Which direction to go? Pre-Built or Self-Build?

[jgreco]

Over here (US), I'm seeing a starting price of $59 and a buy-it-now of $79 which would be fairly compelling if I were making a standalone NAS. (Note to self: review if we need any...) The board price isn't particularly compelling since the cost new was probably about $160 about five years ago, and there'd be no Supermicro warranty.

What density and speed is the RAM? Sandy does up to 1333 while Ivy does 1600. If that's two sticks of 1333 or 1600, the RAM might be a good deal. The usual part numbers are KVR16E11/8 (1600, eBay seems about $60/stick) or KVR1333D3E9S/8G (1333, also ~$60/stick on eBay).

 

[Samuel Matthews]

I need to get myself a place to live in the US with those prices! Component prices over here is ridiculous compared.

The RAM has a model number of KVR16E11/8. Looks to be 8GB modules, DDR3 EEC, 1600MHz PC312800 DIMM.

 

[jgreco]

I saw a "ships worldwide" on one of those boards, I believe.

 

[Samuel Matthews]

Would this be the product you're referring too? - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SuperMicr...532020?hash=item33b0434a34:g:rM0AAOSwIwhWT3dZ

 

[jgreco]

That appears to be the UK version of the link I posted, so, yes.

 

[Samuel Matthews]

I'm sorry, I didn't see that you had linked your text. I read that post on my phone while out and didn't pay attention to it being hyperlinked. My apologies. Right okay, so you think that would be a pretty sturdy starter board for someone just getting into NAS solutions then?

I noticed, while reading through the hardware recommendation topics, that Kingston is a good brand for memory but because of the model numbers its like a game of hit and miss. I'm sure I also read about samsung being a pretty good make for server RAM. What would you personally recommend me to check out?

 

[jgreco]

As long as there's no reason to think that you would exceed 32GB of RAM, it is a very sturdy, well-liked general purpose server board that is not only appropriate to FreeNAS, but also VMware or Linux as well.

 

[Samuel Matthews]

I won't be upgrading past the 32GB any time soon. I have my 1U poweredge for my ESXi needs for now, so i'm safe there. Now time for a CPU and RAM.

This has just caught my eyes while I was scrolling through eBay. I've been looking at getting an E3-1220 v2 for the CPU, and they're going for around £140 on eBay UK. Considering this price I feel that this little package is a nice bang for the buck.

Also, the guy has got back to me regarding the SuperMicro X9SCM-F-O and 2x8GB RAM, he said he would do all three pieces for £179. Now, this is just the Mobo and 16gb RAM, no cooler or CPU. So would you sway me towards the deal linked in this comment?

The Memory in the link is "Kingston 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Unbuffered DDR3 1600 Server Memory Model KVR16E11K4/32". The datasheet is here.

There is also this I found here - Would I struggle to mount this into a rack chassis later on down the line though, would it only fit into a Dell rack mount chassis?

Obviously, with the last solution I linked, I would have to purchase extra RAM for it, as 4gb isn't enough. Just letting you know I would have to do that.

I'll be honest and admit that I think the first link is the better of the 3 here even though I would have a charge of $68 import fees.

EDIT: Combined last 3 replies into this reply to make it more simple to understand. Could a moderator please delete the following two comments made by myself as I can't delete them.

 

[Samuel Matthews]

This has just caught my eyes while I was scrolling through eBay. I've been looking at getting a E3-1220 v2 for the CPU, and they're going for around £140 on eBay UK. Considering this price i feel that this little package is a nice bang for the buck.

Also, the guy has got back to me regarding the SuperMicro X9SCM-F-O and 2x8GB RAM, he said he would do all three pieces for £179. Now, this is just the Mobo and 16gb RAM, no cooler or CPU. So would you sway me towards the deal linked in this comment?

The Memory in the link is "Kingston 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Unbuffered DDR3 1600 Server Memory Model KVR16E11K4/32". The datasheet is here.

There is also this I found here - Would i struggle to mount this into a rack chassis later on down the line though, would it only fit into a Dell rack mount chassis?

 

[Samuel Matthews]

Obviously, with the last solution i linked, i would have to purchase extra RAM for it, as 4gb isn't enough. Just letting you know i would have to do that.

I'll be honest and admit that i think the first link is the better of the 3 here even though i would have a charge of $68 import fees.

 

[jgreco]

There's one minor downside to the E3-1220 v2, which is that it doesn't have hyperthreading. Having a fairly high clock rate CPU that only has four cores is plenty fine for a typical home FreeNAS, but if you're going to be doing extra stuff, then do be aware that the 1220v2 hits a Geekbench of around 9000 while the 1230v2 hits a Geekbench of around 12000. If you are not planning to do a lot of transcoding on Plex, it's probably just fine.

 

[Samuel Matthews]

I'm just wondering how 'crappy' running a Asrock C2550D4I would be... There are so many guides out there that are recommending a Asrock board even though there are even more threads around here telling us that they're not even recommended.

I'll be perfectly honest with you, with the running costs of electric over here in the UK, I'm looking for a low power solution. I want this to be running pretty much 24/7, maybe turned off from 4am to 5pm, while I'm out at work. I want all my encoding done at the device end, so all this needs to be is a file server. I've even gone down the route of looking at a BananaPi, but that just isn't really an option without futher research due to not having enough storage availabilty without using raid cards etc etc.

I REALLY like the look of the software raid and the USB/Flash OS of FreeNAS (Which enables you to take your storage to another device with the OS on the USB/Flash stick, am i correct in that?). This is the major thing for me wanting to use FreeNAS and, simply the amount of support that is available for the first time user for a FreeBSD OS.

 

[Samuel Matthews]

I'm just wondering how 'crappy' running a Asrock C2550D4I would be... There are so many guides out there that are recommending a Asrock board even though there are even more threads around here telling us that they're not even recommended.

I'll be perfectly honest with you, with the running costs of electric over here in the UK, I'm looking for a low power solution. I want this to be running pretty much 24/7, maybe turned off from 4am to 5pm, while I'm out at work. I want all my encoding done at the device end, so all this needs to be is a file server. I've even gone down the route of looking at a BananaPi, but that just isn't really an option without further research due to not having enough storage availability without using raid cards etc etc.

I REALLY like the look of the software raid and the USB/Flash OS of FreeNAS (Which enables you to take your storage to another device with the OS on the USB/Flash stick, am i correct in that?). This is the major thing for me wanting to use FreeNAS and, simply the amount of support that is available for the first time user for a FreeBSD OS.

 

[johnblanker]

Hi, I posted the "is freenas right for me?" Thread. I also posted "cheapest freenas system too". It seems like conserving power is important to u. From what i have read on here, freenas was never designed to be turned off. There are settings to make the hard drives spin down, but it doesnt do off or sleep. Its another one of those "it sucks" things. I was considering a synology nas or a readynas that has support for btrfs. Those things seem to sip wattage. Though they are crazy expensive, have underpowered cpus, and are limited by the drive bays. They have expansion units but they seem to be the same price as the nas units! I looked at almost all of them. With freenas you are getting zfs, a better performing system, expandability, at a much lower cost, and the fun to build it yourself. Not to mention the awesome help u get here. The downside is powered 24/7, can't pop in a single disk to expand, and the learning curve for me is pretty steep. I would say with your experience and the major you are going into, freenas would be a no brainer.

I have settled on the x10-sll-f mobo, with 8GB crucial ecc, and the pentium 3250 cpu. I have everything else. All in all, $250 sits pretty fine by me. Im just going to host my data on it for now, three 1TB hdds. Keep it safe. I will eventually want to host my movies on it and expand to 15TB one i become more familiar with it.

 

[mattbbpl]

Just to be clear, most of the reasons that users around here recommend rarely shutting down your server (i.e. not putting your machine to sleep at certain times every day) also apply to every other NAS solution. This is because those pitfalls exist with the hard drives (reducing their lifespan) rather than the NAS itself.

 

[johnblanker]

I am assuming that the OP was talking about an S3-like sleep state, like my Windows pc. I did not see an option for that in FreeNAS. The only option I saw was the option to spin-down the HDDs. Wouldn't this just be where everything is still on with the HDDs in a low rpm? However, all over this forum they say that this doesn't really even matter because Freenas is always writing to the system anyway so they rarely power down. I am of course repeating common posts I have read. Please correct me if I am wrong.

I'm wondering about all that "on & off is bad for the HDDs". Is there any empirical data that shows the reduction in life span? And I wonder if the data changes with green vs nas drives. I'm not trying to be argumentative I'm just curious about this.

 

[mattbbpl]

If there are, I'm not aware of them (and I'm not a datacenter admin with access to enough machines to verify). I'm just relaying information that people on here and datacenter admins have informed me of. It could be nothing but an old wives' tale, but it's coming from, in part, people who have made a profession out of data safety.

 

[jgreco]

I'm just wondering how 'crappy' running a Asrock C2550D4I would be... There are so many guides out there that are recommending a Asrock board even though there are even more threads around here telling us that they're not even recommended.

What threads are those? The C2750D4I is a nice board, except that the Marvell ports are dodgy. So if you treat it as a six port board, no complaints. The C2550 is basically the same board with less CPU.