HoliestNoir Posted October 16, 2015 Posted October 16, 2015 So, I've settled on unRAID for my fist attempt at a NAS. I plan to use it to store music, video, and documents, and share/stream to computers running Windows, MacOS, Linux, an ipad, and an andorid phone. I doubt there will ever be more than two streams playing at once. I also hope to plug in a printer and print from any device in the house via the network. CPU: Intel Core i3-4130T Haswell Dual-Core 2.9 GHz LGA 1150 35W RAM: G.SKILL Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 Motherboard: MSI H97M-ECO Micro-ATX LGA 1150 PSU: Antec EarthWatts Green EA-380D Green 380W Continuous power ATX12V v2.3 / EPS12V 80 PLUS BRONZE Case: SilverStone SST-PS07B Black Steel / Plastic with Aluminum Accent MicroATX Mini Tower Cache drive: SAMSUNG 850 EVO 2.5" 120GB Storage drives: 2x HGST Deskstar 3.5" 4TB CoolSpin SATA 6Gb/s Internal Desktop Hard Drive Retail Kit, later to be expanded to 4-5.
garycase Posted October 16, 2015 Posted October 16, 2015 Looks fine. The only caveat is that the CPU you've selected doesn't support vt-d (I/O Passthrough), so there will be limitations on what you could do with virtual machines; but if this is going to be purely a NAS that's irrelevant. You might also want to consider using a server-class motherboard with a Cxxx chipset and ECC memory. This would add another layer of fault tolerance to the overall system.
HoliestNoir Posted October 16, 2015 Author Posted October 16, 2015 Yeah, I don't see myself using it for virtualization at all, it's purely a headless NAS box file/media/print server and nothing else. I decided against the server board and ECC (if I had gone that route, I would have tried FreeNAS and ZFS). The whole server hardware route seemed like overkill for my needs. I have a cloud backup for anything that I couldn't bear to lose, so even if my main computer and my NAS explode, I should still be able to recover anything difficult/impossible to replace. Of course if the sun farts and a solar storm wipes out the data center too, I have a real problem.
garycase Posted October 16, 2015 Posted October 16, 2015 Agree -- as long as you've got good backups what you're building is just fine.
tdallen Posted October 16, 2015 Posted October 16, 2015 The CPU you've selected will be fine for basic NAS duties but could struggle a bit if you do any heavy duty transcoding with it. Whether that is an issue will depend on the format of your source media and the capabilities of your players. The general rule of thumb is 2,000 Passmarks per 1080p stream if you are using your system to transcode your media on the fly. In reality, I can completely max out 4,000 Passmark CPU transcoding a high bit rate native BD rip for a Roku. If you have mostly compressed H.264 encoded video you may be fine with that CPU, but personally I'd throw at least at a Core i3-4360 or 4370 in there given your use case - it's only $30 more. And, if your general preference is to store highest quality BD rips and you like lots of flexibility in your players - I'd go with a Core i5. It really depends, though.
HoliestNoir Posted October 16, 2015 Author Posted October 16, 2015 It's just me and a roommate and we both have pretty powerful computers that we use for most of our movie watching, so transcoding shouldn't be needed unless someone wants to watch off of an ipad or a phone. Max use scenario would be one person streaming 1080p to an ipad/android and another person streaming music over uPnP or watching a movie from their desktop (presumably without transcoding).
tdallen Posted October 16, 2015 Posted October 16, 2015 In that case the 4130 should be fine unless most of your movies are full BD rips. The other thing on my wish list would be hot swap drive bays. My current setup is similar to your proposed setup, with a mid-tower case and internal drive bays. Bad things have a way of happening in this setup when you go in to add/remove a drive (for instance, I've inadvertantly disconnected other cables and broken a SATA power connector). If I were doing it again I'd make the investment in either drive cages or a case that supports hot swap. That does cost more, though.
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