ASRock J5005-ITX - ITX Motherboard for Intel Integrated CPU CPUs

This is a brilliant little mini-itx board. In 2009 I purchased a SQA-5H from tranquil pc, this little 5 disk home server came with an Intel motherboard and a single core dual thread Atom Z330. For 11 years it's looked after my data, but it hasn't been supported by Microsoft for at least 7 years. It's been slowing down and I've been meaning to do something about it. The case supplied from Tranquil is the reason I bought it in the first place and I definitely wanted to keep using it.The height dimensions listed for the board show 50mm and measuring the case I estimated I had no more than 42mm of width to fit the board. As soon as the board came I got the ruler out and measured appropriately 35mm! I was so happy.The board went in very easily and I also fitted a pcie 1.0 sata interface and 120gb Samsung 2.5" ssd. First job was to update the bios and then I installed open media vault on the ssd and it booted up right away. I've also installed motion eye to record my eufycam home cameras. I'm just waiting on another Western digital blue hdd. The 5 slots in the case will be used to run a raid 6 setup with a Toshiba external 2.5 USB 3 drive for back up. I'm using 8 gb of crucial ddr3 sodimm and it's running a treat. Debian reports the load average below 0.3 over 15 minutes. It boots very quickly and runs far better than the windows home server. I love it!

Note this motherboard is advertised to only take 8GB of RAM total, but the Memory QVL on the Asrock web site has various 16GB modules verified. I am running with a single Crucial CT16G4SFD824A 16 GB currently and it's fine, various people report 2x16GB also works (module selection may matter).It has 3-pin not PWM (4-pin) fan headers which is a shame.It's a UEFI only BIOS, there is some simple automatic fan control where you can apparently control fan speed to maintain CPU temperature, but I'm not sure how effective this is.Edit: now using 2xCT16G4SFD824A for 32GB of RAM with no problems at all.

Decent mobo however not really fit for purpose out of box.Using this in my NAS/HTPC, works very well running Windows 10 while running Plex and Jelly fin servers. Uses very little power: 15w at idle with no streaming and about 18w while streaming Plex in the background max I've seen is 32w while running many programs.The included CPU cooler is sufficient for light use such as NAS or HTPC use, however I do have a case fan that is temperature controlled by the mobo which increases rpm under heavy load. I've not really tried any gaming on it but imagine it should be fine playing most emulators I have played Unreal Tournament 99 (excellent old game) which works flawlessly.My only gripe is that the BIOS must be updated to allow use of the HDMI port at 4K, which is particularly annoying as you have to use a jumper (like the type on an old IDE HDD) to enable the BIOS to be flashed; I had to dig an old PC out to get a jumper as one is not included. You must also use the command prompt to update the BIOS, it's not just a case of downloading the update and executing the file, you have to open a cmd prompt and enter the path yourself (easy enough but a PITA if you're lazy like me).Once this is done it is a great mobo and functions as it should.+To get a low power consumption I recommend using a PicoPSU, I am using a 160w variant it is so much more economical than the FLEX PSU is was using before and produces practically no heat. EDIT: the 32W power consumption is with 3 SAS 2.5" HDDs running also. As for memory I am using Cruicial DD4 SODIMM 2400Mhz 2x4GB. This processor is limited to a max of 8GB memory; plenty enough but worth keeping in mind.

Got this as an ultra low energy home server and it works flawlessly and consumes about 25w at full tilt and around 11w when ticking along with security cameras recording, local bulk storage film streaming locally etc. With 52tb of starage!

Good speed for a reasonable price, reliable & responsive. Simple to instal.