So you want some hardware suggestions.

[jgreco]

SSDs alleviate that issue by removing the 3+ms seek time of hard drives in favor of microsecond seek times.

in the most optimistic cases. in the average case, somewhat less, and for writes, varies widely.

I wouldn't run SSDs in a RAID-1 without a backup since you'd literally be doing 1:1 writes to both drives. In theory, both drives would reach end of life at roughly the same time. What you could do is a RAID1 of 2 SSDs with a nightly backup to a regular platter based hard drive.

which is why you acquire ssds from two different vendors with hopefully two different technologies. that's actually what we're doing for primary direct-attached ESXi datastores these days, complete with frequent backups, hoping to do the same with a bunch of secondary storage on some FreeNAS storage soon as prices continue to fall, 9.1 comes out, and I actually look at whether or not TRIM and ZFS can be made to work together on 9.1 or whatever.

 

[Bairesman]

Excellent thread, thanks jgreco and all for contributing. I have a question related to the mobo, I was wondering if it makes sense to upgrade to the supermicro X10SLH as it supports faster memory, 6 Sata3 ports and keeps the micro atx form factor. Thoughts?

 

[jgreco]

I would say I won't list them until someone's actually done it and can confirm the level of driver support for the onboard networks under both FreeNAS 8 and FreeNAS 9. I would not consider it a risky hardware purchase as long as you didn't mind the likely possibility that you might need an older Intel PCIe ethernet card on FreeNAS 8. I believe that one of the two ports are supported on FreeNAS 9 as it stands, but the proof is always when someone does it and it actually works.

 

[Bairesman]

I just realized the Supermicro X9SCM motherboard wont fit the Fractal Node 304 case as the first one is Micro ATX while the second one allows only mini ITX. Am I missing something here? Are there any good Mini ITX motherboard to recommend that will work well and also fit the case? (I know it is supposed to be the other way around though as you should always finish with case). Thanks, Martin

 

[jgreco]

I just realized the Supermicro X9SCM motherboard wont fit the Fractal Node 304 case as the first one is Micro ATX while the second one allows only mini ITX. Am I missing something here? Are there any good Mini ITX motherboard to recommend that will work well and also fit the case? (I know it is supposed to be the other way around though as you should always finish with case). Thanks, Martin

There have been some people talking about a little Intel mini-ITX board S1200KP or its successor. I usually do not list hardware I haven't seen, used, or had multiple reports of success. But it is what I'd look at for mini-ITX.

 

[Bairesman]

I finally gave up on trying to use the Fractal Node 304 case for the NAS I am trying to build. Mainly because the support of mITX motherboards is very limited, so you only have a few options to choose from and in case you want ECC support you pretty much have only one. I thought I'd share with you the results of my small research about mATX cases. This is what I have found so far:

1) LIAN LI PC-V354B
2) Silverstone TJ08B-E
3) Silverstone PS07B
4) Fractal Design Define Mini Case

Once again thanks for all the material available in this forum.
Best,
Martin
PS: One last thought on the mITX cases, given the lack of options I recommend amending the OP to include an mATX case as well. As I said on a previous post I only realized about this when I was half-way down the road and by then I desperately tried to find the mobo to fit the case when it should have been the other way around. My 2 cents

 

[Wyl]

I just realized the Supermicro X9SCM motherboard wont fit the Fractal Node 304 case

I have been having this debate as well... But came to the same conclution as you did about the Micro-case vs. the Mini case. Mobo first, case second!

I chose the LIAN LI PC-V354B.

 

[Bairesman]

I chose the LIAN LI PC-V354B.

Same here!

 

[jgreco]

How about you guys both take a few minutes to outline the good, the bad, and the ugly about that chassis? It looks like an interesting option.

 

[Bairesman]

How about you guys both take a few minutes to outline the good, the bad, and the ugly about that chassis? It looks like an interesting option.

I would love to, but I wont have it in my hands before the end of August when I plan on visiting the US... sorry! That being said I will be glad to write a review then, if we don't have one earlier.

 

[Wyl]

I just started building me NAS... Trying to buy everything on sale. So far, I have installed my RoseWill 350w Platinum PS ($95CAN), 4x 3Tb WD Red Drives ($129CAN), and a Samsung 120Gb SSD ($80CAN).

So far, I LOVE the Lian-Li case. It's hand bent Aluminium first of all. No ugly corners, just smooth edges. I really like the minimalist look as well. It has super nice rubber feet as well. The HD Cages are well thought out, and it comes with 3 fans.
Fews things I dislike. There is some wasted space in the unit. I think it could have been a few centimetre smaller in a few areas. And who needs space for a DVD bay anymore?! If they had removed that door... it would be almost perfect case!

I'll start a new thread when I have finally completed my NAS.

 

[Bairesman]

I just started building me NAS... Trying to buy everything on sale. So far, I have installed my RoseWill 350w Platinum PS ($95CAN), 4x 3Tb WD Red Drives ($129CAN), and a Samsung 120Gb SSD ($80CAN).

So far, I LOVE the Lian-Li case. It's hand bent Aluminium first of all. No ugly corners, just smooth edges. I really like the minimalist look as well. It has super nice rubber feet as well. The HD Cages are well thought out, and it comes with 3 fans.
Fews things I dislike. There is some wasted space in the unit. I think it could have been a few centimetre smaller in a few areas. And who needs space for a DVD bay anymore?! If they had removed that door... it would be almost perfect case!

I'll start a new thread when I have finally completed my NAS.

Boy, that is one busy case. Will it make sense to consider a modular PSU? I am not a big fan of all those cables, I know they can be arranged a bit, but still...

 

[Wyl]

I am cable organizing obsessed... I will make sure the cables are perfect! I picked that RoseWill Platinum PSU because Newegg had it on sale for $80. The next closest Platinum PUS was $100+

 

[scotch_tape]

Sorry, I absolutely HATE that case. The motherboard directly attaches to the right side case panel and not to an inner frame so reasonable cable routing within the case looks as insane as the pic above shows it to be. Additionally the power supply is right in front of the motherboard as shown above. Do you need to get near the motherboard for any reason? Yep, pull out the power supply. After I couldn't stand mine any more, I could not even give the case away! It went out with the trash.

 

[Sir.Robin]

Been looking at Lian-li V650 myself, but it only has two hotswap bays and sucky cable management. Define Mini i can recomend though.
Also, the new Corsair Carbide 330 R looks really nice. Althoug a bit large.

 

[volo]

Hi. First of all, amazing post! I just joined the forums and I'm in the period of selecting which parts I will buy for setting up my system.

I was opting for the X9SCM-F and Xeon E3-1220 v2 combo that you recommended and I realized that newegg.com has the newer Supermicro X10SLM-F board and Xeon E3-1220 v3.
The interesting thing is that the price for both options is almost exactly the same, and for that reason I was wondering about the benefits of each alternative. The main thing that came to my mind is that the v3 xeon processor consumes higher power than the v2.

Another thing I wanted to ask you about is the PSU. I'm considering the SeaSonic G Series SSR-450RM but I'm not sure if maybe the 550W version is more suitable for my setup. I think 450W will be more than enough since I'll only be starting with 3x2TB Seagate Barracuda drives and 16GB RAM. Of course, I want to be able to up my storage capacity in the future.

Well I thank you in advance for your thoughts on the subject.
Best regards.

 

[survive]

Hi volo,

I would thin the 450W PSU would be a better choice.

I run an i3-2100....erm, just look at my sig below.....and I use about 145W when my system is doing a scrub. The system idles at around 105W.

With a modern board & proc with less than a dozen drives your biggest problem is finding a high-quality 80+ gold PSU that's actually small enough that it gets enough load to operate in the fat part of the efficiency curve. Any "gold" PSU from a quality maker (e.g. Seasonic, Corsair or Antec) is going to have plenty of headroom to power up the drives when you turn the system on. Honestly, I'd be running a SeaSonic G-Series 360W if it came with modular cables.

Re: Board\proc choice:

The Haswel chips are rated to consume around the same max wattage for a given chip tier but internally they do more work per watt.....I think they bench out an maybe 15% faster than an equivalent Ive Bridge chip. The newer (X10) boards come with the latest generation of Intel NIC hardware...if it were my money being spent I would confirm that FN 9.1 supports them and if it does that's what I would get (I would most likely roll my ESXi box over to it, but that's a bit out of scope here).

-Will

 

[ix400]

Hi there,

currently I have about 28Tb of data stored on my unraid server. Since the performance of this server is very low, I had the idea to build a really big FreeNAS server.

The hardware recoomendations in this thread are nice, but all the recommended systems max out at 32GB of RAM. Since I would like to use ZFS and I will probably need more than 32TB of disk space quite soon, a system with more than 32GB of RAM would make sense.

Any recommendations for a system that can have 64GB or even more RAM? CPU Power is not so important for me. Important is loads of ECC-RAM and low power consumption.

Sorry for my bad English,
Chris

 

[cyberjock]

If you go with 1366 hardware you can go to 48GB+. Otherwise you are looking at socket 2011 stuff(and certainly server grade stuff). I'd look at Supermicro boards that are socket 2011.

 

[ix400]

Thanks.
I just had a quick look, the Xeons that can handle more than 32GB of RAM are all quite power hungry. At least 80W TDP.

Do you think a system with such a Xeon, a Supermicro board, 64GB RAM, controller card and 10 4TB drives will stay below 100W when being idle with the drives spun down?

Since I'm planning to run the system 24/7, I would like to get an idea how much power it will need.

Cheers,
Chris