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Newbie looking for CPU recommendation


Pablo Picasso

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Hello, 

 

I am very new to the Xpenology project.  

 

I am a freelance IT architect and software developer.

 

At the moment I use a Synology 1813+ which I am pretty happy with except the well known limitation of memory and cpu power.

 

Now I would like to set up a Xpenology. My goal is to run it to host shares and being a backup server. Beside that I want to run about 10 docker containers. Some of them ( like openkm) with more workload expectation.

 

My first plan was to set it up with a J5040 (when board comes available) with 32 GB ram.  

I read somewhere that this Pentium Silver J5040 does not support the full command set. And for this it could be a problem to set up a hackintosh on the virtual machine. 

 

Then I found another low power cpu which should be fine. The G6400 or G6400T. 

 

Is that cpu fully supported by Xpenology? It has 2 cores and 4 threads. Which DS should be selected for this setup?

 

Or is there probably another low power consuming CPU with full functionality that I do not have in mind yet?

 

Any input appreciated. 

 

Thanks in advance.

 

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If you want to run Docker, you may want to consider upgrading to something with 4 cores, especially given the small cost increase.

Any recent CPU will work.  Your main concern is to ensure the network card is functional.  The best way to do that is to review what others are using and how.

For your stated purposes any supported DSM platform will work, but see the link at the bottom.

 

New install reports:

https://xpenology.com/forum/topic/12867-user-reported-compatibility-thread-for-dsm-62/

 

Upgrade reports:

https://xpenology.com/forum/topic/29401-dsm-623-25426/

 

Selecting a platform and DSM:

https://xpenology.com/forum/topic/13333-tutorialreference-6x-loaders-and-platforms/

 

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2 hours ago, Pablo Picasso said:

Then I found another low power cpu which should be fine. The G6400 or G6400T. 

 

Is that cpu fully supported by Xpenology? It has 2 cores and 4 threads. Which DS should be selected for this setup?

 

as long as you dont want to use hardware transcoding its no problem (10th gen is not really supported by the i915 driver of 918+)

the ds version might also depend on the disk controller you use, it its ahci the 918+ it its lsi sas then 3617 (3617 has newer native lsi drivers from synology, with 918+ there are some problems with these drivers atm)

 

 

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What do I need for hardware transcoding? That is more theoretically question since I do not really need to transcode.

 

An alternative of 9th generation would be i3 - 9100 or 9100T with the right board. The disk controller will definitely be AHCI.

 

Maybe the easiest is to stick with the Asrock J5040 itx when its available. 

 

I think the performance is good enough for me and I will run it 24/7 so the power consumption is a pro.

The mentioned hackintosh installation which might not be able is a con. But I only need it to compile Apps in Visual Studio for development. So for that time I can bring it up on another computer.

 

With this board I think the 918+ will be the right choice?

https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/J5040-ITX/index.asp

 

Thanks for your help.

 

 

Edited by Pablo Picasso
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I seriously recommend the i3-8100 and the i3-8350 on the used market. They go for very little, "used" is not a scary word when it comes to a CPU. They are super easy to cool, there are tons of inexpensive systemboards you can get for litttle as well. The idle power usage is the same among nearly every model in a given series, so the power costs will be the same as the pentiums you mention. They have exceptional hardware transcoding with no driver fuss if you want to use that (it's amazing if you use it). And they have 4 honest to goodness fast intel cores for muscle when you want to do anthing locally. They also do not rely on turbo mode. Turbo mode may/may not function in xpenology, only base clocks and power saving modes. "Turbo boost is managed by intel_pstate scaling driver, which is not available with the 918+ kernel"

 

The high base clock on the i3 models means they really kick ass compared to the lower end models and frankly some of the higher end models. I ran xpenology servers with i3-8100, i3-8350K, i5-8600k, i5-9600k, and even i9-9900k.  

 

The j5040 is not anywhere near as powerful as the others below as it is a pentium "silver" based on the atom core, not the skylake core. Also although it is 4 core, ignoring turbo mode it is only a 2.0GHz CPU

 

consider these CPUs (What you will see without turbo)

pentium 6400t 2 cores w HT 4MB cache 2.3/3.4GHz

pentium 6400 2cores w HT 4MB cache 4.0GHz

i3-8100t 4 cores 6MB cache 2.4/3.1GHz (bios set)

i3-8100 4 cores 6MB cache 3.6GHz 

i3-8300t 4 cores 8MB cache 2.5/3.2GHz (bios set)

i3-8300 4 cores 8MB cache 3.7GHz 

i3-8350K 4 cores 8MB cache 4.0GHz

i5-8400t 6 cores 9MB cache 1.2/1.7GHz

i5-8400 6 cores 9MB cache 2.8GHz

i5-8500t 6 cores 9MB cache 2.1GHz

i5-8500 6 cores 9MB cache 3.0GHz

i5-8600t 6 cores 9MB cache 2.3GHz

i5-8600 6 cores 9MB cache 3.1GHz

i5-8600k 6 cores 9MB cache 3.6GHz

 

Then consider that both single thread and multithread are important. In my mind the 8100 is a rock star because you can get them so cheap, say 40$ more that the 6400 used at times. The 8350K is also a standout becasue of the comparitive excellent single core and multi-core performance. The 8600K is the next model I like because the mulithreaded performance is enough over the i3-8350K to finally more than make up for the drop in single core performance.

 

 Don't make the mistake of thinking the low end models will save you appreciable money in power, they will not. Neither will the low power models. They don't burn less power to speak of.  When you are looking at a nas from a power cost perspective, the most important thing to look at is the idle power usage. Once you add in the power saving script to shedule power savings, every single one of these CPU run at the same 800 MHz, have the same power gate tech, support the same power saving modes etc etc.  They idle at the same power usage (or close enough that it doesnt matter)  then you look at the relatively rare (for a nas) power burn when the CPU is busy.  This is where the lower freq of the T models will burn less power over time. The important thing to remember is that in a NAS your CPU work is fixed, and your T models, being slower, spend a greater amount of time in the high burn mode.  The regular CPUs are already back in idle mode while the low power CPU's are still in their high burn mode. So, while its not exactly the same, even when you need to do work, the over all power used is pretty darn closer than you would think when looking at TDP numbers. So, why chose the low power models? Because they are easier to cool. Use can use them in all sorts of places where the heat generated by a high power CPU would overheat or damage near by caps etc. In my opinion, T models are never worth looking at unless you can't use even a small heatsync and fan with at least some airflow.

 

If Turbo mode works ( and the fact I see CPU rates at 36,000,001 means it might) things change a bit.

 

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Thanks for this informative thread. 

 

I read some articles about comparison of T and non-T models. I will build a heatsink into the system anyway. It just should be very low noise in normal use. So non-T is the route to go for me.

 

Do you think the i3-9100 (9th gen coffee lake refresh)  has compatibility issues compared with i3-8100T (8th gen coffee lake)? It is about the same price. 

They are in "new" nearly same price as used. 110 Euro new and 90 used. So I would stick for new products.

 

Can you recommend a chipset or mainboard that is known to have a good support in Xpenology for the used peripheral components like disk controller etc ?

Edited by Pablo Picasso
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10 hours ago, Pablo Picasso said:

Do you think the i3-9100 (9th gen coffee lake refresh)  has compatibility issues compared with i3-8100T (8th gen coffee lake)? It is about the same price. 

They are in "new" nearly same price as used. 110 Euro new and 90 used. So I would stick for new products.

 

i guess there won't be much difference in 8th and 9th gen cpu performace in a nas

with the new i915 from 6.2.3 there is no doubt of using hardware transcoding if needed, 10th gen seems not 100% cleared

https://xpenology.com/forum/topic/28321-driver-extension-jun-103b104b-for-dsm623-for-918-3615xs-3617xs/

 

10 hours ago, Pablo Picasso said:

Can you recommend a chipset or mainboard that is known to have a good support in Xpenology

 

not much trouble to expect from chipsets, usually its about cpu and maybe bios (like only uefi and not csm/legacy - loader 1.03b for 3615/17 needs dsm/legacy)

more likely size and how many pcie lanes/slots are available and how many ahci/sata ports are already onboard

if going for higher sata port counts and 10G network that stuff gets more important (and maybe having two M.2 for fast caching with 10G nic)

 

Quote

for the used peripheral components like disk controller etc ?

 

atm i prefer jmb585 based 5port ahci controller that can use pcie 3.0 and use 2 pcie lanes (ahci is native in all dsm versions)

good for 5 normal hdd's or 3 ssd's (performace wise with its max. 2000 MB/s)

in most cases a 6 port onboard sata plus a jmb585 will be good enough

i use a gigabyte B365M HD3 with a 9100 cpu, lots of slots for its size, so expanding is easy (even 2nd nvme drive can be added with a pcie card)

if size is no problem then go for a full atx and a chipset with enough pcie lanes

Edited by IG-88
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I can only back up what the guru master has to say. I also picked up a couple jmb585 based cards to add 5 SATA each. I don't have them in my full time system yet, still in my lab / test box, but so far they work very well. Their ability to use pcie 3 for performance, only require 2 lanes (happens quite often in boards for these CPU's) and low price make them easy to recommmend.

 

If you don't plan on adding a bunch of cards, almost anything has worked for me (so far.) If you do want to add a bunch of cards (GPU, NICs, HBA for more slots, AIC NVME drives) then pay attention to A the physical slot size, B how the slots are wired electrically C how lanes are spread around when multiple slots are in use, and D what features are either/or. Most board have features that you must chose between and can't use at the same time. 

 

Some boards are much better than others in this way. as an example, a pile of 1x slots are useless whereas a board with a bunch of physical 4x/8x/16x slots are very handy, if they can be used at the same time with enough active lanes. The only useful thing that you can put into a PCIE 2.0 1X slot is a 1 / 2.5Gbit ethernet NIC. When I buy a board I just make an excel spreadsheet and track it. z390 boards seem the best to me so far.

 

 

 

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