I need to build a unRAID system that supports 7 x WD 6TB red's in a Lian Li PC-Q25 case. The motherboard must have onboard IPMI. I want the most powerful board and CPU possible, although it will just be used to stream Blu-ray and future 4K movies via openELEC. It will also need to run unRAID v6 in the future. I wondered if Garycase or any other users could suggest a board.

You don't need a lot of horsepower to simply serve up data without transcoding it.

 

I'm running a Celeron in mine, see sig for link.

Your ideal board would be the ASRock E3C224D4I-14S which gives you 14xSATA ports while keeping your PCIe slot open but its an extended ITX board and I don't know if it will fit in the Q25. 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157486

 

If that doesn't fit, the ASRock E3C226D2I might be your best bet with a separate 2 port SATA card:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157466

 

Thanks Guys, yes the ASRock E3C226D2I would do and it supports ECC RAM. Although it does seem that a lot of users have had problems with it. Im used to Supermicro motherboards and IPMI. I know a few users have built systems using their integrated Atom boards X7 I think. I wonder if they would be enough, although I would prefer to run a Xeon 1240V3 CPU.

Thanks Guys, yes the ASRock E3C226D2I would do and it supports ECC RAM. Although it does seem that a lot of users have had problems with it. Im used to Supermicro motherboards and IPMI. I know a few users have built systems using their integrated Atom boards X7 I think. I wonder if they would be enough, although I would prefer to run a Xeon 1240V3 CPU.

 

While it might be tempting to go with more horsepower you'll really pay for it in terms of $. In your case I'd probably avoid an Atom board and go for something like a Celeron or i3. Core i3s are surprisingly powerful and power-efficient but don't support virtualization so are a good choice for a non-VM unRAID with a little headroom for transcoding or whatever down the track.

... Core i3s are surprisingly powerful and power-efficient but don't support virtualization so are a good choice for a non-VM unRAID with a little headroom for transcoding or whatever down the track.

 

Just to be clear, most i3's DO support hardware virtualization, and run VM's just fine.    What they do NOT support is directed I/O (vt-d), so you can't do I/O pass-through.    Whether this is an issue or not depends on what you plan to do with your VMs.

 

They do, however, provide a lot of bang for the buck -- an i3-4330 scores over 5,000 on PassMark.

 

Thanks guys so I think I will look at the AS Rock MB. But with regards to the CPU, celeron, i3 or Xeon 1240V3. Its purely used for movie playback. Im running 5.06 and APCUPS, Cache Dirs, Dynamix and Dynamix System Temp. I will move to V6 eventually and I suppose use docker for these app's. But nothing else. I doubt I will ever run sick beard e.t.c.

Sounds like an i3 (be sure to get one with ECC support) and ECC memory on the AsRock board will give you plenty of "oomph" for what you need 

I just built a system with the Lian Li PC-Q25B myself, you are going to have to stick with a mini itx form factor.

 

I used this blog as a loose guide for parts.... (i used that psu and I can confirm it works).  The asus mobo looks like it may be pretty decent... I ended up with the Asus H81I Plus by accident, but it's working out well for me.

 

http://blog.brianmoses.net/2014/01/diy-nas-2014-edition.html

 

Read through it, I found it pretty helpful for my build.

Thanks but I don't need help building it or the parts. It was only the motherboard and the Asus is no good as it doesn't have IPMI. I will go with the Lian Li Q25B, Silverstone SFX 300w PSU, AS Rock MB with ECC Memory and probably the Xeon 1230V3 for future proofing. Disks are 6 x 6TB WD Red.

Thanks but I don't need help building it or the parts. It was only the motherboard and the Asus is no good as it doesn't have IPMI. I will go with the Lian Li Q25B, Silverstone SFX 300w PSU, AS Rock MB with ECC Memory and probably the Xeon 1230V3 for future proofing. Disks are 6 x 6TB WD Red.

 

A VERY nice system indeed -- exactly what I'd probably use today if I was building a new server.

 

Thanks Gary, most of the parts came from your advise on many of the Q25 forum builds. Im hoping the PSU will be enough if I eventually need to add a seventh 6TB WD Red and a 2 port SATA III card.

I'm confident the 300w unit is fine, but if you're at all concerned, perhaps you should get the 450w version 

... a bit of extra headroom at the expense of slightly lower efficiency in normal operations (since it would be further out of the 80+ certification range).

 

 

Yes I think it will be and another user is running 7 x 7200 rpm drives with it which will draw more power than the 6TB WD Reds Im using.