Hi,

I decided to create my first unRAID server, and I was wondering if anyone could help me with hardware choice.

The aim is to store some of my movies, music and photos library. It's not big at the moment, so it would consist of 2x2TB drives (including one for parity) with plan to further expand in the future.

 

I also would like to run couple plugins like CouchPotato \ SABnzbd

 

The setup I had in mind is following:

 

CASE: Antec 300 Three Hundred - http://www.ebuyer.com/143854-antec-300-three-hundred-case-0761345-08300-3

MOBO: Asus M5A78L-M LX - http://www.ebuyer.com/269070-asus-m5a78l-m-lx-amd-socket-am3-8-channel-hd-audio-matx-motherboard-m5a78l-m-lx

PSU: Be Quiet 530W Pure Power -  http://www.ebuyer.com/190751-be-quiet-530w-pure-power-psu-bn106

Processor: AMD Sempron 145 2.8GHz Socket AM3 45W 1MB L2 Cache  - http://www.ebuyer.com/345357-amd-sempron-145-2-8ghz-45w-1mb-l2-cache-oem-processor-sdx145hbk13gm

RAM: Kingston 4GB DDR3 1333MHz HyperX Blu Memory - http://www.ebuyer.com/234976-kingston-4gb-ddr3-1333mhz-hyperx-blu-memory-khx1333c9d3b1k2-4g

 

As far as hard drives are concerned, I was thinking of those: Samsung 2TB SpinPoint EcoGreen F4EG SATA 3Gb/s 32MB  - http://www.dabs.com/products/samsung-2tb-spinpoint-ecogreen-f4eg-sata-3gb-s-32mb-hard-drive-74TD.html?refs=52450000-52770000&src=3

 

I would be very grateful for any comments regarding this setup and any advices regarding what else should I watch out for.

Only thing that I see is that your selection of a power supply is that it is a dual rail supply.  Recommendation for servers is to use a single rail supply.  (The second rail is usually used only for the GPU card.)  You are probably limited to a maximum of about ten drives with this supply.  Of course, I don't think you can fill that many drives into the Antec 300 case. 

Only thing that I see is that your selection of a power supply is that it is a dual rail supply.  Recommendation for servers is to use a single rail supply.  (The second rail is usually used only for the GPU card.)  You are probably limited to a maximum of about ten drives with this supply.  Of course, I don't think you can fill that many drives into the Antec 300 case.

 

I doubt he could even run 10 drives. I killed an old Antec 450 watt power supply with dual 12v rails with 5 green drives. A single 12v rail is pretty much vital if you're going to have over 3 drives.

 

A few more notes. I would go for 8GB of RAM if you're going to be using plugins to be safe. If you can't afford it now, then buy a single 4GB stick and get another later when you have the cash.

 

Also, I'd go with a Core i3 if you think you may be doing transcoding of video so you can stream it to your phone or iPad or anything like that. The i3 will handle video transcoding better than that CPU you listed will.

Thanks a lot for all your advices!

 

I was planning to have a separate XBMC box. Currently I'm just starting with it, and using Raspberry Pi as XBMC device, but I'm planning to upgrade to something better.

 

Shall I go for better processor in my unRaid then, or can I just stream from XBMC?

I know that you can install Plex on unRAID, but my understanding is that there is no point in doing that if you want to use XBMC.

 

 

Plex or XBMC can just be used with streaming with no transcoding to a HTPC hooked up to your TV if the hardware is powerful enough to support playback. I think I read the raspberry Pi has hardware acceleration for video playback and the OpenElec guys are working on a build for it so you would be fine there.

 

Where transcoding would come in to play would be playback to your phone or iPad or something like that. I use transcoding all the time to stream movies and shows from my unraid server at my apartment to watch at my girlfriends apartment. I use the Air Video app on my iPhone and beam it to her Apple TV with AirPlay. The transcoding of the video is done by the Air Video Server running on my unraid server. The same would be true for Plex. In a situation like this is where you'd want a more powerful processor than the one you listed.