April 10, 201214 yr Question: All these threads concentrate on the cheapest "new" hardware to run unraid. Ok, there's plenty of options for $200-300, but let me propose another question? What works on the "used/cheap" end. Think $50 boxes on craigslist, or junk you have laying around? What does this really need to work well other than a server with a bunch of SATA ports? What CPU speeds are needed? What's the biggest drawback to older hardware -- just disk write speed?
April 10, 201214 yr A lot of old, used, and surplus hardware will work well with unRAID. The biggest drawbacks are typically high power consumption, high heat/noise, and price. Sure, you might be able to score a used motherboard for $30, but a new one only costs $50-$60. The savings on used parts often don't amount to much, plus you generally don't have a warranty to fall back on. Still, if you've got old hardware laying around the house, then by all means whip up an unRAID server. You've got nothing to lose! Other considerations: Number of SATA ports (more is better) Number of SATA controllers built into motherboard (if there are more than one you may have problems, or only one may work) NIC type (many are compatible, some are not. It can be very difficult to figure out if a NIC will or will not work without a hands-on test.) Motherboard's ability to boot from a USB flash drive (many older motherboards cannot boot from a USB device, but there are work-arounds such as the kicker disk) Expansion slots (AGP is no good for SATA drives, PCI is slow, and PCI-X is fast enough but obsolete) Things that don't really matter for basic unRAID use: CPU speed and number or cores RAM speed and number of channels
April 10, 201214 yr One other item - it is generally best to avoid older / re-used power supplies. They are subject to ageing effects (often more so than the other parts) and after a few years they often cannot deliver the power for which they were originally designed. When they fail, the problems are often hard to diagnose, and so I would only recommend second hand supplies for small systems / testing, but I would invest in a new supply for a server that I want to be reliable for a few years.
April 10, 201214 yr running unraid 5b12a on a P5b - plus with a core 2duo processor .... runs OK i guess everything from a P5 asus board and up will more or less run... just have to figure out some bios settings... and be sure if you want to use the VGA pci slot if it supports non vga cards only drawback in my case so far is that i guess he is a bit power hungry and maximum 20 drives ....unless you use the esata port like me with a duplicator to add 2 drives .... which sometimes doesn't make my array start after boot.... need to reboot the esata enclosure and after that undraid finds both disks and i can start the array ... Since i only reboot once a month or so is this a minor issue for me .... there are a few more guys here that are using P5 boards and a8n boards .... without many issues....
April 12, 201214 yr All are good points, and as pointed out. if you are trying to "upgrade" with an older board, things like ram will cost up to 6x what the modern ram costs (unless you gamble on used from ebay). Also older boards may have slower 100Mbit NIC cards or even one that may be questional like an athros. as mentioned, the biggest issue will probably be the USB boot. You do have to remember, unRAID was built to run on older equipment, but the HCL was smaller then. There are still P4 based builds out there with IDE drives even... but not many these days. I would suggest that IF you already had the equipment, give it a try on the free version. If you have to buy the used gear, you might not be saving anything by the time you get the system running. not to mention possible headaches. One option people have done, upgrade their main pc and use the old parts for the server (thats how a lot of home servers start).
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