Asking for a 5 Bay Budget build recommendation

[WinHac]

Friend of mine is looking to get into unRAID. Looking for a recommendation for a 5bay + budget build. $300-$400 range?

[garycase]

Personally I'd spend a bit more and get an Intel-based system, but for a very low cost system, this would be hard to beat:  http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1801938&nm_mc=EMC-IGNEFL081414&cm_mmc=EMC-IGNEFL081414-_-EMC-081414-Index-_-Combo-_-Combo1801938-LM3A

 

$229.99 with everything you need except disks and an UnRAID license ... and it even includes one 1TB disk that would be a nice cache drive.    The case has 5 internal drive bays, plus 4 external bays that could easily hold 4 more drives as is; or even more with a 4-in-3 or 5-in-3 adapter.

 

 

[garycase]

By the way, if you're in the US, watch for Newegg's "Shell Shocker" deals.  They occasionally have some very nice combo buys.    For example, this morning (midnight - 10AM Pacific time( they had an Intel Haswell based system with a 3.2GHz Pentium, 8GB of memory, case and power supply, a 64GB SSD, and a 1TB hard drive for $299.99 

 

Those deals are fairly frequent ... probably at least one fairly nice system/week that's in the $300 - $400 price range.

 

You do, of course, have to be "ready to strike", as the deals are only good for a limited number of hours.

 

[korith]

 

Maybe http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16859108164 it goes on sale fairly often, around $250. Nice and compact, just add the hard drives, flash drive with unraid and you are ready to go. 4 data drives and one parity drive fit nicely.