May 26, 201412 yr Hi guys and gals, I've been running unRAID for a few years now and it's getting time where I feel I've outgrown my current build and looking to go bigger, better and badder. My current specs are as follows: Case: Fractal Designs R3 Case Motherboard: abit IP35 Pro XE CPU: Intel Core2Duo E7500 @ 2.93GHz CPU Fan: Zalman CNPS9700 Heatsink HDD1:JD Firefly PSU: OCZ StealthXStream 400w Silent RAM: 2x 2GB Non-ECC DDR2 GPU: Zotac Fanless GeForce GT220 1GB OS:unRAID Professional Other: Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8, 8-Port SAS/SATA Card - 2 spare on cable, SAS port free Intel PRO/1000 82541PI Gigabit Ethernet Card PCI Additionally, I have 6 HDDs in the array and 1 cache drive. The R3 is a really nice case; however I feel I'm at the maximum capacity due to the rotated lower drive bays. Not sure how much work it would be to get one of these X-Case 5-in-3 caddies in. Now, I already have the Antec 902 as this is the chassis that my current main PC is housed in. From my research, I think that I can manage to get three of the X-Case caddies in the front of the case and go from 7 mounted drives up to a potential 15! While I'm splashing the cash on the caddies and new drives, I figured I should probably replace the rest of the aging system (it was the build before, the build before from my current daily driver PC). My current biggest issues with it are twofold: - Requires a monitor to be plugged into the graphics card to boot. The motherboard does not have any integrated graphics and without the monitor plugged into the GPU the system simply refuses to POST. - It required an Intel PCI NIC card to get around the Realtek driver issues Tom had during the v5 betas. It never did get working for me again. So with all this in mind, I'm looking to buy a new Mobo, CPU and RAM. I'm in the UK and probably have about £200-250 to spend, but that is flexible to ensure a good system. My requirements pretty much are: - Should be as low-power as possible (I have a separate ESXi server for all the stuff that unRAID plugins usually provide). Maybe an Intel i3, but I'm not sure about the expenses compared against lower in the range - are the latest Haswell Pentium/Celerons really worth looking at? - Mini or Micro ATX board, as the reviews of the caddies suggest they come deep into the chassis of the Antec 1200 I saw them installed in - I don't want to risk there not being enough clearance - Integrated graphics support - Have a PCI-E 4x slot for the Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 - Intel gigabit NIC, if possible to make sure that any potential driver issues are kept to a minimum in the future. - USB3 back I/O support - feel this is pretty much going to be a standard thing nowdays but still a requirement Does anyone have any good ideas?
May 26, 201412 yr Author As a first update, some low-power HTPC recommendations I've seen recommend the following parts that could work for me: Intel Pentium G3420 - 3.20GHz Dual core - Socket 1150 - 3MB Cache Asus H81I-Plus - Socket 1150 - 2 x DIMM, Max. 16GB, DDR3 1600/1333/1066 MHz Non-ECC, Un-buffered Memory, Dual Channel Memory Architecture - VGA (1920x1200 @ 60Hz) / DVI with max. resolution 1920 x 1200 @ 60 Hz / HDMI with max. resolution 4096 x 2160 @ 24 Hz / 2560 x 1600 @ 60 Hz - 1 x PCIe x16 (x16 mode, yellow) - 1 x Gigabit LAN (Realtek RTL8111G) - 2 x USB 3.0 Back I/O Anyone see anything that causes an objection? I can see the Gigabit NIC is a Realtek RTL8111G - is that known to cause problems with unRAID? I'll probably put a single 4GB RAM module in, and then need to hunt for a decent low-power PSU.
May 26, 201412 yr In terms of more drives in that case, this is pretty clever: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=25401.0
May 26, 201412 yr Author Considering the number of spare drives I currently have as I've upgraded this gradually over the last 3 years - I think going to "max" capacity of the Antec is probably best way forward. I have just realised that to support that number of drives though I'm probably going to need a second SAS card, unless the board comes with 7x SATA ports. Either way, I don't think I'm going to get it on a mini-ATX. Back to the drawing board, and getting the tape measure out, I guess...
May 26, 201412 yr Considering the number of spare drives I currently have as I've upgraded this gradually over the last 3 years - I think going to "max" capacity of the Antec is probably best way forward. I have just realised that to support that number of drives though I'm probably going to need a second SAS card, unless the board comes with 7x SATA ports. Either way, I don't think I'm going to get it on a mini-ATX. Back to the drawing board, and getting the tape measure out, I guess... The only mini ITX with more than 6 sata ports (seven on the board): Asrock FM2A85X-ITX. Well, the Asrock C2550d4i and C2750d4i both have 12 sata ports, but they have serious issues with unraid and just in general..
May 27, 201412 yr If you are sticking with standard desktop hardware I have just built my first unRAID server. Details are in my sig, I also live in the UK. The MSI board I have used has 8 SATA ports and the CPU is a quad core athlon with a TDP of 45w (less than i3). If he still has some an chap on ebay is selling them new, they are old HP stock I think. Processor was £46, board was £38. I've ran into no significant problems yet!
May 28, 201412 yr Author Ok, here's an updated build using a micro-ATX board which should fit in my Antec 902 and give enough clearance to be comfortable with the X-Case caddies: PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks CPU: Intel Pentium G3420 3.2GHz Dual-Core Processor (£44.70 @ Ebuyer) Motherboard: ASRock H87M Pro4 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£57.11 @ Amazon UK) Memory: Kingston 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£27.32 @ Amazon UK) Total: £129.13 (Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.) (Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-05-28 16:03 BST+0100) Thinking I'm going to start out with the stock Intel cooler that comes with the CPU and reuse the OCZ StealthXStream 400w Silent PSU I already have. Will monitor power usage/noise and decide from there if either of those warrant an upgrade. Huge advantages of the H87M Pro is the integrated Intel NIC and second PCI-E slot. Can't see any obvious downsides with the build as it stands right now! If you are sticking with standard desktop hardware I have just built my first unRAID server. Details are in my sig, I also live in the UK. The MSI board I have used has 8 SATA ports and the CPU is a quad core athlon with a TDP of 45w (less than i3). If he still has some an chap on ebay is selling them new, they are old HP stock I think. Processor was £46, board was £38. I've ran into no significant problems yet! The immediate thing that stands out is the Realtek RTL8111E NIC. While having a Realtek in my first board didn't affect me at the time I built it, it was the issues during the beta that has really turned me off it. I don't mind paying the slight premium to guarantee the Intel NIC and full support in unRAID.
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