Question Looking for a Mini ITX Board with ECC Compatibility

[Littledog78]

Hi, I'm planning on building a TrueNAS file server. Reliability is more important to me for this application than speed, and I specifically want to start with a mini ITX mobo that supports ECC ram. I've seen a post that claimed that pretty much all ASRock AM4 boards do this, but I can't get through the ASRock tech support email (I have to have already purchased a board to do that). I don't have a strong brand preference, but ASRock does have ATX boards that they openly claim will support ECC, and I don't see that claim on the ASRock web site for their mini ITX offerings. I don't have a strong brand preference, ASRock was just the first hit I got. Does anyone have any suggestions on a model with this ability? Thanks in advance.

 

[Lucky_SLS]

Asrock B550M-iTX:

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/G6VG3C/asrock-b550m-itxac-mini-itx-am4-motherboard-b550m-itxac

ASRock B550M-ITX/ac

Supports AMD AM4 Socket Ryzen™ 3000, 3000 G-Series, 4000 G-Series, 5000 and 5000 G-Series Desktop Processors<span style=color:red;>*</span>; Supports DDR4 4733+ (OC); 1 PCIe 4.0 x16; Graphics Output: DisplayPort, HDMI; 7.1 CH HD Audio (Realtek ALC887/897 Audio Codec); 4 SATA3, 1 Hyper M.2 (PCIe...

www.asrock.com

AMD Ryzen series CPUs (Vermeer) support DDR4 4600+(OC) / 4533(OC) / 4466(OC) / 4400(OC) / 4333(OC) / 4333(OC) / 4266(OC) / 4200(OC) / 4133(OC) / 4000(OC) / 3866(OC) / 3800(OC) / 3733(OC) / 3600(OC) / 3466(OC) / 3200 / 2933 / 2667 / 2400 / 2133 ECC & non-ECC, un-buffered memory*




the gigabyte B550i Aorus pro says it supports them in its product page:

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/9pn8TW/gigabyte-b550i-aorus-pro-ax-mini-itx-am4-motherboard-b550i-aorus-pro-ax

B550I AORUS PRO AX 1.0 Specification | Motherboard - GIGABYTE Global

Lasting Quality from GIGABYTE.GIGABYTE Ultra Durable™ motherboards bring together a unique blend of features and technologies that offer users the absolute ultimate platform fo...

www.gigabyte.com

1. Support for ECC Un-buffered DIMM 1Rx8/2Rx8 memory modules*
   * ECC memory (ECC mode) support varies by CPU

I would suggest the Gigabyte Aorus Pro - it got 2.5gbps ethernet compared to 1gbps for the asrock. Wifi 6 compared to asrock's wifi 5.

 

[Littledog78]

Thanks! I did look at a couple of Gigabyte boards on their web site, but did not find the ECC reference. The Aorus looks like it meets my needs.

 

[Misgar]

Are you fitting an LSI SAS HBA in the one and only mini-ITX PCIe x 16 slot, or using the 4 SATA ports for the array? A lot depends on whether you're using spinning disks or SSDs in the main array as to whether a cheap 8-port SAS controller will be fast enough. I've just picked up an 9211-8i for $19 on eBay for an 8 x 4TB SATA hard disk build.

Remember you'll need to set aside at least one SATA port to boot TrueNAS Core, unless you use a SATA DOM in a USB adapter.
https://www.truenas.com/community/threads/ssd-vs-satadom.37072/

I've got two old HP servers with ECC RAM and one standard motherboard with non-ECC RAM, all running TrueNAS Core with RAID-Z2. So far no apparent sign of memory errors on the machine without ECC.

 

[Littledog78]

Are you fitting an LSI SAS HBA in the one and only mini-ITX PCIe x 16 slot, or using the 4 SATA ports for the array? A lot depends on whether you're using spinning disks or SSDs in the main array as to whether a cheap 8-port SAS controller will be fast enough. I've just picked up an 9211-8i for $19 on eBay for an 8 x 4TB SATA hard disk build.

Remember you'll need to set aside at least one SATA port to boot TrueNAS Core, unless you use a SATA DOM in a USB adapter.
https://www.truenas.com/community/threads/ssd-vs-satadom.37072/

I've got two old HP servers with ECC RAM and one standard motherboard with non-ECC RAM, all running TrueNAS Core with RAID-Z2. So far no apparent sign of memory errors on the machine without ECC.

My plan was to use a Jonsbo N2 case and 4 TB SATA drives. A friend of mine at our local Linux user's group brought one he'd built to a recent meeting, and it looked and ran great. The best NAS's I'm aware of are the iX Systems models, and they use ECC. So I'm trying to recreate one on the cheap. It turns out that Gigabyte builds some good inexpensive mini ITX boards that support ECC, and I'm planning on using one of those.