LateNight

Great! Ordered three last week then went to buy more and they were no longer available at that price.

Okay, I was confused my Rembro's comment, "for users who need a connection from the controllercard (Mini-SAS) to 4 single SATA drives or a hotswap cage with a traditional SATA connector (NOT backplane like in the big norco's)."

So NOT suitable for use on the Norco SS-500?

I had to use my email address as my username.

Thanks for the fan help ProfQ. There are some cheaper options but I would rather stick with something that was tested and worked. I'm still waiting for the Norco's and fans to arrive but tonight I plan to put the rest of my components together and run preclear on one of my hard drives.

Any problem with putting this together without the Norco's and running a preclear?

The JetWay JMA3-880GTV2-LF motherboard is back in stock at Newegg.

I just received an email stating that I would not get a tracking number since the units ship directly from the supplier. I'll update as soon as they arrive. I also ordered three Coolink SWiF2-801 fans since ProfQ is having good results using them.

I sent 3BTech an email last night about the Norco SS-500 and received the following reply: "We ship direct from Norco, so their page info will be correct." I'm taking the gamble since it's $87.99 each for three and free shipping.

Thanks for the heads up! I was planning my new build based on 2TB drives but this price was too good.

Thanks Rajahal; The Norco SS-500 it is.

Updated. The Lian Li case was purchased and arrived today. I also purchased 3 Hitachi 3TB drives from Amazon for $106.92/each. The final decision are the hot swap drive bays. Using 3TB drives I could go with three 4x3 or even nine single bays but would I regret it later...the joys of trying to predict the future. Any non cost reasons to go with smaller hot swap bays?

Or the retail version on Amazon for $106.92.

Re: 2TB Hard Drives. Reading the FAQ there doesn't appear to be any "bad" hard drives. Is it still advisable to use different brands when buying at the same time or to space out buying the same model to get a different batch? Any opinions on the following would be helpful (more reliable, faster, better parity drive, lower power, etc): HITACHI Deskstar 5K3000 currently $69.99 with MIR Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARS currently $79.99 Thank again!

Thanks Rembro. I've updated my original post again. Pulled the trigger on the motherboard and the usb adapter.

I may just use Newegg since many companies just use a stock photo. Do you know if these will fit the Lian Li Lancool PC-K12B? The motherboard is now $10 off and free shipping.

Thanks again for the help. How can you differentiate between the old and new model of the Norco SS-500?

Updated the list. It also appears I can buy a used Lian Li Lancool PC-K12B for about the same price as the AZZA. I purchased the Corsair PSU yesterday as it was the last day of the rebate and I've never had problems using them in my builds. I picked the RAM before Rajahal updated his guide but it should work. I see the JetWay now has free shipping.

Any advice on my potential server build would be appreciated. I promise to post pictures when finished! I tried following Raj's Prototype Builds but the motherboard is near impossible to find. I will be using the unRaid server to store pictures, movies for streaming, and document backups. I only have about 2TB of data right now but have yet to rip my DVD collection (200+ movies) and just bought a blu-ray drive. I really like the idea of expanding in the future - maxing at 15 drives when following Raj's upgrade path. I'm not trying to pinch pennies but I am hoping to keeping the initial build under $1K. As far as components here's what I have picked out: Mobo: JetWay JMA3-880GTV2-LF purchased ASUS M4A78LT-M ASUS M4A88T-M LE CPU: AMD Sempron 140 purchased RAM: G.SKILL NS 2GB purchased Kingston ValueRAM 2GB PSU: CORSAIR CMPSU-500CX purchased Case: Lian Li Lancool PC-K12B purchased AZZA Helios 910 Hot Swap Drive Bays: Norco SS-500 purchased Hard Drives: Hitachi Deskstar 3.5 Inch 3TB x5 purchased Western Digital 2TB x5 USB Flash Drive: Lexar JumpDrive FireFly 2GB purchased USB Motherboard Adapter: StarTech purchased ======================================================================================= +Misc cables from Monoprice. Thank you, LateNight