June 13, 201214 yr Nice, don't see why the mini-ITX version wouldn't work good then. Have you ever used ESXi before? You'd be able to host unRAID on there, plus a few more servers (windows, linux, etc) depending on your final hardware configuration. There's also a server grade board I'm looking at as well: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121553 I shouldn't have read these boards over the past few days - my possible build keeps getting more and more expensive Raland's review of that board says "Also for all the people looking at this board for VM's. It does NOT support VT-d while the DQ does. I really can't figure out what Intel was thinking, leaving this feature off a Server board that was seemingly custom made for VM labs yet including it on a consumer workstation board." I will confirm the DQ does support VT-d.. but the NIC is not supported by ESXi 5.x
June 13, 201214 yr Author The NIC is not supported? ... that's just gonna make your build even more expensive grobbes! Dang, my CPU is not gonna arrive until Monday! I guess that's just what it takes to save a couple of bucks.
June 14, 201214 yr Looks like a great build a_n_d_y. My only comment is that you'll have to run unRAID 5.0 beta or RC as 4.7 doesn't support the Realtek 8111E NIC. Best of luck with your build, and have fun!
June 21, 201214 yr Author Been extremely busy this week and I've got a small music fest to attend this weekend, so time has been and is limited for right now. However, I had an hour or two last night to throw together the hardware. The Lian case is nice. Everything seems very well laid out. Like reviews on Newegg suggests, the right-angle SATA cables do not fit because of where the Molex plugs are located. The straight and left-angle SATA cables work just fine. 12" to 18" probably will be the cleanest layout. The Corsair CX430 power supply fits fine as well. However, remove the side stickers, otherwise its difficult sliding in/out the unit. There are only 3-molex plugs available. The case's 5 drive cage requires 3 power plugs (2 for 3 hard drives, 1 for 2 hard drives, so 3 for 5 hard drives total). You will need Y-adaptors (or SATA to Molex adaptors) dependent on if your motherboard supports only 1 chassis fan if you're using 4-5 3.5" hard drives. Is pretty quiet outside of initial start up. Outside of that, I downloaded the free version of unRAID, installed it on a San Disk Cruzar Mini USB stick and the unit seems to boot just fine (booted to the Linux without any BIOS configuration), however I have not actually had time to connect to the web management utility. Memtest ran overnight without issue. The ASUS BIOS is really easy to use... however wish it had more features, but for the purpose of this build, it should work just fine. Anyways, I'll report back once I get connected to web management, hopefully tonight with a few pics of the system build.
June 22, 201214 yr Thought this might be of interest to you: Intel bringing out low cost Ivy Bridge i3 chips this month Should increase transcoding performance by around 30% (based on the transcoding performance of a SB-E i7 vs IB i7) if the software supports QuickSync although these will probably be another month or two before they actually hit the shelves.
June 23, 201214 yr Author Real quick update (running out the door). Everything is working great. My only complaint is that Plex Media Server loses settings after reboots... but thats a Plex issue that I'll have to dive deeper into later.
June 25, 201214 yr Author Another quick update. Server has been running fine over the weekend from what I can tell on v5.0 RC4. I just noticed RC5 was released over the weekend, so I may try upgrading to see what that brings. Currently using Plex 9.6.4 beta plugin with just a couple of minor bugs with the GUI in the Plex web interface. BTW, I figured out that my Plex Library and Temp files were pointed to the flash drive causing it to reset every reboot, which must've been flushing out the previous configurations. Pointing those folders to a user share resolved the issue. I am definitely registering for unRAID Plus to get the disk Cache feature. System is running cool and quiet. I'll have to order a kill-o-watt to see how much power its actually sucking. Thanks to everyone that has thrown in input on this build.
June 25, 201214 yr Author Thought this might be of interest to you: Intel bringing out low cost Ivy Bridge i3 chips this month Should increase transcoding performance by around 30% (based on the transcoding performance of a SB-E i7 vs IB i7) if the software supports QuickSync although these will probably be another month or two before they actually hit the shelves. Its too bad I had ordered parts before reading that. Thanks for the link.
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