HomeServer V2.0 Build Advice Pls


Ockingshay

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What is your budget? Happy to pay what is required. I do not want to spend the money in the wrong area, ie getting a motherboard with thx hometheatre 7.1 HD audio on it, but will get what is needed to do the job properly.

 

How many drives? Ultimately 20ish, i currently have 6x2TB drives. I am going to buy 3TB WD Red drives and an SSD for cache. (1) Is a WD 3TB Red good for a parity drive?

 

Are you interested in running any unRAID Add Ons? This will be a homeserver to replace my windows home server. It will need to run plex @1080p, utorrent/transmission constantly, dropbox, sickbeard and i suppose anything media related that may pop up in the future.

 

Do you want to run green/low power drives or faster 7200 rpm drives? Whatever gets the job done, (2) will WD Red be ok? I'm thinking a 128/256 SSD (3) is this overkill? for cache as the files will be pretty static once they get into plex folders

 

Do you have any spare parts laying around that you would like to apply towards your build? Clean build, except those drives, which are a mixture WD and Seagate.

 

So with that all in my mind, i am looking to build it on a core i3 1155 setup.

 

My questions really are around the MB/CPU....

 

I see a lot of people use SuperMicro x9scm-f but at £180 i'm finding it hard to justify it. (4) Is there a particular benefit to this board?, i do like the idea of IPMI as it will be headless in my closet but i won't be using dual NIC and ECC Ram is more reliable?. Other issues are that i need bios V2 to support latest core i3 and won't have access to another CPU to update the bios. (5) Will a regular desktop Mobo do? I'm a bit out the loop on intel and their myriad of chipset, but the H77 seems to be the most sensible.

 

The SuperMicro x9scm-f doesn't offer me much in the way of upgrading the CPU to say an i5 at a later date, hence leaning towards a desktop board from asus. (6) Will an i3 be sufficient?

 

I will obviously need a sata card extender, looking at the pinned thread those 8 port SAS cards seem to do the trick. The HDDs will not be hot-swappable, but will sit in 4-3 cages. I will buy 2 and then use the Mobo ports for the parity and cache drives i was thinking. (7) Is 8 port a bottleneck and best to get 4x 4 port cards? The mobos have PCIe v3 x 16 slots.

 

The case will be a xigmatek elysium http://www.xigmatek.com/product.php?productid=122 and i'll buy a decent singe 12v rail PSU

 

(8.) Does that all seem as though it's going in the right direction? Anything obviously wrong here?

 

8 answers to my questions to get me on the right track, would be appreciated muchly.

 

Thanks for your input.

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Do you want to run green/low power drives or faster 7200 rpm drives? Whatever gets the job done, (2) will WD Red be ok? I'm thinking a 128/256 SSD (3) is this overkill? for cache as the files will be pretty static once they get into plex folders

The WD Reds, I consider as a green 7.2k drive...the are slower than a real 7.2k but still 30% better than the standards 5.9k green WD-EARS...they will do fine, I'd say.

My questions really are around the MB/CPU....

 

I see a lot of people use SuperMicro x9scm-f but at £180 i'm finding it hard to justify it. (4) Is there a particular benefit to this board?, i do like the idea of IPMI as it will be headless in my closet but i won't be using dual NIC and ECC Ram is more reliable?.

This is a real server board...it is very famous because you can also migrate to an ESXi setup (because with the right CPU it supports vt-d/pcipassthrough).

It also offers quite a lot of PCie slots, good for x8 contoller cards...

Consider ECC as an extra ... also the second nic as a hot spare ;-)

Even in amazon UK this board is "only" 168GBP, see: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004WKRDA4/ref=asc_df_B004WKRDA411875995?smid=A1XCF8DLK3OC2Y&tag=geizhals10-21&linkCode=asn&creative=22506&creativeASIN=B004WKRDA4

 

Other issues are that i need bios V2 to support latest core i3 and won't have access to another CPU to update the bios. (5) Will a regular desktop Mobo do? I'm a bit out the loop on intel and their myriad of chipset, but the H77 seems to be the most sensible.

v2.0 BIOS  you need for a v2 CPU indeed, but your risk is, that you will receive an old board...a board from a recent manufacture date should come with latest BIOS. Check with your supplier.

 

The SuperMicro x9scm-f doesn't offer me much in the way of upgrading the CPU to say an i5 at a later date, hence leaning towards a desktop board from asus. (6) Will an i3 be sufficient?

??? that I do not understand....where will you be going?

Just check prices...if you need a lot more horsepower, go for a XEON...you'll find lower end XEONs to be comparable to an i5 or i7...even cheaper...you don't need the IGP.

An i3 will offer a lot already...given your requirements, without a lot of transcoding, it'll do fine I think...even a PentiumG could possibly do what you want.

 

 

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The X9scm-f is a nice board. it is a true server board built for stability in a 24x7 datacenter environment.

 

The ipmi is a great feature. once you use it, you will wish you has it for all of your servers.  the KVM over IP if offers is just nice.

Being able to get into the bios without a monitor and remote reboots are just the tip of its features.

 

The intel NIC are just better then any other brand out there..

 

ECC ram. yes, it is a little more expensive. but you know your data going through the ram is correct.  no accidental corruption because of ram.

 

The E3 xeons are more bang for the buck CPUs next to the i5/17 series. this is because they do not have the built in video cards that you cant use.

Xeons are serious workhorses. there is a reason servers and high end workstations (and Mac Pro's) use them over I5/I7's.

 

it might be a tough chunk of change right now. but when you have had it on 24x4 for 5 years and it has not died. you  might be glad you invested the little extra.

in the end, is about what fits in your budget.

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