I plan on starting out with only a few 4TB drives, but adding on until I hit the current limit of 25 drives (not including the USB/OS drive).

The box will be essentially a large NAS box with all of my CDs/DVDs/BDs backed up to it for viewing on the local network.  I'm going to be building my own case out of wood since I haven't found any case that can hold all the drives for less than $200.  I have a few old cases that I'll be cutting up to mount the motherboard to inside the wood case.

I don't need IPMI on the motherboard (even though this one has it) as the machine will have a monitor/keyboard/mouse close by if that becomes necessary.  My main concern is that I be able to run this right out of the box with no changes to firmware or major bios changes.

 

The current estimates for the system and cards is $1100, but I could go up to $1400 if there's a good enough reason for it.

LimeTech USB sticks, HDDs, and SFF8087-to-SATA cables are not included in the current cost estimates.  Almost all of my drives are SATA now and the PATA/EIDE drives I have aren't really worth using in this situation.

The only add-ons I think I may run are unRAID-Web, Dynamix/UnMENU, SmartHistory, and maybe Plex media server.  I don't think I'll run Transmission/unTorrent.

 

My current list of hardware:

• SUPERMICRO MBD-X10SAT-O ATX Server Motherboard LGA 1150 DDR3 1600/1333/1066 ($270, I chose this because it was the only one on NewEgg that had 3 PCI-E 3.0 x16 for the SuperMicro SAS RAID cards)
  
  • http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182830

  [*]SUPERMICRO AOC-SASLP-MV8 PCI-Express x4 Low Profile SAS RAID Controller  ($330, I know that I'll need three of them and SFF-8087_mini-SAS_to_SATA cables to connect to the hard drives)

  • http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816101358

  [*]SeaSonic S12G S12G-650 650W ATX12V / EPS12V 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Active PFC Power Supply  ($100)

  • http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151137

 

I'm not sure which CPU would be better in the long run.  The 4130T is very low power, but the 4570S would be able to handle more processes/threads.  When building/checking the parity drive, would it be limited by the HDD speeds or the CPU?  The machine will be on 24-7, as I expect most of these machines are.  These are the two contenders I'm looking at.

• Intel Core i3-4130T Haswell Dual-Core 2.9GHz LGA 1150 35W ($123)
  
  • http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116947

  [*]Intel Core i5-4570S Haswell Quad-Core 2.9GHz LGA 1150 65W ($200)

  • http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116897

 

RAM is another area I wasn't sure about, both in size and what to get.  The current plan is for 2 sticks of 8 GB ECC RAM, but would a single stick of 8 GB be good enough?  I don't have any must-get manufacturer, but I've used Crucial before and I've been happy.  This is what Crucial's website said would work with the X10SAT motherboard.

• 16GB kit (8GBx2) DDR3 PC3-12800 Unbuffered ECC 1.5V 1024Meg x 72 ($200)
  
  • http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/x10sat/CT4486262

 

 

I plan on starting out with only a few 4TB drives, but adding on until I hit the current limit of 25 drives (not including the USB/OS drive).

The box will be essentially a large NAS box with all of my CDs/DVDs/BDs backed up to it for viewing on the local network.  I'm going to be building my own case out of wood since I haven't found any case that can hold all the drives for less than $200.  I have a few old cases that I'll be cutting up to mount the motherboard to inside the wood case.

If you're planning on building the system up to 25 drives, you really shouldn't skimp out on the case.  With your plans of 25 drives, hotswap cages pretty much become a necessity.  The odds of knocking cables slightly loose, etc when working inside or changing a drive will be pretty good.

 

You don't have to go all out and buy a supermicro 25 bay case, but even if you only get a cheap rosewill 12 bay rsv-l4412 for ~200 (or individual the individual cages inside it for ~$50 you'll be miles ahead.

 

You can also get a Norco 24 bay for ~$450.

 

High hard drive density and no hotswap is a recipe for disaster.

 

That P/S is fine for now, but as you add drives, you're going to have to upgrade it.  It has 54A on the 12v rail, and you have to figure that each drive is going to take ~2A start up current which doesn't leave you any room at all for all of the other components.

All of the Haswell CPU's are very power efficient -- I'd go with the i5, or even an i7.  It'll run at very low power when the demand is low; but the more "horsepower" you have available, the better the system will perform if/when you run a CPU-intensive task (never know what you might decide to do in the future).    Every system I've built in the last few months has used an i7-4790 ... perhaps a "toss" of an extra $100, but I look at it as "horsepower insurance" 

 

I'd also go with 2 x 8GB RAM ... for 2 reasons:  (1)  Same as with the CPU ... never hurts to have extra memory available, and UnRAID will use it for extra buffering if it's available;  and (2) you'll get better performance with your memory subsystem if you have 2 modules so it can run in the optimal dual channel mode.

 

Just found this old post from bjp999 that pretty much says everything about hotswap  http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=13450.msg131681#msg131681

Now that unRAID uses btrfs or xfs, I think it's a good idea to consider ECC RAM, which you've done. 

 

That, however, means you need a motherboard that supports ECC (so on Intel either C224 or C226 chipset), and on AMD you need AM3+ board with a board that has working ECC in the BIOS.  The board you've cohsen is fine.

 

Also, on Intel, the only S1150 CPUs that support ECC are Celerons, Pentiums, i3 and Xeons.  i5 and i7 do not support ECC RAM in the S1150 form factor.

 

The E3 Xeons are the ECC supporting i5 and i7 equivalent.  Lower E3 Xeons are Quad core with no HT (i5 equivalent), and the higher ones ate quad core with HT (i7 equivalent).

 

So, OP, in your original list, the i3-4130T will support ECC OK, the i5-4570S will not.

 

Personally, I'd go with the i3-4350, it's fast when required (dual core 3.6GHz with HT), and it'll idle using very little power, and it's much cheaper than the E3 Xeon.

There are some inexpensive disk controllers on eBay you might want to consider. Like the popular IBM M1015 and Areca ARC-1230 / 1231ML / 1261ML / 1280 / 1280ML. The Areca controllers provide 12 to 24 slots on one card which will be very helpful for a big build. They are not popular here but I just ordered 2 - an ARC-1230 and an ARC-1231ML and am going to try them out (both support 12 drives - only difference is one is SATA and one is SAS). At $69 they were a bargain per slot! I already own an older ARC-1200 that I use for RAID0 parity that I know works.

 

I have had servers approaching 25 drives. One thing you may not be considering is the sheer heft of them! I expect my server topped the scales at 75 lbs +. Even in great shape, picking the thing up to move it was tough!  Consider how you will service the server and literally how you'll move it into place from the assembly area. Having removable drive slots gives you the option to take out many of the drives to move it which helps tremendously. My current backup server is in an Antec 9 drive case, and with 5in3s holds 15 drives. But I've connected 2 Rosewill 4in3s which I have screwed together into a makeshift 8 drive 2nd case and run externally, adding another 8 drives for a total of 23. Works for me!

I wanted to thank everybody for their inputs.  Based on what I've read from other posts and what was said here, I've updated my build to the following:

Case:  Norco 4224

Motherboard:  SuperMicro X9SCM-F-O

CPU:  Intel Xeon E3-1230 V2 Ivy Bridge 3.3GHz Quad-core

RAM:  2 x Kingston 8GB DDR3 SDRAM ECC Unbuffered DDR3 1600

Controller cards:  3 x SUPERMICRO AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 PCI-Express 2.0 x8 SATA / SAS

PSU:  SeaSonic SS-750KM3 750W ATX12V V2.3/EPS 12V (+12V@62A)

Cost of components (not including Norco 4224 case) = ~$1,032 + S/H

 

I went with the X9SCM-F-O board since a lot of people on here seem to use that board and like it.

Squid, I wasn't sure about getting a Norco, but follow-on reviews say that Norco has fixed most of the backplate issues that were seen in the earlier versions.  I upgraded the PSU to handle the 25 HDDs and still have a buffer left over.

HellDiverUK, thanks for reminding me that not all CPUs support ECC RAM.  I made sure to check Intel's site (links below) to make sure the CPUs I was looking at supported ECC RAM.

Bjp999, I did look on eBay for the M1015 and ARC-1230 controllers, but didn't find any that were any cheaper than what NewEgg is charging for the SuperMicro controllers.

 

I did consider the i3-3250 Dual-core 3.5GHz CPU, but I think spending the extra money for 2 more cores will help if I decide that I need to run Plex transcoding in the future for 1080p or, god forbid, 4k video.

So unless there are other comments or I find something unusual with the build in my thread searching, I'll go with this build and start adding drives.

 

 

References for anyone checking out this thread in the future:

Kingston has tested this RAM with the X9CSM-F motherboard.

Intel's spec sheet for the E3-1230 CPU.

Intel's spec sheet for the i3-3250 CPU.

I ran my final systems specs against this website which said that recommended power supply was 472W.  The 850W PSU will have enough power to spin up all the drives and have extra 12V power left over.

Not sure how many drives you need - but you are buying 24 slots with 3 cards = $333.

 

Two of THESE 12 port cards provide the same 24 slots with 2 cards = $140.

 

That would save $192!

 

There is also THIS 24 DRIVE CARD for $100. It is all SATA ports, not SAS, but you can buy the SATA to SAS cables for the Norco, instead of the SAS to SAS cables you need with the Norco. This is only $99.99.

 

That would save $233!

 

I prefer the SAS connectors which are harder to knock loose and easier to install. But either would work.

 

I am going to install my ARC-1231ML this weekend and can report experience. I have confirmed that the driver is included with unRAID.