Changing my unraid server?


griffer

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I have been running unraid for some weeks now, and am really happy with it.

I am thinking of selling my old gaming rig, but don't know if it will be put at better use as my unraid server.

 

It's a core2duo 2,6ghz with 2gigs of ram.

 

as opposed to my current server which is a

 

1,8ghz celeron with 1gig of ram.

 

I currently have 4 500gig sata drives, and don't really have any problems with speed.

 

What do you recon? Am i gonna be sorry later i didn't take this chance to upgrade the hardware, or do you think my current box will be adequate for some time?

 

Im currently not running my network at 1gbit, but thinking about it, i guess the core2duo machine would be able to handle that better?

 

Thanks in advance :)

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The important things to have in an unRAID server are:

 

1 - Lots of SATA ports.  You do not want them to be on your "PCI" bus.  The PCI bus can be an unRAID bottleneck.  Most MB SATA ports are good, but occasionally some of them are using an addon controler and are on the PCI bus.  The current high water mark (I think) is 9 ports for the ABIT board.  A bunch have 8.  Older ones have 4 or 6.

 

2 - A Gigabit controler that is NOT on the PCI bus.  Similar issue to above - you do not want it on the PCI bus.  Most newer MBs are good.  Marvel is common and well supported, as are Intel and others.

 

3 - Some people like on-board video so that you don't waste their PCIE x16 slot on video.  Some people buy cheap PCI (not PCIE) video cards because they use less power and free up that slot.

 

4 - Fast and wide add on SATA controllers can be plugged into the PCIE x16 slot (but they are pricy).  There is a $100 4 drive card that uses an x4 slot or faster, that would work here.  Many motherboards come with 2 x1 slots and 1x16 slot.  Pretty standard.  Mine has one x4 slot and one x16 slot + on board video.

 

A faster CPU, more memory (used for caching but not a big deal for most users), super graphics card, etc. are all pretty meaningless to unRAID, at least right now.  There is ongoing dialog concerning how to add software to an unRAID server to get it to do other stuff, like play music, serve video, host virtual machines, etc.  When (if) these become a reality, more horsepower may become important.

 

So, if your gaming rig has got 8 SATA ports and your current server has 4, and they both support gigabit controlers, I'd switch.  Otherwise I see no real reason to do so.

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