Reddit reviews ASRock Rack Mini ITX DDR3 1333 Motherboards (C2550D4I)

When I built my home lab router I used a ASRock C2550D4I. Not as ethernet happy as OPs but good enough for a router and boat load of SATA for RAID/JBOD.

• Intel Atom C2550
  
• 4 x 240-pin DDR3 DIMM slots
  
• 1 x PCIe 2.0 x 8
  
• 2 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s, 4 x SATA2 3.0 Gb/s plus 6 more SATA3 6.0 Gb/s
  
• 2 x Gigabit LAN plus 1 X dedicated IPMI port
  
  

I just built my first NAS/PLEX server and things are going great. Total cost was around $1300

SilverStone Mini-ITX NAS case

32GB DDR3 ECC RAM

4x HGST Deskstars

this sweet mobo ties it all together. It's got a quad-core Atom processor, 12 SATA ports across 3 RAID controllers, and supports 64GB of RAM, all in a Mini ITX form factor.

I'm running FreeNAS with a Plex jail

That's... not really how servers work. Most of them won't have more than one or two on-board SATA ports unless they have an embedded RAID controller, which almost certainly won't be able to be used as an HBA.

What it SOUNDS like you're looking for is a lot of RAM and the RIGHT expansion cards. I'm not sure what your definition of expensive is, but you can get Dell H200s, which are re-badged LSI 9211-8i cards, and reflash them to IT mode. That gives you 8 direct ports, and with a SAS expander the option for quite a few more. The H200 can be had on eBay for about $45. I'm using one with an expander in my NAS with SATA drives with no issues.

If you just want a motherboard that will work as a NAS with 16GB of RAM, though, and depending on your budget, the 8-core Asrock C2750D4I (or the cheaper, quad-core C2550D4I) might do the trick. They support up to 64GB of RAM, have 4 RAM slots, and 12 SATA ports. The CPUs aren't hyperthreaded and they're not overly powerful, but they're very common in NAS builds; I think the C2750D4I is used in the FreeNAS Mini that iX Systems sells. You're still looking at the $350-$450 range for one of those boards, but that includes the embedded CPU.

If you really just want a rack server that has lots of RAM slots and can hold 8 hard drives, look for an 8 bay or 12 bay Dell R510. With a pair of L5630s you'll have 8 RAM slots. You'll still need to get the right kind of SAS card to use with it, which is the H200 or H310 if you don't want to use RAID, and then flash to IT mode, but that fits the description.

I bought it about a year ago on german amazon. (There is now english translated version of german amazon.)

I bought it from a seller called 'Jacob Elektronik'. Also the price difference between the C2550D4I and C2750D4I isn't quite as large anymore but it's still over 100€.

If you want to stay in the ZFS realm you don't need/want a hardware raid card. Look into something like http://www.amazon.com/ASRock-Rack-Mini-Motherboards-C2550D4I/dp/B00GG94YDS/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1462197980&sr=8-2&keywords=avaton

It has lots of ports for connecting disks is extremely low power and is perfect for making a dedicated NAS.

Edit:
In my original post below, you'll see bad/incomplete advice. See the reply by /u/LifeIsOnTheWire. Avoton can still be viable, since it can handle transcoding/streaming with Plex. However, you would still need something like a Chromecast to make it work.

Original:
If you want more sata ports, consider something like the following, it has 12. There is also an 8 core version for a bit more: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00GG94YDS/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1450635017&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=avoton+c2550&dpPl=1&dpID=61YNMDJ98mL&ref=plSrch

I am literally looking to build almost the exact same system that you have listed, and I trying to decide between the C2750 vs the C2550. I do want to run a Plex jail and do some transcoding, so I am leaning towards the 2750. But the quad-core is $150 cheaper from Amazon here in the US.

On the other hand, with the hard drives being the largest cost, adding an extra $150 doesn't seem to be that big of a deal.

In any case, looking at Amazon UK it looks like a seller in Germany has the C2550 for 240 Euros. Not sure how that compares to what you are looking to pay for the 2750.

This ASRock C2550D4I board is in the same ballpark pricewise and has lots of nice things (12x SATA, IPMI, dual wan) and is only slightly less powerful than the 2750. This is a board I use.

I run 6 jails, one of which is Plex, and it does a nice job. It isn't overly powerful, but does everything I ask of it (serving 4 computers, 2 phones, and 2 iPads) while gently sipping power, which is pretty awesome for something that is on 24/7.

Using this motherboard in that case
I'm using the onboard Sata controller to run the drives. I also have a 10gb NIC in the PCI-E slot.