Build on a budget


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Hi everyone,

 

I'm new here, first post ever  ;D

 

I have recently moved country and my new home as the benefit of having access to symetrical 1Gb/s fiber (for real) and legal downloading written in the law.

Let's just say I have found paradise and my old Synology DS111 with it's 2TB drive its downfall. It was already pretty full by the time I left my previous country, but it's just not viable going forward.

 

I have been pondering bigger NASes and similar solutions for the past few weeks and here I am, settled on giving unRAID a try after reading a lot of good things about both the platform and its community.

 

Ok, that's it about the story of my life and the philosophical discussion about why I'm here. From here on, we're only discussing hardware, I promise ^^

 

I was unsure for the longest time of whether to combine my future VM host and the unRAID machine (running unRAID as a guest OS on ESXi for instance) but I ended up deciding against. As such, I will need 2 machines and the unRAID one will only be running unRAID. I mention that because it's important to understand that it's driving 2 main considerations about this build: to be dirt cheap and designed with only unRAID in mind. Anything and everything else will run somewhere else.

 

Here were my design constraints:

 

  • As cheap as possible (we're talking below $300 for everything except the disks)
  • Low power consumption when idle (< 50W is a must, < 40W would be great)
  • Small footprint (size and noise) because it has to live in my living room
  • Enough room to have 6+ 3.5" drives, the more the better (8 drives in this configuration)

 

I started designing with PCPartPicker and picking up the cheapest part that went together while still fitting my criterias above and then I changed some of them depending on what is available locally and the local differences in prices (Switzerland).

 

This is the finalized list of parts. I haven't ordered anything yet but unless you tell me something is really wrong with it, I will pull the trigger in the coming days.

 

zVnD8H5.png

 

And here are my questions:

 

[*]Is this build sensible to run unRAID baremetal with 8 disks? By that, I mean powerful enough to run it and saturate the gigabit interface when reading data.

[*]I will set the TDP of the CPU to 45W in the bios. Will I meet my < 40W idle target for the system? (drives would be spinned-down by unRAID)

I did a PSU calculation, which you will find below, but that doesn't tell me how much the system will draw when only the CPU and motherboard are active. This is my biggest uncertainty so far and I would really like to keep the power bill low as power can get quite expensive here.

[*]Is the PSU beefy enough to run the machine with 8 drives running at the same time? (parity check for instance). It should be according to the simulation, but I prefer double-checking.

[*]Is the Cooler Master Elite 342 a good enough case for hosting up to 8 drives (5 inside, 3 in the two 5.25 bays) without becoming a spaghetti monster that would be impossible to keep cool?

 

Is there anything else I missed?

 

Thanks in advance for your help with the design of this build. Don't hesitate to ask questions, I'll gladly reply and provide more details :)

 

Annex 1: PSU calculation using OuterVision PSU Calculator:

H5UvVSi.png

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[*]Is this build sensible to run unRAID baremetal with 8 disks? By that, I mean powerful enough to run it and saturate the gigabit interface when reading data.

[*]I will set the TDP of the CPU to 45W in the bios. Will I meet my < 40W idle target for the system? (drives would be spinned-down by unRAID)

I did a PSU calculation, which you will find below, but that doesn't tell me how much the system will draw when only the CPU and motherboard are active. This is my biggest uncertainty so far and I would really like to keep the power bill low as power can get quite expensive here.

[*]Is the PSU beefy enough to run the machine with 8 drives running at the same time? (parity check for instance). It should be according to the simulation, but I prefer double-checking.

[*]Is the Cooler Master Elite 342 a good enough case for hosting up to 8 drives (5 inside, 3 in the two 5.25 bays) without becoming a spaghetti monster that would be impossible to keep cool?

 

1.  Your build as spec'd is more than enough to run Unraid.

 

2.  You don't need to set the TDP because that will only help if you maximize the CPU on rare occasions. My thought is why choke the CPU for rare occasions?

 

3.  The power supply is big enough, and single rail. I am kinda cringing here because I don't think it is a good idea to cheap out on the power supply no matter what your budget is.

 

4.  That case looks great! You can easily keep the wires out of the way of airflow when you build this.

 

As for keeping the power usage under 50W I doubt it. I'd like to see systems with 6-10 drives that are.

 

 

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do you want to transcode/stream the movies over the network, or do you have an external device, like a smart tv, a media player, a whatever stick etc....?

If unraid only has to push data into the local network, saturating 1 gig lan, or even say high enough output for one 4k 60hz stream, you should be fine with less horsepower. In that case unraid is just a "external usb drive" that sends data through rj45 instead of usb and as such does not need a lot of power.

 

Considerations as I tested network/cpu usage on 10 gig networks...multicores do not realy help, as most of the "overhead" or just executing the transfer is done on one core only (per stream)

so basicaly a cheap dual core that idles well and has enough punch for (one?) transfer is what I would go for.

also, at that price catagory, I would not go for new hardware and search for something used.

If you download stuff from the net as the main source, and you do not have usual occasions of "putting 4 TB of stuff into the array like right now" write speeds are not realy a big deal. read speeds are not bound by cpu performance that much, as the actual work that is done is by checking and updating the parity.

 

Do you have multiple people that acces unraid? Multiple devices or streams at once?

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2.  You don't need to set the TDP because that will only help if you maximize the CPU on rare occasions. My thought is why choke the CPU for rare occasions?

 

3.  The power supply is big enough, and single rail. I am kinda cringing here because I don't think it is a good idea to cheap out on the power supply no matter what your budget is.

 

As for keeping the power usage under 50W I doubt it. I'd like to see systems with 6-10 drives that are.

 

2. Actually, you make a good point about the TDP. If it's indeed only a cap on the upper-bound of the CPU and it doesn't change anything at idle or low-load, then there's really no point for me to lower it. I don't mind the occasional spike when doing some heavy processing.

 

3. Believe me, I know that you should never skimp on a power-supply and that's why I went for a Corsair one instead of a lower-price no-name one (LC-Power, Xilence, Eurocase, FSP Group ...)

 

I'd like to discuss the total power enveloppe a bit more.

I'm sure you're talking from experience when you say it won't fit under 50W at idle but my maths don't add up.

 

 

Motherboard + CPU + RAM: ~29W according to http://www.pcper.com/news/Editorial/AMD-AM1-Retested-60-Watt-Power-Supply

3.5" drive on standby: between 0.38W and 1.5W

 

Let's take the worst case scenario and round up the MOBO to 30, the drives to 16 (8 * 2W) and add a few of watts for case fans (3 fans at 2W each). That way we get 30 + 16 + 6 = 52W

 

Granted, I have breached the 50W ceiling but I have also done my calculation using the highest values I found online for each individual component.

In the end it will be hard to tell without actually measuring it (I plan to buy a kill-a-watt and post the results online when I have completed the build), but I do have hopes for being able to idle between 40 to 50W with all the drives loaded in.

 

If you think otherwise and have good reasons for that, I'd be happy to hear them as I might reconsider this build if the power enveloppe is going to be way higher than that :)

 

 

 

so basicaly a cheap dual core that idles well and has enough punch for (one?) transfer is what I would go for.

also, at that price catagory, I would not go for new hardware and search for something used.

 

A cheap dual core is what I am aiming for with the A6-7400K :)

 

Do you have any idea where to find used hardware at a decent price in Switzerland that would also not explode my power budget?

I found this equation very hard to solve here.

 

As I just moved to this country, I don't know people yet so I can't really ask around if anyone has a machine they could give/sell me.

I have a very old P4 Prescott at my parent's place but it's in another country and the machine is so power hungry and loud anyway that it wouldn't make any sense to use it.

 

Companies here don't hand out end-of-life hardware. Anything and everything is recycled and accounted for and go through official channels for decommissioning.

 

I have looked at classifieds but people sell very old hardware for a higher price than what you can get new at similar performance levels.

 

I considered looking online at websites like eBay, but on anything coming from outside of the country, you get killed on VAT/"import and processing" fees that all the major shipping companies (including the regular Post) automatically apply on overseas parcels (think 8% + a flat fee of $20-25 per package + shipping), so it's really not worth it either.

 

Also, let's say I find a good deal locally and get a power-efficient machine that is not too old (because of PSU and case compatibility issues + the need for SATA 3) for lower than $50 (I doubt it, this is the kind of offers we have here: $100 for a Q6600 http://www.anibis.ch/de/computer-~-b%C3%BCrotechnik-computer,-pc-~-mac-computer--1939/dell-xps-420-geh%C3%A4use--16692268.aspx?loc=z%C3%BCrich&sdc=20&fcid=1939). Even in that case, I would still probably need to buy a new case for it to host 6+ drives and make sure it's compatible.

 

I'm not saying it's impossible, just that I haven't been able to find a good way to make this work so far.

 

do you want to transcode/stream the movies over the network, or do you have an external device, like a smart tv, a media player, a whatever stick etc....?

[...]

 

Do you have multiple people that acces unraid? Multiple devices or streams at once?

 

We currently stream to PCs (plain VLC from files on the Synology) but have never transcoded so far. I guess with Plex, that being so easy, it might become something we start doing when we have the hardware and software for it. With this CPU, I should be able to transcode one 1080p stream according to Plex's website, as it requires ~2000 of passmark score and the A6-7400K hovers around 2800. If it ever becomes a need to be able to transcode multiple streams at the same time (friends accessing my media library from the WAN for instance), I would shift Plex to the other machine hosting my VMs. But at that point, the network and single-drive performance of Plex might become the bottleneck ^^'

 

We'll see anyway. For now, the requirements are "cheap, lot of storage, low key and low power".

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Hi, I think your build looks solid but here are a few comments:

 

  • A 2,800 Passmark CPU might be enough to transcode a single 1080p stream but you're cutting it close.  2,000 Passmarks per 1080p stream is just a rule of thumb, you can easily need more.  Also, don't forget to leave some CPU available for unRAID!  2,800 Passmarks is fine for a basic NAS but if you plan to do any transcoding I'd start with a 4,000+ Passmark CPU.
  • A 350w power supply with 25a on the 12v rail ought to be enough for your power requirements... but do consider the age of your drives and the amperage pulled at spinup.  I've seen things get wonky with a marginal power supply at startup or spinup (say, when a parity check is starting).  The issue is that you get a momentary spike in demand as the drives spin up.  If you have all newer drives you're probably fine but older drives can have higher power requirements.
  • Whether or not you'll be under 40w or 50w at idle in this setup is mostly a function of the motherboard.  If idle power use is a significant concern then you're better off going Intel, but the AMD setup will probably cost less and only use a little more power.
  • 4GB is fine for a basic NAS with one or two lightweight Dockers.
  • I think you'd have a better chance of maxing your network usage with a motherboard that has an Intel based LAN chip, but the Realtek in my system works Ok.

 

Good luck!

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Quick update, I just ordered the parts yesterday.

I consolidated it all to only order from 2 local resellers (so some prices were a bit inflated and I had to change the USB drive) and bumped the memory to 8GB.

 

Here's the final list and associated costs:

 

CPU: AMD A6 7400k - 60.65

Motherboard: ASRock FM2A88M PRO3+ - 79.95

RAM: Kingston 8GB DDR3-1333 - 41.95

OS drive: SandDisk Ultra Fit 16GB - 10.20

PSU: Corsair VS350 - 41.95

Case: Cooler Master Elite 342 - 44.4

Cables: SATA cables x5 - 2.25

Cables: MOLEX-SATA adapters x3 - 3.45

 

Total: CHF 284.8 / $288.36

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Looks good but why did you go with 8GB 1333 memory?

 

I don't know why people got onto transcoding since you just want to stream to PCs, this computer will be fine for what you want. Instead of streaming with VLC try installing Kodi on one of your PCs, you'll like it.

 

 

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With Plex's new apps, and more video formats supported by browsers, I've found Plex very, very rarely transcodes anything.  Even across the web, I rarely see transcoding.

 

8GB is about right for 6.2 - on my machine it uses 90% RAM when running a few dockers and a single Windows 8.1 VM.  I upped it to 16GB last night, and it's using just over 50% RAM.

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Just a small update.

 

I received all the parts yesterday and assembled the machine. The case is amazing at this price point and works really well with a micro-ATX motherboard (I wouldn't recommend it for a full ATX one). It can support up to 9 drives with 3 of them in the 5.25" bays, though my motherboard only has SATA ports for 8 drives. With minimal cable management, I was able to organize all of it pretty neatly for such a small form-factor.

 

The default CPU heatsink fan AMD provides is a bit noisy and so is the 120mm one at the front of the case, but I'm planning to switch the latter with a Noctua I have lying around.

 

Installing unRAID 6.2 was a piece of cake. So much that at some point I got confused because I was sure I was going to have to login on the server and set some things up but there was nothing about it in the docs.

 

I slotted 4 drives, two 2TB drives, one 1TB and one 500GB. I set one of the 2TB ones as my parity drive, created a 4TB array with the remaining 3 and "voila", I had my 4TB share readilly available. I left the machine run during the night to complete the parity rebuild and I'll start testing with data tonight and later I'll add more drives.

 

If all goes well, I'll purchase my Plus license soon, but so far I'm very impressed by unRAID :)

 

I still need to buy a kill-a-watt to check my power consumption but I'm fairly confident it fits below 50W when everything is idle.

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Just a small update.

 

<<<<  snip    >>>>

 

I still need to buy a kill-a-watt to check my power consumption but I'm fairly confident it fits below 50W when everything is idle.

 

I would save the money and use it to buy a UPS instead.  The built-in UPS plugin will give you the power consumption.  Plus, your server will gain the important benefit of being protected from bad things happening in the event of power outage.

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