# New server build



## KernelPanic (Jul 3, 2015)

Would there be any issues doing a UEFI or non-UEFI install of FreeBSD 10.1 on this hardware:

ASUS AM1M-A motherboard
AMD Athlon 5350 Kabini processor (with GPU)
8 GB RAM (PC 12800)
Highpoint Rocket 640L 
Intel EXPI9301CTBLK 

It is going to be a media server, firewall and probably proxy for an internal network


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## wblock@ (Jul 4, 2015)

The Intel card and RAM, sure.  The motherboard probably, and I seem to recall reports of people running Kabini processors--but verify that.  Not sure if the GPU will be usable yet.

The RAID controller is at least 2/3 of the price of one of the recommended LSI controllers, and might be worth rethinking.


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## KernelPanic (Jul 4, 2015)

The motherboard is designed to use the CPU as its video card. I have seen one person here state they're using it. Although Google searches suggest I may not want to use UEFI since ASUS boards aren't supporting anything but MBR.

You're right about the RAID card, Highpoint says it is supported but it is not on the FreeBSD 10.1 Hardware Compatibility List. Which LSI were you referring to?


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## kpa (Jul 4, 2015)

Make sure you don't even try to use the pseudo-RAID capabilities of the HBA you're getting, ZFS RAID and even gmirror(8) are vastly superior to anything in that department.


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## wblock@ (Jul 4, 2015)

KernelPanic said:


> Which LSI were you referring to?


LSI 9211-8i/LSI SAS2008/IBM ServeRAID M1015.  See https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/confused-about-that-lsi-card-join-the-crowd.11901/.


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## KernelPanic (Jul 4, 2015)

kpa said:


> Make sure you don't even try to use the pseudo-RAID capabilities of the HBA you're getting, ZFS RAID and even gmirror(8) are vastly superior to anything in that department.



That is another alternative I'm considering to keep this thing as inexpensive as possible. My current system has a Promise TX150 RAID card that won't work with FreeBSD 9+ because it apparently writes its RAID information into the same space that GPT and gmirror do.


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## kpa (Jul 4, 2015)

KernelPanic said:


> That is another alternative I'm considering to keep this thing as inexpensive as possible. My current system has a Promise TX150 RAID card that won't work with FreeBSD 9+ because it apparently writes its RAID information into the same space that GPT and gmirror do.



Choose an HBA that doesn't require you to label/initialize the drives in any way to use them as individual drives, problem solved.


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## tingo (Jul 4, 2015)

KernelPanic said:


> Although Google searches suggest I may not want to use UEFI since ASUS boards aren't supporting anything but MBR.


That is not a general issue for Asus boards; some of them work just fine with UEFI and GPT. It is hard to figure out which ones work or not without trying it.


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## diizzy (Jul 5, 2015)

If you're on a tight budget...

Asrock B85 Pro4
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157387
(Needs BIOS version 2.0 or higher)

or

Asrock H97M Pro4
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157512

Intel Pentium G3440
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116997&ignorebbr=1

That eliminates the need for a separate NIC (Intel builtin) and separate HBA (6 ports instead of 2).
//Danne


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## KernelPanic (Jul 14, 2015)

Similar to diizzy's post:

Gigabyte GA-F2a68HM-H (4 x SATA III)
AMD A4-7300
GSkill ValueSeries DDR3 1333 (2 x 4GB)
Intel NIC
2 x 1TB harddrives

Four SATA ports should be good enough for what I'm doing and a ZFS software RAID is available from the install media.


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