Totally new to this board and unRAID. Would like some help in getting parts together for a server.

 

What is your budget? Neither pinching pennies nor splurging, say somewhere in the ballpark of $2000

How many drives do you want your server to be able to support and how much capacity do you need? 12 + parity + cache, so 14?

Is expandability important to you? Yes! If so, what's your long term goal? Start out with 12TB (4x3GB + parity + cache) expand to 36TB (12x3GB)

Are you interested in running any unRAID Add Ons?  If so, which ones?  Be specific. I would think so, anything for a DNLA media server (Plex? Airvideo)

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. If green drives are good for media streaming, then that's fine.

Do you have any spare parts laying around that you would like to apply towards your build?  This includes drives. I may have some 750GB drives to use.

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. None to speak of. I'm hoping (finger's crossed) that there's a mid-tower case that can hold that many drives.

 

Thanks for any and all suggestions.

Just to be clear your $2000 budget is including the cost of five 3TB drives plus a cache drive?

 

 

 

EDIT: I'll just assume it includes the price of the drives.

 

CPU: Based on you saying you're interested in Air Video and Plex, that means transcoding. I'd go with one of the new Ivy Bridge Core i3's. The i3-3220 is the best bang for the buck IMO. It's runs cool and uses little power when idle and stays cool under full load. It'll transcode anything without breaking a sweat. (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116775) $130 shipped

 

Motherboard: I'd go for the Supermicro MBD-X9SCM-F-O. Lots of people on here, including myself, use this board and it's rock solid. Enough onboard SATA ports for you initial setup plus tons of room for future expansion with SAS HBAs. IPMI allows complete headless management, including things like BIOS access. Supports Xeon E3 processors as well if you ever decide to go for virtualization in the future. If you do go with this board, make sure to get the power supply I listed or one that is known to be compatible because it's picky about power supplies. (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182253) $200 shipped

 

RAM: Since you'll be running some plugins go for 8GB to be safe. This Kingston doesn't have any reviews yet but I've seen it mentioned on other forums as working fine and compatible with this board. Pick up two sticks at $38 each. (http://amzn.com/B007N9XMR4)  $76 shipped

 

Power supply: I'd go for the PC Power and Cooling Silencer Mk II 750W. I use it myself and you won't have to worry about needing to upgrade later as this PSU will easily support 25+ drives. It's on sale right now on Amazon for $69 after rebate. It's also known to be compatible with the board I listed. (http://amzn.com/B003U29C3Q) $89 shipped plus $20 rebate.

 

Case: Cases are one of the things people are most picky about. I personally really like the Antec Nine Hundred. I've been using it myself for about two years and it has excellent cooling and if you ever want to get 4in3 or 5in3 drive cages this will fit 3 because it's got 5.25in bays from top to bottom. I personally use 2 5in3 cages in mine and it's great. LED lights on the fans and the clear side window is kind of tacky IMO so I broke the LEDs off and painted the window black to match the case. It has 2 adapter cages for 3.5 inch drives that will fit three each for a total of 6 like you need. When you add more I'd recommend going with some 4in3 or 5in3 cages. (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129021) $106 shipped

 

Flash drive for OS: I'm partial to SanDisk flash drives. And this one is tiny. The motherboard I listed has a USB port on the board and this thing will barely stick out past it. (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820171587) $8.49 shipped

 

SATA cables: The board actually comes with 6 I believe. Pick some more up from Monoprice if needed.

 

Total for PC parts: $589.50

 

 

 

 

For hard drives you have two main choices I would go for. WD Green drives or WD Red drives. The greens you sound familiar with. The Red drives are a new line of drives for WD. They have three main benefits. 1, the have a firmware optimized for NAS use. 2, they have a 3 year warranty. 3, they have a 35% higher mean time between failures. They also only use the same amount of power as green drives while being slightly faster. Right now they run about $25 to $30 more than the green. IMO, those benefits make it worth it to me but it's up to you. Green: (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136874) or Red: (http://www.shopblt.com/item/western-digital-3tb-intellipower-64mb-3.5in/wesdig_wd30efrx~bpr7549.html)

 

Green 3TB x 5: $775

Red 3TB x 5: $905

 

Total with green drives: $1364.50

Total with Red drives: 1494.50

 

 

So that's $500 under budget even if you go for the more expensive hard drives. I would just use your existing 750GB drive for the cache or maybe one of these (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136771) if you want to use your 750GB in the array at some point.

Thanks mrow for those items.

 

Couple of questions:

Are any drive cages compatible with the Antec or is there one specific type I should get?

Expandability: Since your "quote" comes in $500, what card(s)/cables do I need for adding more drives?

Yes, any cage will work. I personally use two of the Supermicro CSE-M35T-1B (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817121405). I like it because it's got a really nice build quality and the fans on the back are 92mm vs 80mm all the other popular cages have. The fans are a bit on the loud side so if that bothers you you might want to replace them. I would recommend the Noctua NF-B9 (http://amzn.com/B002CQU13Q) to ensure good airflow through the cages while being whisper quiet. They are on the expensive side but it's worth it. The one thing with the Antec case is that it has little notches that stick out to hold 5.25 inch drives level but you can bend those in with some plyers or a clamp in 5 minutes.

 

As for HBA cards there are two popular choices. Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 or the IBM m1015. The Supermicro is 4x and the IBM is 8x PCIe. Outside of parity checks you will notice no difference in speed and even during the partity checks the difference will be minimal. Deals on both of those cards a cropping up all the time so look around to get the best price. I saw a deal on the Supermicro card in the Good Deals section of the forum. The IBM you won't find new as in "new in box" because they are all pulled from servers and resold to the best of my knowledge. They still are new though. As for cables to work with those cards you'll need breakout cables. I and a lot of others on here use these from Monoprice (http://www.monoprice.com/products/subdepartment.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10254&cs_id=1025406). They're high quality and you won't find a better price anywhere. The half meter cables are more than enough but you can get longer if you want to.