A few hardware questions

[NameUnknown]

I am looking to build a NAS for home use. I will likely be installing it into a rack as there are a couple other servers I plan on setting up as well as mounting my networking equipment. The build I was considering is this:

Case/PSU: Supermicro 2U Rackmount Server Case w/560W PSU & 8 3.5" hotswap bays - $359.99
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-F2A85XM-HD3 FM2 - $74.99
CPU: AMD Athlon X4 750K Trinity 3.4GHz - $84.99
RAM: Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3 1333 CAS9 - $89.99
OS Drive: Patriot 8GB USB Flash Drive - $14.99
Storage: 8x Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB - $799.92
OS: FreeNAS of course :)

The plan is to create a redundancy within the server by creating a 6TB RaidZ1 that has snapshots taken and stored on a second 6TB RaidZ1 array. All of these drives would be installed into the hotswap bays of the case so in the case of an emergency, the arrays could be pulled out instead of having a 6TB external drive which is easy to steal. There is also a small chance that the arrays would be used as an offsite storage for members of my family as well. Given the aforementioned plan I have a few questions pertaining to the proposed build.

1. Is the CPU selected, Athlon x4 750k, overkill? Could you get by with a dual core Athlon?
2. I have read that with ZFS its best to use JBOD, does that still apply if you are only using the onboard SATA ports?
3. Given that this system is already a bit more expensive than I would have liked, do you see any way to reduce its cost?
4. Do you see any issues with the above build?

Any help with this would be very much appreciated.

 

[jgreco]

With 4TB drives frequently (like twice within the last week) going on sale for $150, the selection of 2TB drives at $100 is driving your cost.

 

[NameUnknown]

I would still need 3 of them for parity which still drives the cost higher while driving capacity up and power usage down. The thing is though, I'm working within a $2500 budget for 1-2 pfSense boxes, NAS, and a Windows Server. I could use the NAS purely as a centralized backup mechanism for all systems on the network which would then allow for a single array and an external for the occasional snapshot to be stored on. I should also be able to pair down to a dual core for sure if I did that no?

The total storage I need at present is
2.64TB for my desktop
500GB for my laptop
320GB for my wife's laptop
1TB for my wife's desktop
120GB for my netbook

I should also add that none of of these are full either. I intentionally made sure I had overhead on the NAS build already. If all systems were at capacity I would still have roughly 1.4TB empty on the NAS in the current build proposal. I guess I could bump it up a singular array to all 3-4TB drives if I were to then backup snapshots of critical data to an external that could be grabbed in a fire.


How would you guys do it if you were on a budget of no more than $1450 for a rackmounted NAS?