Motherboard w/ support for 8th gen Intel and ECC

[helfisk]

I'm looking to retire my old Synology NAS and decided to have some fun building my own based on an m-ITX board and FreeNAS.
I've been looking at different options and it seems i3-8100 is an excellent choice for the following reasons;

1. Supports ECC
2. Has 4 cores
3. Clocked at 3.6Ghz
4. 65W TDP
5. Easy on the wallet

However - it seems there's currently no boards supporting 8th gen intel CPU's and ECC memory.
In fact, it seems the Z370 chipset doesn't support ECC at all, and I've yet to find any other boards with socket 1151, 8th gen support and ECC.

 

Please tell me, oh wisdom of the internet, does anyone know any boards that will fit my needs?
Or is there anyone who knows when boards with chipsets supporting ECC and 1151 will hit the market?

 

Story time - aka tl;dr WARNING

I ended up being so frustrated, being unable to find the information anywhere, that I decided to try asking Intel support.

I got to a page with a link to raise a support request. Link directed me to a page, stating "This page is temporarily unavailable".
The page suggested posting my inquiry to Intel's forum. I tried, but when I hit the post button, I got to a page saying "Not allowed" and suggested a link to contact them.

Link directed me to a list of support phone numbers. I called the number listed for my country and got a voicemail stating "This number cannot be called from a cell phone" - like who the **** uses land lines now a days?

Intel - Trolling, perfected.

[Enderman]

The CPUs don't support ECC so why would the motherboard....

Why do you even need ECC?

Do you know what ECC is?

If you did, you would probably also know you have to buy a xeon for it.

[Electronics Wizardy]

the server chipsets arent out yet so no ecc, but really ecc won't make a big difference. probably anouther month or two before they come out and they wont be in cheap boards.

 

 

 

what are you doing with the nas. That i3 is way overkill for a nas normally. id go celeron or pentium here or go 2200g.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[helfisk]

Just now, Enderman said:

The CPUs don't support ECC so why would the motherboard....

Why do you even need ECC?

Do you know what ECC is?

If you did, you would probably also know you have to buy a xeon for it.

It does - but for reasons that allude me, only the i3 lineup does, no i5 or i7 supports it.

https://ark.intel.com/products/126688/Intel-Core-i3-8100-Processor-6M-Cache-3_60-GHz

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, Enderman said:

The CPUs don't support ECC so why would the motherboard....

Why do you even need ECC?

Do you know what ECC is?

If you did, you would probably also know you have to buy a xeon for it.

the i3 8xxx all support ecc look here

 

https://ark.intel.com/products/126689/Intel-Core-i3-8350K-Processor-8M-Cache-4_00-GHz

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Helmer said:

It does - but for reasons that allude me, only the i3 lineup does, no i5 or i7 supports it.

https://ark.intel.com/products/126688/Intel-Core-i3-8100-Processor-6M-Cache-3_60-GHz

 

there are no xeon versions of the i3, pentium or celeron, thats why. Your sposto get a xeon e3(now labeled xeon e) for the i5 or i7 eqv parts, and there normally the same price anyways.

[helfisk]

4 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

the server chipsets arent out yet so no ecc, but really ecc won't make a big difference. probably anouther month or two before they come out and they wont be in cheap boards.

 

what are you doing with the nas. That i3 is way overkill for a nas normally. id go celeron or pentium here or go 2200g.

FreeNAS uses ZFS - and while I don't fully comprehend the risk in ZFS w/o ECC, it seems everyone agrees non-ECC is not a good idea.

It's going to double as a media server, hopefully not too crappy for transcoding on the fly - though I fear it might be.

 

5 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

there are no xeon versions of the i3, pentium or celeron, thats why. Your sposto get a xeon e3(now labeled xeon e) for the i5 or i7 eqv parts, and there normally the same price anyways.

I know, originally I was considering upgrading from i5 in my own build, and use that chip in the NAS - but no ECC sadly

[Blasteque]

If you're already set on Intel, then this isn't going to dissuade you, but the Ryzen 5 2200G supports ECC, so do most of the mobos (like ASRock - AB350M Pro4), and they're reasonably priced.

[helfisk]

5 minutes ago, Blasteque said:

If you're already set on Intel, then this isn't going to dissuade you, but the Ryzen 5 2200G supports ECC, so do most of the mobos (like ASRock - AB350M Pro4), and they're reasonably priced.

Not at all - but it seems the board you've suggested is only ECC compatible, but doesn't support utilizing the feature.
As far as I can tell, only X399 chipsets support ECC - but then I'd have to built a NAS with ATX or E-ATX chassis

[Blasteque]

1 minute ago, Helmer said:

Not at all - but it seems the board you've suggested is only ECC compatible, but doesn't support utilizing the feature.
As far as I can tell, only X399 chipsets support ECC - but then I'd have to built a NAS with ATX or E-ATX chassis

Interesting.  I didn't look that deeply.

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 hours ago, Helmer said:

FreeNAS uses ZFS - and while I don't fully comprehend the risk in ZFS w/o ECC, it seems everyone agrees non-ECC is not a good idea.

It's going to double as a media server, hopefully not too crappy for transcoding on the fly - though I fear it might be.

 

I know, originally I was considering upgrading from i5 in my own build, and use that chip in the NAS - but no ECC sadly

ecc is always nice to have, but zfs doesn't do anything that makes it need ecc more than any other file system, esp a checksumming one like btrfs or refs. For a home server I wouldn't worry about it, and just keep backups. 

 

That i5 from your desktop will be fine here.

 

 

[SupaKomputa]

For NAS why not AVOTON, 8 core,  2.5ghz.

Support DDR3 ecc reg (cheap memory).

https://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=as_at?imprToken=bMMsCsb82gp3VXQImiIMvw&slotNum=0&ie=UTF8&tag=alr42-20&linkCode=ur2&linkId=a0a3e5a95e2916c539501c97b1cc78bb&camp=1789&creative=9325&index=pc-hardware&keywords=Asrock C2750D4I

 

[helfisk]

19 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

ecc is always nice to have, but zfs doesn't do anything that makes it need ecc more than any other file system, esp a checksumming one like btrfs or refs. For a home server I wouldn't worry about it, and just keep backups. 

 

That i5 from your desktop will be fine here.

Seems there is a valid point in not needing ECC, read an interesting article pointing towards the same conclusion.
Still, it will be used to store and backup data that is irreplaceable - spending a little more on ECC and peace of mind, seems valid compared to backing up my backed up data.

Based on info and recommendations, I've decided to wait a few months, see what happens on the market and go from there.

 

14 hours ago, SupaKomputa said:

For NAS why not AVOTON, 8 core,  2.5ghz.

Support DDR3 ecc reg (cheap memory).

https://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=as_at?imprToken=bMMsCsb82gp3VXQImiIMvw&slotNum=0&ie=UTF8&tag=alr42-20&linkCode=ur2&linkId=a0a3e5a95e2916c539501c97b1cc78bb&camp=1789&creative=9325&index=pc-hardware&keywords=Asrock C2750D4I

 

It is an interesting option, and definitely considering it! 8 cores will surely benefit transcoding.
Unfortunately I cannot locate it at retailers in my country - closest I can get is SUPERMICRO A1SAi-2750F, sporting 8 core at 2.4ghz with boost to 2.6ghz - but it is a bit pricy.
Then again, total price for a system built around this board, including ECC mem, PSU and chassis is roughly around the same price point of a good 4 bay Synology NAS but vastly superior.
A few concerns though; the board supports 2x SATA-600 and 4x -300, but I suspect that's not an issue with mechanical drives in a NAS?
Another thing is, board uses SO DIMMS - so the mem price will likely be quite a bit steeper.

[Electronics Wizardy]

23 minutes ago, Helmer said:

Still, it will be used to store and backup data that is irreplaceable - spending a little more on ECC and peace of mind, seems valid compared to backing up my backed up data.

 

Ecc won't save your data, backups will. ECC will lower the chances of data loss in a specific case, but the system can still have corruption and destroy all your data. You can have a psu kill all your drives. You can have a fire. You can drop the system and destroy drives.

 

You want backups here. Get a external drive or two and store it at a safe deposit box or a friends house.

 

 

[helfisk]

6 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Ecc won't save your data, backups will. ECC will lower the chances of data loss in a specific case, but the system can still have corruption and destroy all your data. You can have a psu kill all your drives. You can have a fire. You can drop the system and destroy drives.

 

You want backups here. Get a external drive or two and store it at a safe deposit box or a friends house.

Oh ignorance was bliss! Still good to know - thank you.
Unfortunately I have bad experience with external drives - seems the longer they're shelved, the more likely data corruption is. Will look into cloud based backup solution for that irreplaceable data. Perhaps Glacier, heard it's cheep as long as you don't need to recover data

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Helmer said:

Oh ignorance was bliss! Still good to know - thank you.
Unfortunately I have bad experience with external drives - seems the longer they're shelved, the more likely data corruption is.

drives won't last forever, but there still a good backup solution and much cheaper than almost anything else out there, like tapes or online storage.

[helfisk]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

drives won't last forever, but there still a good backup solution and much cheaper than almost anything else out there, like tapes or online storage.

How about BD disc's for backup? Seems like a cheap option, though I'd hoped never to return to optical

[SupaKomputa]

14 hours ago, Helmer said:

Seems there is a valid point in not needing ECC, read an interesting article pointing towards the same conclusion.
Still, it will be used to store and backup data that is irreplaceable - spending a little more on ECC and peace of mind, seems valid compared to backing up my backed up data.

Based on info and recommendations, I've decided to wait a few months, see what happens on the market and go from there.

ECC wont save your data, using ECC will decrease data corruption "when you transfer the files", but no use after its stored in the hdd. So ECC is crucial in high io applications such as database, but not so much in streaming where fault tolerance is high.

 

Quote

It is an interesting option, and definitely considering it! 8 cores will surely benefit transcoding.
Unfortunately I cannot locate it at retailers in my country - closest I can get is SUPERMICRO A1SAi-2750F, sporting 8 core at 2.4ghz with boost to 2.6ghz - but it is a bit pricy.
Then again, total price for a system built around this board, including ECC mem, PSU and chassis is roughly around the same price point of a good 4 bay Synology NAS but vastly superior.
A few concerns though; the board supports 2x SATA-600 and 4x -300, but I suspect that's not an issue with mechanical drives in a NAS?
Another thing is, board uses SO DIMMS - so the mem price will likely be quite a bit steeper.

But this is 8 Atom Core mind you. Not full fledge pentium core. Its better than synology arm processor though.

what kind of issue you worried about? you can still use plug 6 drive at once.

For speed, no mechanical drive have more than sata2 speed.

14 hours ago, Helmer said:

How about BD disc's for backup? Seems like a cheap option, though I'd hoped never to return to optical

Optical disk is the worse long term backup solutions.

The disk is unprotected so its damaged easily.

At worst if the disk corroded and the whole disk is gone.

This happened in properly stored cds.

If you store your backup in optical disk, the reader may not be available in the future 30-40 years later.

 

I have good experience with HDD, still can access some of my 20 years hdd backup.