The Dell Perc H200/H310 flashed with IT mode firmware will turn it into an HBA. This and the SFF 8087 cables make it a relatively cheap HBA for FreeNAS. Dunno if you are willing to spend the extra money on the 9300, but about $50 bucks for the card and cables off ebay should be a nice incentive at least.
Just won a 9300-8i used on eBay for $100 from the US
Got together my list of all the parts as well as all the random bits I need for the build
placed the order for all the parts since i was able to win that HBA. Also I tested various Hotswaps I had around here and Rosewill which is cheap with the best cooling fit.
Nice seeing everything come together. Definitely let us know how everything works out.
Alright so some updates are already on Twitter if any of you follow there and will soon come here BUT I am thinking of going straight to 64GB of ECC. Looking into it looks like I need unbuffered. Anyone have a line on some Samsung B die unbuffered ECC? I also need 16GB sticks. The stuff wendel had in his video “M391A1K43BB1-CRCQ” are only 8GB dimms.
No b die ecc the 2666 speced stuff is still quite pricy too
Ram 4x16GB Crucial ECC 2666 (CT16G4WFD8266) $711 is what I paid for the ram in my tr build
I found B die ECC but not unbuffererd, registered.
do you recommend the crucial memory? Na yeah it looks likes 4 would be about what you paid through Provantage.
I havent had any issues and wendell has messed with these sticks a lot so they are pretty safe bet.
id skip the ryzen APU’s when talking linux, from what i read they have horrible support sofar in linux. You would properly be better off with a regular ryzen 4 core/8 threads cpu for the approx same price, then some low end GPU to render console.
If i were you id go for a distro like ubuntu server, or something similar, and just do things through console, you get the exact same functionality, just without the web interface overhead, and you only really have to master a couple of zpool, and zfs commands and then you’re done.
yeah I havnt had issues with crucial as a brand just wondering about Ryzen compatibility. Ill order them when i get a chance can still do setup and testing with the 32GB for now.
Look at all the parts! O.O
drives came in a bit later since I needed an in person signature
scroll up a bit and youll see that im not using a Ryzen APU I cant because i wouldnt have enough PCI-E lanes.
As for the CPU… 
And software wise I can always change it up if necessary. Been 10 years probably since I realy had anything running Linux on the regular so in a way ill be breaking ground and learning a ton of new things. I dont need this NAS right this minute and will have a temporary build together testing things as I test fit other things and mod the Antec 900 so it actually has cable management. I also will only need this once my desktop build Anthrax 9 is complete because my secondary system that is standing in right now is ITX and cant do 10G LAN. Since i am not out of storage I can also run both for a while before puling the drives from the old system and adding them to the array.
just though id post an update on this it is still in progress but there was this huge to do with the company i bought the original memory from that wasnt compatible so i have been dealing with a paypal claim. I have now ordered the memory @mutation666 suggested from newegg. Had to order 2 different times because they limit to 2 sticks. First pair is in now, second is on the way.
I did get the system booted into windows 10 with some non ECC corsair ram i had around to test the other hardware and the 580.
I know im dredging this up but its still a work in progress. I just found out the the Aquantia 10G cards are not supported in FreeNAS also some have said that a different OS would be better since id like to possibly pass the GPU though and have multiple VM’s. Would anyone have suggestions with/for this?
Ive seen many use unraid which seems to have a decent interface.
I run ESXi with FreeNAS, pfSense, and a Windows 10 gaming VM for my main desktop. Aquantia released a VIB for their Aquantia NIC on the x470 Taichi Ultimate, so if you wanted to give that a shot, by all means. Another option is a Linux distro with ZFS and KVM/QEMU, as there is a Linux driver for the Aquantia NIC as well
Alright so I already have 64GB of ECC memory in the system. I already have 2x 10G Aquantia cards and the motherboard what hosen so I could use both at x4. Most of this system was made out of parts I already had kicking around or could trade for etc. I can do an updated post with the exact hardware.
I have it temporarily built so I can do testing with software as I plan to heavily modify an Antec 900 to fit everything and have cable management.
ZFS on linux is fine as long as you don’t end up needing a Kernel newer than 5.1. Afaik that is the latest kernel you can build the ZoL module against. It’s probably fine if your hardware is older.
As far as distro goes (assuming you go the distro route) ubuntu plans to support ZFS on root from the installer in the next release. You can still do it today, but it takes some extra steps as the installer itself won’t do it for you. Afaik ubuntu is one of the few distros that aren’t treating ZoL like a plague (due to it’s CDDL license) and has committed to supporting it in the installer. Likewise Pop OS (based on ubuntu) seems to have ZFS on root support on their roadmap.
That’s not to say you can’t get ZFS working on other distros. It’s just that it will take some more work as the lack of support or documentation might be a hurdle. I.e. Arch has good documentation but I don’t believe they have ZoL binaries on their ISO (correct me if I’m wrong).