New build - what would you buy?

[netmonky]

Hi All,

I have been looking onto this project for a while but always end up putting it off :-(. I now have a nice new TV with DLNA and I now wish to build a freeNAS box that will be:
* as low powered as possible (vs performance)
* Support 6x Sata disks
* Support 2/3TB drives - from what I have read - only some chipsets support this (c7)
* LOM support as I will not have a monitor attached if all goes wrong ;)

Even though the Atom's are great I don't think it will be able to hack the performance of running he nas and sabNZB which i hope to have installed in the future on this box. So I have been looking at the low powered I3 2100T.

Your thoughts are appreciated .

 

[joeschmuck]

I just ordered (again) four WD Red NAS drives, 2TB each. Since these are priced at $130 at Tiger Direct, it's a good buy. These are new drives designed for NAS use (lots of runtime and spinup counts) so hopefully they will last.

Your TV supports DLNA, so does mine however it does a crappy job of displaying a DLNA streaming video, it's fuzzy or should I say, it's a soft picture. I have a Samsung Smart TV. I use my Sony BluRay player as my DLNA device for my TV, works much nicer plus it converts many different video types. You're TV may work better than mine but it's something to keep in the back of your mind.

As for other parts, the I3 would work fine, just pair it up with a MB that has all the features you desire and capable of supporting the RAM you desire. I would not recommend lower than 8GB of RAM. Buy a quality power supply, don't go cheap here or you will pay the hard price.

There are threads here that describe what people are using so you should look at those for ideas on cases and other parts.

Good Luck!

 

[netmonky]

Thanks for the replay joeschmuck. The only boards I can find with LOM support is supermicro. Is it called something else for other manufactures? Does anyone have LOM/IPMI they could recommend?

 

[Child]

I just build a new NAS:

Asrock E350M1/USB3
8 GB RAM (16 GB possible)
5x 2 TB WD/Seagate Harddrives
Lian Li PC-Q25

I can highly recommend the Lian Li case - even though it doesn't have the six hot-plug slots you would require. You can still mount 8 to 9 3,5" harddrives. It is pretty neat. If you want to go Mini-ITX you can use a ASUS P8H77-I for S1155. It has six SATA ports onboard. Then use the mentioned i3 or even go with one of the Pentium G6X0Ts.

As for the PSU I'm getting a Xilence SPS-XP200.SFX 200 Watts ... hope that'll perform well ;)
LOM/IPMI - my guess is, that those features are mainly supported by real-serverboards. Which will work but cost considerably more.

 

[joeschmuck]

Do you really need LOM/IPMI? I think I understand the LOM thing but are you really looking for KVM over IP? I guess I don't understand what environment you plan to use this computer in where LOM/IPMI would be much of a benefit.

Here is my advice based on the fact that I run my system in my basement, not keyboard, monitor, or mouse. All I have is a single Ethernet cable and power cord. It has been running fine for 7+ months without incident.

1) Buy the MB you desire, just ensure you have onboard video built in. This not only lowers power consumption from having an add-on card and the resulting heat but generally reduces the size needed for your case.

2) When you build your device, you should to have it hooked up to a monitor, keyboard just to get it set up and running fine. Once the software is installed and you know the IP address then you should perform the basic configurations via the GUI and then can shut it down and remove the monitor and keyboard. All further access is done through the GUI over Ethernet.

I do not recommend disabling the video as sometimes the FreeNAS box works fine, sometimes it doesn't. If you really need to save that small amount of power, give it a shot but I don't think it's worth the potential pain.

The only time you would need to access the monitor and keyboard again might be if you have a hardware failure or for some reason the IP address magically changed and I needed to locate it or manually reset/change it.

Also on the power supply thing... If you locate a nice 350 Watt 80% Gold Plus, grab it. With these 80% Gold Plus power supplies, you don't have to worry about burning up electricity, they are very efficient. I say 350 Watts because you mention 6 drives and the processor eats some power too, but mostly we are looking at startup current if all the drives try to turn on at the same time. Seasonic make some of the best out there and are highly recommended. And I'm keeping in mind that you may re-purpose this computer for something else in the future.

 

[netmonky]

Thanks for advice. IPMI seems limited to supermicro from what I can see as I cannot find any boards with ATM support so far. I wanted IPMI as I work away from home most weeks so would be good to logon if the OS has issues etc.

 

[netmonky]

found he below Asus server board - looks like it could do just what am looking for ;-) - any thoughts on this?

http://www.dabs.com/products/asus-s1155-intel-c204-ddr3-matx-server-board-82X9.html

 

[joeschmuck]

You should adjust your link and remove the "a" at the end of the html.

Wish I could give you some advice on that board or chipset but I can't speak to it. Hopefully someone will be able to as it's not a cheap MB to purchase however it does have nice features.

 

[netmonky]

thanks - updated. Ok, I am thinking of the below as a system

Asus S1155 http://www.dabs.com/products/asus-s1155-intel-c204-ddr3-matx-server-board-82X9.html
i3 3220T CPU
16Gb Corsair RAM - 2x sticks so I could upgrade in future
RED WD HDD - 4x to start with - expand to 6x eventually
Lian Li PC-Q25 case - i am told you can fit 6x hdd's in this if needed (4x hot swap)


can someone case there eye over this and make sure it will all work together - this is my 1st build ;-)

 

[joeschmuck]

You have one problem... The MB is a micro-ATX and the case is for a Mini-ITX. The MB you have is way too large to fit into the case.

 

[Stephens]

How are you going to arrange your storage? RAID0, RAID1, RAID-Z1, RAID-Z2? You need to consider this because in most cases, I'd say get all 6 drives now because expansion doesn't always work the way you'd want. Have you read noobsauce80's ZFS primar?

FYI, I used the Lian Li PC-Q08 which has space for 6 HDD's plus an optical bay.

 

[netmonky]

I was hoping to run plex on this hence the bigger cpu but :-( - look like plex has not been ported to bsd/freenas yet. Does anyone use plex? If so, what do you do - use another box?