rebooted the server and all disks came up no issues but the day after my auto parity check kicked in and it did parity checks at the speed you are seeing 20-40 mb

as were a few weeks ago i did around 80 mb

 

so i stopped the check... pushed all cable connecters well on the disks and the mobo and saw one of the cables was a bit in a weird angle so i replaced that cable for any case

 

after that the parity check went again full speed at 80 + mb

 

i would check all your sata cables to see if that doesn't make a difference