I have picked out the following hardware to build an unRaid Server that will be used at home.  It will be used for system backups of several computers as well as storing movies to stream to my HTPC.  I would like to know if there are any incompatibilities in what i have selected.

 

By the way, other threads in this forum has been very helpful... I read until I couldn't see straight!  LOL.

 

 

Budget: Wanted to keep the build at about $300 without drives

 

Number of Drives/Expandability: I plan to start with 6 (4 data drives, 1 parity, 1 cache).  I will add as time goes on and space is required, but will probably never go over 10 to 12.

 

Ad-Ons: Probably not. I have an existing Home Theater PC that I do encoding and playback on.

 

Green Drives: Yes, probably will run mostly green drives

 

Spare Parts: None, except I already have 4 Samsung HD204UI 2TB drives I will use, as well as a 7200 RPM drive for the cache drive

 

 

So, here is the hardware I have chosen...

 

Case: RAIDMax Seiran ATX902WB ($64.99 with rebate) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811156269

 

Power Supply: Rosewill HIVE Series 650 80 Plus Bronze, Modular ($59.99 with Promo) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182132

 

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2P AM3+ AMD 760G Micro ATX ($49.99 after rebate) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128504

 

Processor: AMD Athlon II X2 260 Regor 3.2GHz Socket AM3 65W Dual-Core ($64.99) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103873

 

Memory: Crucial Ballistix sport 4GB (2x2GB) 240-pin SDRAM DDR3 1333 ($24.99)  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148541

 

I have also have ordered the SATA cables from Monoprice.

 

 

Thanks for any help and suggestions...

 

 

If you really minimizing your costs and are not planning on running any add-on, why don't you consider this processor?

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103888

 

It is perfectly capable of running any basic unRAID system at max performance as long as you are not going to use it to transcode video. 

Frank,

 

Thanks for the quick response... and good point.  I guess I just can't make myself buy such a low end processor!  What if I do want to run some add-ons later?  LOL.  Maybe I'll want a new machine for me and send this one to college with my daughter. 

 

 

So otherwise, does the hardware look OK?

 

 

Thanks...

Frank,

 

Thanks for the quick response... and good point.  I guess I just can't make myself buy such a low end processor!  What if I do want to run some add-ons later?  LOL.  Maybe I'll want a new machine for me and send this one to college with my daughter. 

 

 

Your call on that...

 

So otherwise, does the hardware look OK?

 

 

It should do the job.

Thought I would post a quick update with a picture after my build, hopefully so other can see an inexpensive build that works.

 

1. Total cost for hardware was $289

 

2. Cost of unRAID software was $69

 

3. I already had all of the disks

 

4. System went together and booted from USB first try - no issues at all

 

5. Like the case a lot - for $60 it is very nice. There are three fans that come with the case and they are very quiet.  It keeps everything nice and cool.

 

If anyone has any questions feel free to ask, and thanks for all the help that these boards provided!

 

I like that case, although I'm partial to cases that hold the drive bays sideways, makes cable management a breeze.

I like that case, although I'm partial to cases that hold the drive bays sideways, makes cable management a breeze.

 

I agree, but I was trying to keep it cheap for now.  I can add the 5 in 3 drive cages later, as the case will take them.  I would love to have the hot-swapping ones, but those alone would add a couple hundred dollars to my build.

 

 

I understand, I pinched pennies with my build, managed to get the hardware in at right at $200 IIRC. Only thing was my case doesn't have 5.25 bays all the way down, but once I surpass 15 drives ill move to another case. Should be a while before that happens at any rate.

Nice build!  It sounds like you did not have any issues with the LAN chipset?  I've read that the Realtel 8111 has issues unless you're on a beta unraid... which version are you running?

 

Also, it looks like the SATA ports are 3.0GB/s, I realize that I HDD can't keep up with that, but I'm still green on SSDs - I don't imagine that will be a bottleneck for you?

Nice build!  It sounds like you did not have any issues with the LAN chipset?  I've read that the Realtel 8111 has issues unless you're on a beta unraid... which version are you running?

 

Also, it looks like the SATA ports are 3.0GB/s, I realize that I HDD can't keep up with that, but I'm still green on SSDs - I don't imagine that will be a bottleneck for you?

 

I did not have any issues with the LAN chipset.  I was afraid I might, but I read the problems AFTER I ordered by motherboard, but no issues at all.  I am running version 5.0-rc5-r8168.

 

They are SATA II ports, but no issue at all for me.  This runs at home and not a multi-user system for the most part.  I use it  as a media hub to store my music and movies, as well as store backups for each computer, which run every night.

 

I am running a cache drive and get sustained transfer rates of between 70-90 MBs.  With a 1Gbs network, it isn't going to get much better than that anyway.  Without the cache drive I was getting between 30-40 MBs, so the parity calculations were the bottleneck there.