Taking the plunge and dipping my toes into building a NAS. I'm trying to start out small and use the components I already have on hand, which consists of a Core2Duo CPU and 8Gb of RAM running on a P5BW-LA motherboard. Unfortunately, the motherboard's build in NIC is a Intel 82562V PHY that's only capable of 100Mbits. It also doesn't have integrated graphics.
My original plan is to use a old PCI-E Graphics card in the PCI-E slot, thus requiring me to purchase a 1Gbit PCI (Not PCI-E) NIC. However, the ones I've found on amazon are all realtek (Realtek RTL8169SC and RTL8110SC) and this forum is littered with people reporting trouble with realtek NICs. I'm looking for a $20 1Gbit PCI NIC off amazon/newegg/ebay that will play nice with unraid. The Realtek RTL8169SC claims that it's Linux supported.
My other option is to configure the NAS using the graphics card and then replacing it with a 1Gbit PCI-E NIC. However, my research didn't yield any definitive answers on if this would work.
