Hi All,

 

I'm looking to build a fast, fanless unRAID system. The most important aspect is that it is fanless and low power. I'm leaning toward using a 240GB SSD as a parity drive w/ a bunch of SSDs to make the rest of the array. My question... is the atom D2800 CPU fast enough? Thanks!

The CPU should be OK, I think.

What I see as a challenge is that mobos with that chipset seem to have two S-ATA ports only.

...and mini-PCIe slots...so you need to find an appropriate card to build your array...AFAIK these slots will give you x1 speed, only.

Also, don't underestimate power consumption of SSDs...some are in the same range as green spinners.

...this will go into heat finally, and you will need some sort of active airflow (fan).

Hope you don't plan on doing any video transcoding (a la Plex Media Server)

I wouldn't. The disk I/O capabilities of the Atom seem poor at best leading to slow disk access speeds.

 

Use one of the low power i3 processors (T on the end of the part number) with a passive heatsink. Should be easy to keep cool. I've run both an AMD BE2350 and 4850E processor with a Mini Ninja cooler with no problems to give you an idea of the heatsink size vs processor wattage.