upgrading after all these years

[thebobs]

Have been with Unraid for many years.  Read the board quite a bit, but rarely post.  Now I need some input.

 

Running version 4.7 on, believe it or not,  the original Intel D865GLCLK motherboard with Promise PCI SATA cards! My Unraid server has been rock solid.  It has never failed me, but its time to upgrade to take advantage of 3TB drives. I have 14 data drives right now.

 

My server is almost exclusively used to serve ripped movies to my HTPC, so its toughest job is streaming one, occasionally 2, blu-ray streams over gigabit network.  It spends most of its time asleep (timed S3 via the powerdown script) and wakes 100% reliably with WOL. 

 

I'd like to upgrade my motherboard, cpu, memory and SATA cards.  My main criteria is that a new setup needs to sleep like a baby and wake reliably with WOL.  Incredible speed is not important, but I would like to be able to go to the full 24 drives that Unraid supports over time. So 2 PCI express slots for a pair of SuperMicro AOC-SASLP-MV8's or equivalent are desirable.

 

Given my desire to have the served go to sleep seamlessly, I've avoided looking at server grade boards and CPU's.  After looking at various motherboards I thought an AMD board would be inexpensive and fit my requirements, but can't really decide as I see so many recommendations for Intel I3:

 

Components that  I've been looking at:

 

Motherboards:

ASUS M4A88T-V EVO AM3 - was looking at some deals that have largely disappeared now

ASUS M5A97 R2.0 AM3

 

CPU:

AMD Athlon II X3 450 Rana

 

Memory:

Crucial 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Desktop Memory

 

I have a Corsair tx-750 PSU which should serve me for awhile.

 

It's been ages since I built my servers so I'll apologize up front if I've really missed the mark here.  Any advice is very much appreciated.  I'm open to an intel solution as well

 

This forum is the best.

 

 

 

[mrow]

If you're looking for a budget purchase, go for the Celeron G1610. It's $20 cheaper than the AMD chip you listed and also performs the same. It's Ivy Bridge based so it runs cool and uses little electricity, which'll save you money in the long run. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116889

 

Benchmarks:

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Celeron+G1610+%40+2.60GHz

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Athlon+II+X3+450

 

If you go for the Intel chip, go for some 1600MHz RAM, it supports it.

[caseyparsons]

Yeah, what he said  .

[thebobs]

Thanks will do

 

[naxiand]

Is wake up the server(from s3) is solved with salp cards? I think this is crucial for you since you used it....

 

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

 

 

[thebobs]

Good point on salp cards not playing nice with s3. Not sure how to overcome that. I'll watch for configurations that are working for others

 

[thebobs]

I realized that my reference to s3 sleep might be wrong. I use the power down script combined with wol to "sleep" and wake my server. Does the raid card issue apply to the power down script?

[mr-hexen]

i wouldnt think so. you are essentially powering it down after 'x' minutes of no activity. then rebooting it from a WOL signal.