malcolmputer
Explorer
- Joined
- Oct 28, 2013
- Messages
- 55
Alright, let me start this off with a huge "Your Mileage WILL Vary". I have watched for stuff on sale, and did a lot of research, and bought stuff as I could sneak money away from the wife.
You will most likely be unable to duplicate the case purchase, but suitable cases can be found for similar prices (you will want to source your own decent PSU though).
Case: SUPERMICRO CSE-731i-300B ($23 (microcenter clearance bin))
PSU: PWS-303-PQ (came in the case above (reason I bought the case))
HDD: 10 x 320GB WD Blue WD3200AAJS ($18 each shipped, best offer on fleabay)
RAM: 2 x Crucial CT102472BD1339 8GB DDR3 SDRAM 1333MHz ( $70 each, fleabay; $109 each microcenter)
MB: ASUS M5A78L-M LX PLUS ($40, ebay; $55 newegg)
CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 240 ($30 ebay)
Misc: Random SATA cables (drawer), 2 Molex to SATA adapters (drawer), network cable (drawer)
USB: 4 x 4GB microcenter USB Drives ($5 each)
Drive Cage: Comes with fan ($23)
I payed a total of $456, including drives (6 in use, 4 cold spares), and boot device (1 in use, 3 imaged from final config).
The ECC WORKS :) I am so happy about this. You simply (from bios) change the ECC type to enabled, and set your RAM scrub rate.
The network WORKS. It is a realtek NIC, and it doesn't set any speed records (at about 80MB/s), but it works, and I haven't had any problems with about 2 weeks uptime. Freenas 9.1 RELEASE (FYI)
The onboard SATA has a bug. You have to set the first four drives as ACHI, and the other two as IDE. (or all IDE, not recommended). I honestly didn't expect this, but I am at the latest MB firmware revision, so there isn't much to do about it. When all were set to IDE, scrub speeds were awful (~30MB/s). When set 4 ACHI, 2IDE, I get around 250MB/s scrub, and 190MB/s with a 10GB dd (from dev/zero to /mnt/pool/zero.file)
The drives stay pretty cool. 1 hour into a zpool scrub, the temps were 35, 35, 35, 37, 31, 32. The 37c reading was one of the middle drives in the group of four (I think the higher middle). The ambient room temp varies between 70F and 80F. Unfortunately I don't know what they were during the above measurements. Case is sitting on a coffee table, about 2 foot off the ground.
If you wanted to duplicate this, my recommendations would be to lower the 16GB of RAM to 8GB if you are using small drives like mine. (Save ~$70), and maybe not buy as many spares.
Feel free to ask any questions. Criticism will be tolerated. Suggestions welcome.
You will most likely be unable to duplicate the case purchase, but suitable cases can be found for similar prices (you will want to source your own decent PSU though).
Case: SUPERMICRO CSE-731i-300B ($23 (microcenter clearance bin))
PSU: PWS-303-PQ (came in the case above (reason I bought the case))
HDD: 10 x 320GB WD Blue WD3200AAJS ($18 each shipped, best offer on fleabay)
RAM: 2 x Crucial CT102472BD1339 8GB DDR3 SDRAM 1333MHz ( $70 each, fleabay; $109 each microcenter)
MB: ASUS M5A78L-M LX PLUS ($40, ebay; $55 newegg)
CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 240 ($30 ebay)
Misc: Random SATA cables (drawer), 2 Molex to SATA adapters (drawer), network cable (drawer)
USB: 4 x 4GB microcenter USB Drives ($5 each)
Drive Cage: Comes with fan ($23)
I payed a total of $456, including drives (6 in use, 4 cold spares), and boot device (1 in use, 3 imaged from final config).
The ECC WORKS :) I am so happy about this. You simply (from bios) change the ECC type to enabled, and set your RAM scrub rate.
The network WORKS. It is a realtek NIC, and it doesn't set any speed records (at about 80MB/s), but it works, and I haven't had any problems with about 2 weeks uptime. Freenas 9.1 RELEASE (FYI)
The onboard SATA has a bug. You have to set the first four drives as ACHI, and the other two as IDE. (or all IDE, not recommended). I honestly didn't expect this, but I am at the latest MB firmware revision, so there isn't much to do about it. When all were set to IDE, scrub speeds were awful (~30MB/s). When set 4 ACHI, 2IDE, I get around 250MB/s scrub, and 190MB/s with a 10GB dd (from dev/zero to /mnt/pool/zero.file)
The drives stay pretty cool. 1 hour into a zpool scrub, the temps were 35, 35, 35, 37, 31, 32. The 37c reading was one of the middle drives in the group of four (I think the higher middle). The ambient room temp varies between 70F and 80F. Unfortunately I don't know what they were during the above measurements. Case is sitting on a coffee table, about 2 foot off the ground.
If you wanted to duplicate this, my recommendations would be to lower the 16GB of RAM to 8GB if you are using small drives like mine. (Save ~$70), and maybe not buy as many spares.
Feel free to ask any questions. Criticism will be tolerated. Suggestions welcome.