Building a 24hours 365 Day NAS with GA-5AX and which CPU?

Discussion relating to Socket 7 hardware.
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ipv6ready
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Building a 24hours 365 Day NAS with GA-5AX and which CPU?

Post by ipv6ready »

Current chip AMD K6-2 450 CXT on GA-5AX

My system is slow as it does not show any L2 cache??? I presume it is disabled in the Bios? I can't check the Bio due to no monitor! As stated I use RealVNC once itis loaded into XP. I will correct this this weekend as I am taking it to friends house.

What chip should I look to buy. I think I got the bug :)

The system will be running as a NAS and print server.

I will downgrade the OS to WIN2000

I have taken out all the ram except for a Hynix 256 PC133 SDRAM

AMD K6-2+(plus) 475 ACZM
AMD K6-2+(plus) 533 ACZ
AMD K6 3+ 450 APZ

I have 2 Promise Raid card on Order
Plus I will dismantle by 2x Maxtor 250 GB
Also on order are 2 320 GB HDD

I will set the two raid card as separate mirrored drives

I will use a 20gb Seagate 5400 for the OS

Just recieved a $24 :-) GEforce4 MMX440 8xAGP

ATX 500 watt power supply generic tower with front fan.

I also ebayed 4 extra 8 cm fans with filters and will attack the case with a jigsaw to attach the fans on the side and top of the case to vent hot air.

All sitting in the basement


PS - I am a Semi Pro Photographer -> likely to go pro in a year or two and since going digital I need about 50gb of storage extra a month. Not uncommon to take 30gbytes of pics at one gig. each RAW picture file are about 15Mbytes each and some of these files can increase to 50mybtes!

A further copy is kept at the studio.

Your thoughts are appreciated.

So should I just also upgrade the board and cpu to a P4 or athlon?

I also burn a mountain of DVD. But rather then doing it after every job. I would rather hire a local kid trustworthy to do a batch twice a month, hence the large NAS
K6-2 500 Gigabyte GA-5AX v5.2
Want to run it as 500GB NAS, Print Server and personal FTP server.

OS Win 2000,

Question will this board take a PCI ATA 133 card and will it recognise HDD larger then 137GB?

Your help is appreciated.
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theEMP
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Post by theEMP »

well as NAS and print server aren't the most demanding things on the world. I would only upgrade if I absolutely had to.
DrSwizz
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Post by DrSwizz »

The only thing that I would change is the OS: Use OpenBSD or GNU/Linux instead.
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theEMP
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Post by theEMP »

DrSwizz wrote:The only thing that I would change is the OS: Use OpenBSD or GNU/Linux instead.
why would you say that Doc?
larrystotler
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Post by larrystotler »

theEMP wrote:
DrSwizz wrote:The only thing that I would change is the OS: Use OpenBSD or GNU/Linux instead.
why would you say that Doc?
Linux doesn't require anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-crapware, etc to be installed. It's very easy to set it up as a Samba server(Samba is Linux's version of Window's Server Message Block protocol). If you use Linux with no GUI, you can run it easily with only 64MB RAM and quite possible 32MB. It can however be a little difficult to set up if you aren't experienced with it. I've used Linux since 99, so if you have any questions, ask.

As for the hardware, I will tell you that I've found that the K6 series doesn't seem to transfer at the full 100Mb/s of ethernet in some cases. Especially if you use the scp command. scp stands for secure copy. It uses encryption to establish a connection with a remote machine via the ssh(secure shell) command. A P3-500 is faster at scp than a k6-2/500 because the encryption can use the P3's SSE to speed it up.

However, if you don't need it to be extremely fast, your system is good as it sits. Most DVD burners only need a 5MB/s feed, so you should be ok. I had posted a link to a company that was selling K6-2+/570s for like $7. That would be a cheap upgrade.

The GeForce4 MX440(which I have) is not a need for a NAS system. You can even get by without using a video card is you wanted. I have a server with no video card installed in it that I log into remotely to do maintenance on.
DrSwizz
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Post by DrSwizz »

As larrystotler said; Reliability, security and modest hardware requirements.

Personally I would choose OpenBSD because its' superior security. However OpenBSD does lack the relative user friendlyness that some GNU/Linux-distributions have and it isn't as optimized as Linux.
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theEMP
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Post by theEMP »

sometimes it's best to stick with what you know though, so when something goes wrong you know how to fix it.
ipv6ready
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Post by ipv6ready »

Larry,

I will stay away from Linux as I don't have any experience with it. I have to agree with EMP on staying with something I know. ie if the computer died I can just use a external USB case and connect it to my laptop. Not sure how long it would take for me to rebuild a linux/unix box?

I just looked at the link for the cheap K6, wow! But FE don't deliver to Sydney Australia, from the website, hmm. The say to call, so I will later in the week. I hope shipping is not ridiculus.

NAS will be isolated with no net excess. So will I need a AV? I was thinking of sceduled scan from another little machine I am building with more grunt.

I just picked up a second motherboard + Athlon 700mhz + 256mb for a $1 plus $7.50 shipping. looking to build a complete basic pc for $100 :-) just to see if I can.

Larry, if i have no video card do I still get a GUI from my laptop? I thought I needed a VGA card for a gui? Hmm If I don't need one I might take it out and use it in the Athlon.

My main is a Toshiba Satelite 2GB A100 with Core Duo T2250 Gigabit Geforce Go 7300 PciX 256mbytes. I really like this laptop.

PS I enabled the L2 cache in the bios but sandra/cpupid still says no L2 cache? Is it possible that a GA-5AX was sold with no cache? Though it does say 512kb cache during POST!
K6-2 500 Gigabyte GA-5AX v5.2
Want to run it as 500GB NAS, Print Server and personal FTP server.

OS Win 2000,

Question will this board take a PCI ATA 133 card and will it recognise HDD larger then 137GB?

Your help is appreciated.
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theEMP
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Post by theEMP »

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KachiWachi
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Post by KachiWachi »

Please be certain about what you are looking at with reference to sandra/cpupid.

Are you looking at the CPU L2 cache...or the Motherboard External (L2) cache?
Moderator - Wim's BIOS

PC #1 - DFI 586IPVG, K6-2/+ 450 (Cyrix MII 433), 128 MB EDO. BIOS patched by Jan Steunebrink.
PC #2 - Amptron PM-7900 (M520), i200 non-MMX, 128 MB EDO
PC #3 - HP8766C, PIII-667, 768 MB SDRAM
PC #4 - ASUS P3V4X, PIII-733, 256 MB SDRAM
PC #5 - Gateway 700X, P4-2.0 GHz, 768 MB PC800 RDRAM
PC #6 - COMPAQ Evo N1020v laptop, P4-2.4 GHz, 1 GB PC2700 DDR
PC #7 - Dell Dimension 4600i, P4-2.8 GHz, 512 MB PC2700 DDR
PC #8 - Acer EeePC netbook, Atom N270 @ 1.60 GHz, 1 GB RAM
PC #9 - ??? ;)
ipv6ready
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Post by ipv6ready »

KachiWachi wrote:Please be certain about what you are looking at with reference to sandra/cpupid.

Are you looking at the CPU L2 cache...or the Motherboard External (L2) cache?
I am aware that my current chip has no internal L2 cache. But I thought that the "motherboard" 512K cache would show up as either L2 or L3?

Am I wrong on thinking that?
K6-2 500 Gigabyte GA-5AX v5.2
Want to run it as 500GB NAS, Print Server and personal FTP server.

OS Win 2000,

Question will this board take a PCI ATA 133 card and will it recognise HDD larger then 137GB?

Your help is appreciated.
ipv6ready
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Post by ipv6ready »

Just a quick update.

I decided to use a Compaq EN Deskpro Tower (this is a midi tower) Got it for $115 aussie so about $US90 couried to my house

This tower is not a small dinky one, it a "smaller full tower" only comes with a 250Watt PS. But looking at it, it could be easily upgraded.

Also for a Compaq unusually it is all indusrty standard except for the "screwless" drive cage.

I just thought after looking at the cost of buying a new case and other bits and pieces I think this is a good choice. Also it allows me to Play overclocking with the K6 :D Couldn't do that if it was running as my NAS!

* Pentium III 1.0 Ghz CPU
* 512 Mb PC133 SDRAM
* 20Gb hard disk drive
* CD-RW
* Floppy drive
* 1 AGP slot, 5 PCI Slots (Yes 5 full size)
* Intel 815e chipset motherboard
* Integrated Intel 815 Video card
* Integrated audio controller
* Integrated 100Mbits network card
* 2 USB, 2 serial, 1 parallel port
K6-2 500 Gigabyte GA-5AX v5.2
Want to run it as 500GB NAS, Print Server and personal FTP server.

OS Win 2000,

Question will this board take a PCI ATA 133 card and will it recognise HDD larger then 137GB?

Your help is appreciated.
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KachiWachi
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Post by KachiWachi »

ipv6ready -

Why is there a question in your sig?
Moderator - Wim's BIOS

PC #1 - DFI 586IPVG, K6-2/+ 450 (Cyrix MII 433), 128 MB EDO. BIOS patched by Jan Steunebrink.
PC #2 - Amptron PM-7900 (M520), i200 non-MMX, 128 MB EDO
PC #3 - HP8766C, PIII-667, 768 MB SDRAM
PC #4 - ASUS P3V4X, PIII-733, 256 MB SDRAM
PC #5 - Gateway 700X, P4-2.0 GHz, 768 MB PC800 RDRAM
PC #6 - COMPAQ Evo N1020v laptop, P4-2.4 GHz, 1 GB PC2700 DDR
PC #7 - Dell Dimension 4600i, P4-2.8 GHz, 512 MB PC2700 DDR
PC #8 - Acer EeePC netbook, Atom N270 @ 1.60 GHz, 1 GB RAM
PC #9 - ??? ;)
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