Hi,

 

I'm looking at creating my first unRAID build, but I'm not really sure what hardware to select. Can you help guide me in the right direction please?

 

•What is your budget? Lower is better! I guess around $1,000

•How many drives do you want your server to be able to support and how much capacity do you need? Currently my goal for the server is 6TB

•Is expandability important to you?  If so, what's your long term goal? Yes I would plan on upgrading to 8TB within a few years

•Are you interested in running any unRAID Add Ons? Currently the only add on would be MySQL server

•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. low power drives are fine for me

•Do you have any spare parts laying around that you would like to apply towards your build? I currently have a Intel G620, it would be nice to be able to use it in this build.

 

Thanks for the assistance in guiding me through this process.

Go to the unRAID Compulsive Design subforum. There are several SFF (small form factor) builds there that should give some ideas. I don't think you will have any problem using your processor.

Awesome thank you!

I've been eyeballing a system like this for a while. The Lian Li Q25B has a small footprint and 5 internal hot-swap bays plus additional room for another 2-3 harddrives, for 7-8 total.  The Asus P8H77-I, can use your CPU and has 6 sata ports which means you likely won't need a SATA expansion card unless you want 7+ drives.  This provides for 6 TB of protected storage, a 500GB cache drive and expansion option to 12 TB when using 3 TB drives. The PSU is modular to help with cabling.  At a total of 850-900, this also leaves plenty of room in your budget for an unRAID Plus license.  About the only thing it lacks is a remote management feature, which is hard or impossible to find on a non-Atom based mITX motherboard.

 

 

PCPartPicker part list

 

Motherboard:  Asus P8H77-I Mini ITX  LGA1155 Motherboard  ($95.99 @ NCIX US)

Memory:  Corsair 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1333 Memory  ($45.78 @ Amazon)

Storage:  Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($59.99 @ Newegg)

Storage:  Western Digital Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($144.99 @ NCIX US)

Storage:  Western Digital Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($144.99 @ NCIX US)

Storage:  Western Digital Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($144.99 @ NCIX US)

Case:  Lian-Li PC-Q25B Mini ITX Tower Case  ($127.98 @ SuperBiiz)

Power Supply:  SeaSonic 450W 80 PLUS Gold Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply  ($85.85 @ NCIX US)

Total: $850.56

(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)

(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-03-12 14:43 EDT-0400)

 

EDIT:  The PSU I recommended is 5.9" inches long and may have difficulty fitting.  If you decide to go with this case, look for a 5.5" long PSU or you may have difficulties getting it to fit.

Awesome thanks TripKnot for the build suggestion! I'm pretty new to unRAID, never used it before. What does remote management provide? Ability to control the box from outside the network?

It allows you to manage the server remotely, even BIOS settings, from another computer.  Basically you wont need a keyboard or monitor hooked up to do any local work from a terminal.  Much of the setup of unRAID is done from the webmin but some is from the console.  Remote management is a nice feature to have but not essential.  However, some people swear by it.