What is your budget?  $350ish

 

How many drives do you want your server to be able to support and how much capacity do you need? 10-12, though I will only have 6 to begin with.

 

Is expandability important to you?  If so, what's your long term goal? I think I'll max out at 10, 12 at the most.

 

Are you interested in running any unRAID Add Ons (see here)?  If so, which ones?  Be specific. uTorrent, Sickbeard, SAB, MySQL, possibly more. This unRAID box will be serving up mostly 720p and some 1080p to three different XBMC HTPCs.

 

Do you want to run green/low power drives or faster 7200 rpm drives?  If you don't have a specific need for 7200 rpm drives, then choose green drives. Green Drives

 

Do you have any spare parts laying around that you would like to apply towards your build?  This includes drives.

I have one SATA expansion card that adds two more SATA, and 4x2TB WD EARS.

 

If you already have parts in mind, please oh pretty please post links to them so that we don't have to look them up. See below.

 

 

 

 

CASE Antec Three Hundred Illusion

PSU Antec NEO ECO 520C 520W

MOBO ASRock H61M/U3S3

CPU Intel Core i3-2100 Sandy Bridge 3.1GHz

RAM G.SKILL Value Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600)

 

I'm also going to buy 2x2TB WD EARX, one for parity and the other for more space and also because I will need a blank drive so I can begin migrating my data into the array. I have thumb drive and enough SATA cables for the install. Just wondering if I am missing anything glaring or if any of you have advice, concerns if this were your build.

You might want to reconsider your case selection with the final number of drives you are considering.  The Antec 300 has only 3.5" internal drive bays.  As you install more and more drives into this case, you will find that the interior will become more and more crowded with SATA cables and power cables.  At some point, you will have to change out a drive.  You may find that in doing so you create even more problems when you have to move other cables around to disconnect the drive that has to come out.  (Connections to SATA drives are tenuous at best!)

 

You should probably look at the Antec 900 or the Antec 1200.  They will both allow top-to-bottom 5.25" drive bays which allow you use any of several different 5.25" drive cages which allow you to change out drives without even opening the case.

I'd go with the Antec 900 case if you are looking for a case of that size size in particular. The fact that it's all 5.25in bays will allow you to add 4 in 3 or 5 in 3 cages later on if you are going to be adding the amount of drives you listed.

 

I have the same motherboard and power supply and they both work great. However, Newegg has this board (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157233R) open boxed right now for the same price. It has USB 3 ports and an additional PCIe 1x slot for future expandability. I'd go with that if it's still available when you order.

Thanks for the advice, guys. I took your advice and went with the Antec 900 and I also switched out the mobo for the ASRock H67M. I liked the fact that it had an extra PCIe slot and that it had a Realtek NIC over the Atheros.