What do you think of these parts for $250? First venture into Unraid, help me

[Gigahertz21]

My media collection is growing and right now I have everything on USB external hard drives, around 3TB of stuff that is not protected.  I was first planning on doing a WHS build but someone mentioned using Unraid and after doing some reading, I think I'm going to try it out since the file duplication feature in WHS sucks big time compared to Unraid from what I've read.  Everything that will be stored on the server will be media files and I have a built in Gigabit network in my house that the Unraid box will connect to.  I'm a little hesitant since I've never messed with Linux/RAID before but I'm going to try out the free version of Unraid first and if I can get Sabnzbd/Sickbeard/Couchpotato setup correctly then I'll eventually buy the Plus version of Unraid.  I also plan on buying a couple of the Western Digital 2TB Caviar green drives to populate my Unraid box once I get one, and then transfer all of my media files over to them.

 

I was thinking of just building my own Unraid box but this guy on Craigslist is selling the below for $250, what do you think of the parts/price for this Unraid box?  It looks like a decent deal to me especially since the Promise SATA 300 TX4 cards sell new for $70 on Newegg and this deal includes 4 of them.  The only issues might be the amount of memory which I can upgrade and the mobo from what I've searched, does not have a Gigabit LAN port.   Specs and Pics below:

 

 

1X COOLER MASTER STACKER 810 12 BAYS ALUMINUM SERVER CASE WITH 4 WHEELS (MINOR SCRATCH)

 

1X INTEL 945 GNT Motherboard (NEW TESTED - APPROVED UNRAID SERVER BOARD)

 

1X INTEL CORE2DUO WITH 8 HEAT PIPE CPU COOLER (NEW TESTED - INSTALLED ON THE MB)

 

2X 512MB RAM (INSTALLED ON THE MB)

 

4X PROMISE SATA 300 TX4 RAID CARD (16 SATA HDD RAID READY)

 

2X 4GB PATRIOT USB THUMB DRIVE (BLANK)

 

4 HOTSWAP REMOVABLE ICYDOCK WITH ONE KEY (INSTALLED - INSIDE CASE)

 

4 SATA CABLES

 

1 120MM QUITE CASE FAN

 

1 ANTEC 500W QUIET SMART POWER SUPPLY (INSTALLED - INSIDE CASE)

 

1 R/W DVD/CD DRIVE WITH IDE CABLE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[jortan]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think those 4 PCI slots share a maximum bandwidth of 132MB/sec. This isn't a problem if you're only writing to one or two drives at a time (as you might be with WHS), but as you add more drives the system is going to get slower and slower.  You can alleviate this somewhat with a cache drive, but doing parity checks/rebuilds is going to take forever, at 16 drives, you're looking at a maximum theoretical speed of 8.25MB/sec.

[Gigahertz21]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think those 4 PCI slots share a maximum bandwidth of 132MB/sec. This isn't a problem if you're only writing to one or two drives at a time (as you might be with WHS), but as you add more drives the system is going to get slower and slower.  You can alleviate this somewhat with a cache drive, but doing parity checks/rebuilds is going to take forever, at 16 drives, you're looking at a maximum theoretical speed of 8.25MB/sec.

 

So what motherboard would you go with then?

[jortan]

The limit I mentioned is not specific to that board, it's a limit of the old PCI slot and the reason we now have PCI-E.  It seems like a good deal on the face of it, but the PCI issue combined with the lack of gigabit ethernet - I think you'd be better off spending some more on a build that will last.

 

Raj has done a lot of great work producing builds for various drive quantities and budgets:

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=7998.0

 

In the section "unRAID Compulsive Design"

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?board=39.0

 

For discussion about particular motherboards:

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?board=9.0

[SSD]

16 drives on the PCI bus would be miserable. You need to use PCIe controllers like the SuperMicro AOC-SASLP-MV8.

 

Also, 1G is a bit small for memory. Although it will work, you might be limited in addons you can run. I'd recommend 2-4G RAM.

 

Gigabit NIC is also necessary for good performance.

[gfjardim]

It should give you a quick start at WHS, but like bjp999 said, unRAID need good bandwidth in controllers and disks, and this means PCIe buses. There are more potential issues. Old PSU with stressed capacitors can fail or deteriorates it's electrical efficiency. Old CPUs means higher idle power consumption, etc...

 

 

 

 

[Gigahertz21]

Thanks for the help/info, I guess I'll stay away from the parts I posted.

[Rajahal]

Looks like the same package is now for sale on eBay for $200 (with $50 shipping, but maybe you live near this guy?):

 

http://compare.ebay.com/like/180652419711?var=lv&ltyp=AllFixedPriceItemTypes&var=sbar&_lwgsi=y

 

I think that's actually a pretty decent package.  It will be slow by today's standards, but it will should work reliably.  It contains everything you need to get unRAID up and running, even flash drives.  The case alone is worth at least $100, and it can certainly be re-used in future builds.  I'm a bit wary of the motherboard - the seller claims it is unRAID compatible, but I don't see it in the forums or on the wiki.  Still, I haven't heard of a single Intel board that didn't work with unRAID.  The megabit LAN issue is easily fixed with a $30 PCI or PCIe Gigabit LAN card.  RAM is easily upgraded, though 1 GB will do for basic streaming (probably not for Sabnzbd/Sickbeard/Couchpotato though).  The TX4 cards are solid performers, just slow compared to PCIe cards.  It looks like the motherboard does have a PCIe x16 and PCIe x1 slot, so you can add some faster cards if needed.

 

Bottom line is that I believe this is a pretty good deal for that amount of hardware.  It looks like a ready-to-go set to me, it should work with unRAID right away.  You could then upgrade it over time to improve performace (add a Gigabit NIC, replace PCI SATA cards with PCIe cards, upgrade RAM, add more hot swap bays, etc.).  I think those kind of slow upgrade projects are fun.  However, if you prefer to build a server that will allow you to 'set it and forget it,' then this is not the package for you.  My prototype builds thread will give you an idea of what kind of storage capacity you can expect for different budgets.  From there you can decide how much you want to spend, and then start choosing parts.

[Gigahertz21]

Looks like the same package is now for sale on eBay for $200 (with $50 shipping, but maybe you live near this guy?):

 

http://compare.ebay.com/like/180652419711?var=lv&ltyp=AllFixedPriceItemTypes&var=sbar&_lwgsi=y

 

I think that's actually a pretty decent package.  It will be slow by today's standards, but it will should work reliably.  It contains everything you need to get unRAID up and running, even flash drives.  The case alone is worth at least $100, and it can certainly be re-used in future builds.  I'm a bit wary of the motherboard - the seller claims it is unRAID compatible, but I don't see it in the forums or on the wiki.  Still, I haven't heard of a single Intel board that didn't work with unRAID.  The megabit LAN issue is easily fixed with a $30 PCI or PCIe Gigabit LAN card.  RAM is easily upgraded, though 1 GB will do for basic streaming (probably not for Sabnzbd/Sickbeard/Couchpotato though).  The TX4 cards are solid performers, just slow compared to PCIe cards.  It looks like the motherboard does have a PCIe x16 and PCIe x1 slot, so you can add some faster cards if needed.

 

Bottom line is that I believe this is a pretty good deal for that amount of hardware.  It looks like a ready-to-go set to me, it should work with unRAID right away.  You could then upgrade it over time to improve performace (add a Gigabit NIC, replace PCI SATA cards with PCIe cards, upgrade RAM, add more hot swap bays, etc.).  I think those kind of slow upgrade projects are fun.  However, if you prefer to build a server that will allow you to 'set it and forget it,' then this is not the package for you.  My prototype builds thread will give you an idea of what kind of storage capacity you can expect for different budgets.  From there you can decide how much you want to spend, and then start choosing parts.

 

Ok cool, thanks for the post.  I'll have to look for newer parts and see what I can come up with, gonna just build my own.