# Mini-ITX MB for home storage server



## donjao (Aug 22, 2010)

Hello everyone.

I've been doing a research for couple of weeks, but still unsuccessful. I'm looking for a Mini-ITX motherboard for home storage server. 

I was considering these MBs:
IntelÂ® Desktop Board DG45FC
ZOTAC ION ITX G Synergy Edition
Gigabyte GA-H55N-USB3

But it's really hard to determinate if the MBs will work with FreeBSD.

Basically i need a RAID  1 maybe 0-1 for 4 HDDs. And that's about it. Don't need anything else. The only thing is that I have PCI-E x4 RAID controller (3ware 9650SE-4LPML) if needed, but I'd prefer that RAID controller would be integrated into the MB.

Do you have any other suggestions guys? Would be nice to hear some other ideas.

Thanks in advance.


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## aragon (Aug 22, 2010)

They probably all work to varying degrees, eg. Gigabyte's USB3 ports won't work (yet), but everything else on that board should work.  Out of all of them I'd rather have a Zotac H55-ITX.

I've only seen the Zotac ION board reported on [thread=6176]here[/thread].  Please report your results with whatever you buy.


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## jem (Aug 23, 2010)

I would be very surprised if the Intel board wasn't completely supported.

I have the Intel D510MO mini-ITX board and everything is picked up fine.


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## donjao (Aug 23, 2010)

*aragon*, hey thanks - will report definitely. Be the problems is, I don't wanna report something like: "damn, bought this MB and cannot work with it". I really need to know for sure if I can use a built-in RAID controller, as it's the key feature.

*jem*, yeah, it looks like that, BUT, the D510MO does not have a RAID controller nor the PCI Express x4. The DG45FC has a RAID controller, but, the question is - will that one work?


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## jem (Aug 23, 2010)

It's an older LGA775 board - not exactly bleeding edge technology.  I'd be 99.9% certain it'll work fine and would confidently buy one for use with FreeBSD.

I've used four Intel boards with FreeBSD over the last couple of years and have only once had a problem with the newer gigabit ethernet chip on one of them not being recognised by the em(4) driver, but even then I suspect it was just a case of the PCI device ID not being added to the driver yet.  That was on the DP55WB board (LGA1156) which was new at the time.

EDIT: A quick Google turned up this post to lists.freebsd.org.



> I have an Intel motherboard DG45FC with a 7-STABLE from 2 days ago.
> Everything is fine, except that the sound is not working



This post also includes a dmesg from 8.0-BETA1.


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## aragon (Aug 23, 2010)

In my experience Intel boards are well supported.

None of the boards listed have proper RAID controllers.  Do some searches on why you should avoid the Intel Matrix RAID that you're referring to.  You're better off with a GEOM(4) based RAID IMHO. 

Having said that, it is supported via the ataraid(4) driver.


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## jem (Aug 23, 2010)

aragon said:
			
		

> you should avoid the Intel Matrix RAID that you're referring to.



You don't have to avoid boards with Matrix RAID as such, you just leave it disabled in the BIOS.




			
				aragon said:
			
		

> You're better off with a GEOM(4) based RAID IMHO.



Or ZFS.


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