What hardware to run of, got a few options. (Recycling is good for the wallet)

[Mr_B]

Intel C2D 8400 (2x3GHz) 65w
AMD Phenom X4 9850 Black Edition (4x2.5GHz) 125w
Phenom X3 8750 Black Edition (2x2.4GHz) 95w

Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS4 (Intel)

Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-DQ6 (AMD)
ASUS M4A785-M (AMD)

The quick rundown:
They all get 8GB RAM. Sadly, 2GB modules is the largest stuff i got laying around.
The Intel has faster RAM. (The AMD boards doesn't support it, refuses to boot for some reason)
Only the ASUS isn't equipped with dual Realtek NIC's.
(2x 8111C chips for the EP45, 2x 8111B for the MA790FX-DQ6, and a single 8112L for the M4A785)
The MA790FX-DQ6 Owns the PCI-E category, and wins hands down. But then again, i'm unlikely to ever run more then possibly one IBM M1015.
The M4A785-M is however the only motherboard to have integrated video. (ATI Radeon HD4200, shared memory, minimum 32MB)
Each motherboard has 6x sATA, 3Gb/s, and they all have at least a PCI port for the crappy SiI3114 "RAID" card i got laying around somewhere to use for starters.

I'm coming from, and will most likely continue to use, a NetGEAR ReadyNAS NV+ with 4 2TB "RAIDX" (RAID 5, with some "grow as you go" feature allowing for upgrades. To bad they forgot to mention that 2TB+ drives wont ever be supported.) The NV+ has a bunch of media features, and torrenting i'm very pleased with, (Even if it's slow as a bugger) not to mention that i don't really have any where to empty the data on it, to decommission it, and reuse the drives for this project. Yeah, i know, backups. I guess i should just admit it. The current NAS isn't backed up, and neither will the next one be. There is nothing on it that i couldn't live without, and anything i really want to save has at least a couple of backups on other harddrives. In the long run, when everything is set up "just so" i can see the NV+ becoming the backup for this new thingy, but i'm more then likely to scrap that concept once the array gets filled up, and move stuff with infrequent access, and low bandwidth needs to the NV+

It's just going to be me using it. It's going to be used as a media server providing stuff for the TV, (DLNA) and, if i can figure out how, it will have a Transmission plugin installed for my torrenting needs. The NV+ has me FTP'ing and using Samba to access it from the PC, mainly since FTP allows for faster access. It's just a poor IT3107 SPARC in there. 260-280 some odd MHz, and a single GB of RAM.

Anyway, enough about me, and my stuff. Which of the above bits should i base my system around? Is there a favoritism AMD VS Intel, more cores vs higher speed single threads, is it worth running a dual NIC setup to my DELL Powerconnect 2724. (It doesn't support LACP, only static LAG trunks. Should work with Load Balance / Round Robin as it IS IEEE802.3ad compliant (LACP isn't mandatory, and hence not included in my sweet toy. Rats.) I think.) I'm slightly favoring the Intel build my self, mainly for the reason that it's a tad more energy conservative. But the more 'equipped' motherboard, and the faster memory is likely to eat up the difference up to the X3 on the ASUS motherboard, and if it doesn't, i still need to find, and stick a GFX in there.

I'm also fairly noobish when it comes to configuring a thing like this, so it's going to be a learning experience. I've managed to survive administering, upgrading, and maintaining my Smoothwall, but thats fairly much "point n' click" the web interface. This thing will more then likely teach me a thing or two. It will be my first encounter with (Free)BSD. It's not like having hardware experience will help much there.

Now it's your turn. Please advice what hardware you think i should put my effort in to, and don't be ashamed. If you feel i should rather go get a second ReadyNAS, just say so. I probably wont, but at least i'll be more prepared for a high entry level, and a mean uphill learning curve.
B!

 

[bollar]

Since your needs appear to be modest, I'd try with the Intel board since that's the one you prefer and see how it goes. It should be plenty to handle your media streaming and Transmission stuff. Since it's just you, I doubt you'll see any benefit from bonding your NICs. Maybe you could have one port for your access and one for rsync to the old ReadyNAS, but I don't think you would notice a throughput difference either way.

Setting up FreeNAS is not particularly difficult, though there are a few gotchas that are difficult to recover from. Experiment with data you don't care about losing, read the manuals, faqs and guides, etc. It took me several builds before I got the configuration that I was really happy with.

 

[Mr_B]

I'll do that. If i experience slowness i suppose the CPU will be "it" and a 3GHz quad for the platform can be had at relatively little money these days, i just rather recycle then start buying stuff of the bat. I'm going to start out with a bunch of "junk" drives, so both performance, and storage space will suffer from the start, once i'm happy with what i've got i'll spring for new drives. At that point, is there anything special to keep in mind? Should one go for the likes of WD's red series, or should you go for anything, just not drives aimed at video surveillance systems?

Will 8GB be enough RAM, or it will be an issue in the long run? It's not going to be a problem when i start playing around with the old drives, but when i pull those and hit new drives an array, even a modest one will contain 6 2-4TB drives mainly depending on the price-tag at the moment...
B!

 

[bollar]

I think hard drives are a near religious discussion. I like and use Seagate drives for most purposes, but you'll find others here who have had horrible experiences with them. If I were buying WD drives, I'd go for the black series, but I doubt it really matters. Although it's probably not a good practice, I have some ancient drives (20K+ hours) on some of my backup servers.

Otherwise, ZFS loves RAM. A rule of thumb that I have been using is 1GB of RAM for every TB of data plus an extra GB for space at a minimum. If you have more RAM, ZFS will use it. 8GB is considered the minimum RAM in the documentation. Hardware Recommendations

 

[cyberjock]

Skip the LACP. For a single user its pointless and only adds more complexity. If you had 7 machines in your house all doing stuff I might reconsider that concept. But for less than 2-3 machines its almost pointless.

8GB of RAM is fine. If you find yourself buying some future 5TB+ drives and 8GB won't cut it, you'll have to factor in a new motherboard, CPU, and RAM. 8GB will be fine for you.

I'm an Intel guy myself. Had bad luck with AMDs, so I'd recommend Intel. Even if i try to accept AMDs as sufficiently powerful and valid options, the Intel is more power efficient and will definitely serve files to 1-2 machines without problems. Power WILL become a long term problem, so plan ahead. Also your C2D is 3Ghz, and samba is single threaded. So Ghz means more than number of cores.

As for NICs, I always recommend Intel. Realtek has performance problems and too many threads have people complain about them. Of course, if you aren't expecting 60MB/sec(which I'd expect 40-60MB/sec from that CPU, but more is possible) then the Realtek NIC will work fine.

 

[Mr_B]

I like and use Seagate drives for most purposes, but you'll find others here who have had horrible experiences with them.

I've been using Seagate mainly for the last 15 years or so, but as of lately i lost confidence in them. I messaged them about what to me seamed like a straight forward question: "What is the warranty time on a retail Pipeline. I'd like to know so i can factor in the warranty as i try to figure out what drives i want to buy" The answers i got back was... Discouraging. You aparently have to buy a drive so that the support can use the online feature to figure out your warranty, coz they have NO IDEA what the drive leaves the factory with...

Otherwise, ZFS loves RAM. A rule of thumb that I have been using is 1GB of RAM for every TB of data plus an extra GB for space at a minimum. If you have more RAM, ZFS will use it. 8GB is considered the minimum RAM in the documentation. Hardware Recommendations

Yeah, i did read that, and thats pretty much why i asked. No point in building a whole system just to find out it wont work when i stick new drives in it.

Skip the LACP. For a single user its pointless and only adds more complexity. If you had 7 machines in your house all doing stuff I might reconsider that concept. But for less than 2-3 machines its almost pointless.

LACP only if i decide i want to challenge my self with reconfiguring the switch, check.

8GB of RAM is fine. If you find yourself buying some future 5TB+ drives and 8GB won't cut it, you'll have to factor in a new motherboard, CPU, and RAM. 8GB will be fine for you.

By the time i find my self looking at 5TB drives, my current "gaming" system will probably be willing to donate it self to the purpose. It has slightly more drive ports, and more memory to boot, with 2 free slots left as it is.

I'm an Intel guy myself. Had bad luck with AMDs, so I'd recommend Intel. Even if i try to accept AMDs as sufficiently powerful and valid options, the Intel is more power efficient and will definitely serve files to 1-2 machines without problems. Power WILL become a long term problem, so plan ahead. Also your C2D is 3Ghz, and samba is single threaded. So Ghz means more than number of cores.

It's not like the damands will be that great. I'm alone, or at least the company i keep get to watch the same media stream as i watch, and i can only use so many sources at the same time.

As for NICs, I always recommend Intel. Realtek has performance problems and too many threads have people complain about them. Of course, if you aren't expecting 60MB/sec(which I'd expect 40-60MB/sec from that CPU, but more is possible) then the Realtek NIC will work fine.

How much trouble is it to switch a running system over to a new NIC then? Just push it in, fire it up, and point at the new NIC, and it's done? (It's my understanding that it should be this simple, and if so, i wont bother with getting a new NIC as of now.)

Thank you both so much.
On a personal note, it's quite a bit of information to take in to figure all this out. It's almost scary. I'm going to try and "go for it" by the weekend, and see if i can get something going, so i at-least have something hands on, which might make the confusion less dominant.
B!

 

[jgreco]

If your networking setup is simple, yes, it's drop-in-and-a-little-config. If you have stuff like vlans or link agg set up, it's a bit more finicky, especially if you end up needing to use the console to regain GUI access, but it's also completely doable.

 

[cyberjock]

While I'm sure that the C2D will meet your electricity power savings needs as well as be powerful enough to run your server, in the worst case you can always replace the motherboard/CPU and if you use the same hard disks and bootable USB drive it should "just work". The only thing that may not work is if a motherboard's onboard LAN isn't supported with FreeBSD.

In short, as long as you have an Intel NIC, SATA ports on your motherboard, and enough RAM you should be able to swap out the system in quick order.