July 13, 201213 yr Hello all. I'm new to the forum here. Been reading around for a while and decided to jump in. After filling up my Ready NAS Duo 2TB in about 2 months i decided it was time to upgrade. This site has been a huge asset in helping with selection of hardware and equipment. Thanks to all for there posts, suggestions, and build examples. So my new egg shopping cart is full, but befor I fork over the cash I wanted to get some feedback on my build. I tried to keep it basic and use as many of the componets suggested in the various prototype builds as possible BUT it is a hybrid of the designs so I am not 100% sure everythign will work together. This unit will be used only for storage ....... I do not anticipate any add-ons. At best there may be two HTPC's streaming content at any given time. The goal is to have 10TB of usable storage with the ability to expand beyond that capacity without having to start over from scratch. With the exception of the case this was designed to be a budget friendly, low power build. Case: Corsair Obsidina 550D http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811139012 (Yes. I know that this doesn't fit in with the typical "budget build" but I love the look of this case and thought i would spend the extra dollars in case i ever repurpose it) Power Suppy: Corsair CX430 V2 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139026 MOBO: ASRock A55M http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157277 CPU: AMD A4-3300 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819106013 RAM: 2GB Kingston Value Ram http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134812 Hot Swap Drive Bays: 5 x Mobile Rack for 3.5 inches SATA HDD - Open Frame http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=108&cp_id=10824&cs_id=1082402&p_id=3857&seq=1&format=2 Exisitng HDD's: Two repurposed WD 2TB Green drives. New HDD's: Looking at (4) new WD 2TB Green Drives http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136891 Total Price (w/o drives):$382.25 plus S/H I have an extra 500G drive laying around. Is it worth while to set up a cache drive? Lastly, should i go with 3TB drives (price seems to be close $/GB) or stick with 2tb? Thanks in advance for any feedback. Looking forward to getting this project moving forward.
July 13, 201213 yr Welcome- I have a budget build that I run no add-ons on as well, and kinda eased into it (just 3.5 TB for storage), but I would say if you are going to buy hard drives, and the additional cost of going with 3 TB doesn't bother you (too much), then I would buy some 3 TB drives. At a minimum, you will probably want 1 3 TB drive for your parity drive (remember that the parity drive has to be at least as large as the largest data drive in your array).
July 13, 201213 yr Why are you looking to purchase (5) Monoprice Racks when you have only (4) 5.25" slots in your case? Especially since you are looking at six or seven drives in the case! My suggestion would be to have a good look at the Antec 900 case if you are going to buy a new case. It can be configured to have (9) external 5.25" slots I would go with the 3TB drives at this point. While they do require version 5.0 and that version is still in beta, the beta is quite stable at this point and you should not have any problems running it. (It does have some issues with LSI based SATA cards but that will be addressed before final release.)
July 16, 201213 yr Author Good point on the drive bays. So Im now heading a different direction on the cPU/MoBo. Mobo:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157260 cPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103951 I currently have this setup in an HTPC and they are working flawlessly. My thinking is that I can ease into this setup inexpensively and if i ever outgrow this board/processor i can definently find a new home for these in another HTPC. Does anyone have any feedback or experience with these in the unRaid environment? Also, how important is SATA III over SATA II?
July 16, 201213 yr Also, how important is SATA III over SATA II? Unless you have an array of SATAIII SSDs or are using a SAS expander you won't get any observable benefits. If you were reading a small file on a spinner that would fit entirely inside it's cache you might see a benefit if it was present in the cache already. But otherwise the speed of accessing it off the platter is much less than SATAIII.
July 17, 201213 yr An AMD APU has a dedicated GPU on the chip and will only add to your initial cost, power bill & heat without providing any gain at all. It's a great chip for a MediaPC as the onboard gfx are powerful enough for 1080p/bluray content and a good replacement for a dedicated graphics card. For an unRAID server however, these are features that likely won't be used unless you plan on the server doing some sort of transcoding (such as Plex). The APU (CPU) you have selected will work fine though I would recommend something like the following, keep in mind although these are both AMD setups there is a socket change: AMD AthlonII X2-250 (AM3 Socket) $49.99 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103904 Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2P (AM3 Socket) $59.99 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128504&Tpk=GA-78LMT-S2P NB: Above motherboard is based on the Realtek 8111E LAN so you would need to use a newer version of unRAID v5
July 17, 201213 yr I know I say this in every build thread but I think for the price/performance ratio (unless you have very firm budgets limits) a Core i3 is the way to go for an unraid server. Cool, low power consumption, and will be able to handle everything you might possibly might do on your server (outside of virtualization) including on the fly bluray transcoding.
July 17, 201213 yr I know I say this in every build thread but I think for the price/performance ratio (unless you have very firm budgets limits) a Core i3 is the way to go for an unraid server. Cool, low power consumption, and will be able to handle everything you might possibly might do on your server (outside of virtualization) including on the fly bluray transcoding. +1 (after all, check my sig!) - the newer socket 1155 replacement for an i3-540 would be an i3-2100/2120 If you can't stretch for an i3, an AthlonII would be my next choice. Any of the "e" series AthlonII's are an awesome alternative, they're just super hard to find and usually a little more expensive than the base chips but use a lot less power (X2-240e, 245e, 250e etc).
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