July 13, 201114 yr Hello! I'm looking to build an unRAID machine. While i've been toiling with computers since I was 2, I'm not particularly proficient on the hardware side, so reading through these forums has been a bit of an exercise for me. Can someone point me in the direction of a recommended build that will suit my needs? I notice the ones on the wiki haven't been updated in about 8 months, and I imagine some things have changed in that time. I see that Raj has rather a lot of builds put together, so perhaps one of those is the answer. Here are my plans for the system: At first I will just use it as storage until I learn the ins and outs of the system. (I've never used Linux.) Eventually I would be glad for it to run as a torrent box and to serve as a Plex machine able to output HD video to one screen at a time. I have a large amount of hard drives stacked up at home that I'd like to use. I can probably supply around 15 drives at the moment. I very much appreciate your assistance. The kind and helpful community here is what spurred me in to this project. Thank you kindly! EDIT - Should I just run with Raj's "15 Drive Budget Box?" 15 Drive Budget Box Mobo: JetWay JMA3-880GTV2-LF CPU: AMD Sempron 140 RAM: Kingston 2GB DDR3 1333 PSU: CORSAIR Builder Series CX500 V2 500W Case: AZZA Helios 910 SATA Expansion Cards: Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 8-Port SAS/SATA Add-on Card 2 Port SATA Serial ATA PCI RAID Controller Card - Silicon Image Cables: 0.5m 30AWG Internal Mini SAS 36pin (SFF-8087) Male w/ Latch to SATA 7pin Female (x4) Forward Breakout Cable x 2 Hot Swap Drive Bays: Norco SS-500 x 3 Cost: $675 + shipping + cost of hard drives Capacity: 28 TB Expandability: None.
July 14, 201114 yr Hello! I'm looking to build an unRAID machine. While i've been toiling with computers since I was 2, I'm not particularly proficient on the hardware side, so reading through these forums has been a bit of an exercise for me. Can someone point me in the direction of a recommended build that will suit my needs? I notice the ones on the wiki haven't been updated in about 8 months, and I imagine some things have changed in that time. I see that Raj has rather a lot of builds put together, so perhaps one of those is the answer. Here are my plans for the system: At first I will just use it as storage until I learn the ins and outs of the system. (I've never used Linux.) Eventually I would be glad for it to run as a torrent box and to serve as a Plex machine able to output HD video to one screen at a time. I have a large amount of hard drives stacked up at home that I'd like to use. I can probably supply around 15 drives at the moment. I very much appreciate your assistance. The kind and helpful community here is what spurred me in to this project. Thank you kindly! EDIT - Should I just run with Raj's "15 Drive Budget Box?" 15 Drive Budget Box Mobo: JetWay JMA3-880GTV2-LF CPU: AMD Sempron 140 RAM: Kingston 2GB DDR3 1333 PSU: CORSAIR Builder Series CX500 V2 500W Case: AZZA Helios 910 SATA Expansion Cards: Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 8-Port SAS/SATA Add-on Card 2 Port SATA Serial ATA PCI RAID Controller Card - Silicon Image Cables: 0.5m 30AWG Internal Mini SAS 36pin (SFF-8087) Male w/ Latch to SATA 7pin Female (x4) Forward Breakout Cable x 2 Hot Swap Drive Bays: Norco SS-500 x 3 Cost: $675 + shipping + cost of hard drives Capacity: 28 TB Expandability: None. If you want to eventually run torrents and Plex off the box then an upgrade to a dual core processor and more RAM would be in order.
July 14, 201114 yr Author Ah, I was deathly afraid someone was going to say something like that. The more RAM is no big deal, I can just order another of the same stick (I assume.) But I am at a loss when shopping for processors. Can you recommend one that will work with the rest of my parts and suit my eventual needs?
July 14, 201114 yr A little bit of research shows that the mobo will support any Sempron 100 series, AthlonII or PhenomII processor. The Phenom range goes up to six core, which would be overkill. Perhaps an AthlonII two core would be adequate. If you really fancy lots of power, then this one would fit the bill!
July 14, 201114 yr Author Thank you for the reply and for doing the research for me. How much processing power would I need for Plex and torrents? Would a dual core like this suffice? I wouldn't need a stronger power supply or anything if I got a dual-core or quad-core processor? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103903&cm_re=Athlon_II-_-19-103-903-_-Product (Not sure how to make that link look pretty. Sorry about that.)
July 14, 201114 yr Thank you for the reply and for doing the research for me. How much processing power would I need for Plex and torrents? I'm not familiar with Plex and its processing requirements. As for torrents, they don't use a huge amount of processor resource, so I suspect that the dual core Athlon would be sufficient. I just wonder whether an additional core might be useful if you should find further applications to run on your unRAID server. For instance, I run SqueezeBoxServer and a mail server (Dovecot) on mine. Would a dual core like this suffice? I wouldn't need a stronger power supply or anything if I got a dual-core or quad-core processor? Mo, compared with the requirements of the disk drives, processor power requirement is minimal these days. It's some of the high powered graphics cards which really suck up the power. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103903&cm_re=Athlon_II-_-19-103-903-_-Product (Not sure how to make that link look pretty. Sorry about that.) That one should be fine.
July 14, 201114 yr Author Gotchya. So the dual core should be sufficient, but a quad core may open the door to more functionality. I will take a look at the available apps and see what looks appealing. Hard to imagine doing anything else with this box besides running my media center. Cheers! Thanks for the assistance!
July 15, 201114 yr I don't think anyone has successfully gotten their unRAID server to double as an HTPC (Plex or otherwise) at this point. It is possible to pull it off using VMs, but it is a lot of work. It is much easier to just build a separate HTPC that interfaces with the server over the network. Plex and XBMC do have database functions that can run on the server, but I don't think you need fancy hardware for that. Torrents love RAM, so go for 4 or 8 GBs if you plan on running lots of torrents.
July 16, 201114 yr Author Ah thank you for that, Raj. I've got an old MacBook Pro (the very first version of that computer) that's been trucking along for more than 5 years now and is able to run Plex, Transmission, and Automatic ably. If I can offload Transmission to the unRAID machine then maybe it will continue to cover the other programs for a good while longer. Alright, I've got a solid plan now. I'll get a dual core chip and 4GB Ram. Thank you all for the help!
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