[geeks] LittleFall2

[Lionel Peterson]

On Sep 25, 2008, at 4:06 PM, Micah R Ledbetter <vlack-lists at vlack.com>  
wrote:

> On Sep 25, 2008, at 1:25 AM, Jonathan Groll wrote:
>> I don't think the D945GCLF2 motherboard can do anything other than
>> PCI, I am afraid. So, no 3ware PCI-X ;-( Are there better  
>> motherboards
>> for Atom 330 perhaps?
>
> Well, the card should work, just slower, right?
>
> The long, 64 bit PCI-X cards are supposed to be backwards compatible  
> with "normal"-sized 32 bit slots. The only time I remember hearing  
> that this was a problem for someone was if the motherboard  
> manufacturer put something like a big heatsink or capacitor in the  
> way of the extra PCI pins, which have to hang over the back of the  
> 32 bit slot. I have definitely run 64 bit cards in 32 bit slots.

I'm pretty sure a PCI-X card won't fit on the miniITX board - though I  
haven't tried it or looked too hard into it.

OTOH, what use is 3 Gb/sec disk I/O if you are using 1  Gb/sec  
Ethernet in a file server role? Can a dual core (quad thread) CPU  
really exhaust a PCI interface SATA 1.5 Gb/sec interface?

How are the on-board SATA ports connected? I suspect PCI Express, so  
for a small fileserver applianc where speed is a factor, I'd use the  
on-board ports for data and boot off either IDE or Flash memory...

Two terabyte SATA drives are about $275, a two gig ram stick is under  
$40, and a one Gig USB "pen drive" is under $10 - so 2 TB of storage  
would cost about $400 plus a case/PS. With a well-stocked parts bin  
you could drop the RAM to as little as 512  Meg and use a junk "pen  
drive" to boot (64 Meg or so for FreeNAS).

You could further expand your storage space with a four port PCI card  
and hang six drives total off the MB (even more with port multipliers  
if an appropriate PCI card was used).

Six TB dives would run you about $850, four port SATA cards are about  
$25-50, an Antec Three Hundred case is under $50 (on sale), and a  
suitable PS should be available for under $50...  Six TB of storage  
for under $1,200 is pretty good...

Performance should be reasonable, IMHO.

Lionel