# Gigabyte BRIX GB-BXBT-1900



## c.nut (Jun 22, 2015)

I'm scaling down my old web hosting business so it's time to rethink hardware. Has anyone tried to install FreeBSD 10.1 on the Gigabyte Brix GB-BXBT-1900?

I'm only going to be hosting a few domains and thought that this unit would make a good low cost, low power consumption web/mail server.

Any success or failure stories would be appreciated or suggestions for similar hardware that runs FreeBSD.

Thanks in advance
Craig


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## User23 (Jun 22, 2015)

The Intel J1900 has a dual channel memory interface. The linked gigabyte barebone only got a single SO-DIMM Slot it looks like.
This halves the overall amount of useable RAM and halves the memory bandwith. Maybe there are other barebones out there with 2 DIMM Slots and perhaps 2x 2,5 drive slots for raid1


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## c.nut (Jun 22, 2015)

User23 said:


> The Intel J1900 has a dual channel memory interface. The linked gigabyte barebone only got a single SO-DIMM Slot it looks like.
> This halves the overall amount of useable RAM and halves the memory bandwith. Maybe there are other barebones out there with 2 DIMM Slots and perhaps 2x 2,5 drive slots for raid1



yes, only one slot, I had planed on putting 8GB in it and a 500GB SSD but I agree with you, If anyone has a suggestion on a 2 slot 2 drive unit that is also low power consumption and not too expensive then that would be perfect.

I'm running gmirror with dual drives on a small cluster of 6 servers at the moment, but these servers are ageing and far more than I need now.

However, if the BRIX J1900 will run FreeBSD without problems, then I could always attach an external drive via USB3 and mirror that 
the big question is......... will it run?


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## wblock@ (Jun 23, 2015)

That's the trouble with tiny systems.  Unless they hold everything you'll need, they become a pain.  A micro-ATX system in a small case is more expandable.  A bit larger, but might very well run cooler.  And there will be at least one PCIe slot, multiple SATA ports, and so on.


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## c.nut (Jun 23, 2015)

wblock@ said:


> That's the trouble with tiny systems.  Unless they hold everything you'll need, they become a pain.  A micro-ATX system in a small case is more expandable.  A bit larger, but might very well run cooler.  And there will be at least one PCIe slot, multiple SATA ports, and so on.



Understood, and probably about the same price if not cheaper, I was keen on the low power consumption but I guess dropping my current 6 servers for two micro or mini ITX systems will represent a saving on the power bill anyway


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## wblock@ (Jun 23, 2015)

With an efficient power supply, it should be possible to get a normal system down to nearly the same 30W as that Brix system.  In fact, the ASRock Q1900DC-ITX has a DC input and onboard DC regulation that should be the same as the Brix.  But it also has two RAM slots and four SATA ports.  Some Newegg reviews of other J1900 motherboards claim the same range also, like 25-30W for the micro ATX ASRock Q1900M.  Similar notes on the 
BIOSTAR J1900MH2.  I have not tried any of these with FreeBSD myself, though.


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## c.nut (Jun 23, 2015)

wblock@ said:


> With an efficient power supply, it should be possible to get a normal system down to nearly the same 30W as that Brix system.  In fact, the ASRock Q1900DC-ITX has a DC input and onboard DC regulation that should be the same as the Brix.  But it also has two RAM slots and four SATA ports.  Some Newegg reviews of other J1900 motherboards claim the same range also, like 25-30W for the micro ATX ASRock Q1900M.  Similar notes on the
> BIOSTAR J1900MH2.  I have not tried any of these with FreeBSD myself, though.



thanks, great info. I'll do some research on those boards


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## c.nut (Jun 23, 2015)

ok, after a bit more research, I've come up with the following;

1 x Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V Motherboard
1 x Antec ISK 110 VESA Mini-ITX Case with 90W Adapter
2 x G.SKILL 4GB DDR3 1333MHz SODIMM Memory F3-10666CL9S-4GBSQ
2 x OCZ (A Toshiba Company) ARC 100 120GB 2.5" SATA III SSD ARC100-25SAT3-120G 

Initially, I'll probably just build one and either gmirror or ZFS mirror the drives. Dual NIC's will come in handy, I have two public subnets so I could run web server on one NIC and mail server on the other then if the load is too high, it will be easy enough to build a second one and split the services between two servers.

I'm familiar with gmirror, been using it on my existing servers for about 6 years and already learnt all the tricks for recovering from failed drives etc, FSZ is new to me but sounds like it might be a better way to go (opinions please)

I believe that is not a good idea to use a swap slice on SSD drives which is why I went for 8GB of RAM rather than 4GB (opinions please)

I realise that the J1900 isn't going to be up to heavy work but I'm only going to be hosting 4 or 5 domains with maybe 3 Joomla websites and the associated mysql databases, Im toying with the idea of running virtualmin (been running Hsphere up till now) which means that mail server will be Dovecot IMAP + SpamAssassin + ClamAV.

I guess I will very quickly find out if the J1900 is up to the task but if anyone has opinion or real life experience to share on suggested build, I would love to hear it.


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