Fishbits

Sparkie, thanks for the info. I'm just getting back to looking at all this again and unfortunately missed the rebate time limit Thanks everyone for the responses so far. At this point, after reading more posts and talking to friends, it sounds like the Gigabyte board is going to be my winner. Going to slap 2GB of ram on it as well. Now I'm just trying to decide on the case My local Fry's has the Stacker 830 for a decent price. It's a little large, but they don't carry anything else with 9 front bays like the Coolermaster Centurion 590. Any other opinions out there on PSUs? I'm starting light with only 3 or 4 drives, but I'm building to max out at 15. Initial drives are all 500GB SATA II. Probably going to load the case with some good 120mm fans as well. Any recommendations for quiet fans? I'm using a SilenX iXtrema 120mm fan with my HTPC and love how quiet it is.

Thanks for the info guys. Sparkie, for the corsair memory, I can't find any specific parts called out on the Gigabyte website's compatibility list. I've never really had any problems with board/ram matching in the past, but since everyone here seems to have a lot of experience with this specific hardware I figure it won't hurt to ask This seems to be my DDR2 800 option from newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145040 Thoughts? I appreciate the help guys. I'm hoping to have everything sorted out and ordered in the next week or so.

I'm looking to order parts and build my first unRAID rig in the next couple of weeks. A couple of things are on sale right now, so I wanted to run my current parts list past this forum to seek advice, corrections, confirmations... I've only been looking into this recently and haven't had time to bring myself completely up to speed on parts. Hopefully this will be a good kickstart for me and help get things rolling. Since the P5B-VM DO boards are all but extinct now, I've been looking at some of the more frequently mentioned alternatives. The ABIT AB9 Pro is currently on sale at NewEgg, plus there is a MIR that knocks the total price down to $49.99. I am currently thinking either that board or the Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3R. So, my parts list so far: Mobo: Abit AB9 Pro Mobo-alternate: GA-EP35-DS3R Memory: Crucial Ballistix (2 x 1GB) - I know I only need 1GB total, but the price delta between 1GB and 2GB is marginal so why not future proof. Memory -- If I get the Abit mobo: DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model BL2KIT12864AA804 Memory -- If I get the Gigabyte mobo: DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model BL2KIT12864AA804 Case: Coolermaster Stacker 830 CPU: E4500 Allendale Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz Video: Something cheap, possibly passively cooled SATA Backplane: AMS 5-in-3 backplane -- Likely just buy all 3 of these at once to keep it looking tidy. PSU: haven't decided yet. Sounds like the current line of thought is to get something with a single 12V rail to better handle the draw during startup. The boards all have built in LAN support, but it seem like a fair number of posts here show people also buying dedicated cards. I'll probably try the onboard in the beginning unless someone thinks that is a bad idea. I don't mind dropping $50 on a NIC card. (How would this do: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833106005 ??) I can't wait to get something put together so I can resume ripping my library. I've currently got a pair of 500GB drives in my HTPC that are quickly approaching capacity. Any advice is appreciated!!

Thanks!

After reading up on unRAID for a while, I'm getting close to taking the plunge and setting something up. The P5B-VM DO seems to be very popular, but after looking around I can't find any vendors that still sell it. Does anyone know of an online retailer that still offers it? Are the any other recommendations for an equivalent? Failing that, I guess it's time for a long research session. -Thanks