Ultimate *Budget* UnRaid


arcticool

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Hey all-

I'm looking to build the ultimate *budget* Unraid solution and looking for suggestions.

I really don't care about performance beyond it being able to stream DVD and HD DVD media stored on drive.

I couldn't care less about write times and to me $ saved on performance is $ for more drives.

 

Besides cost, my only other considerations are that it is able to support up to *8 SATA drives* (BTW, I noticed that most motherboards listed EG. the P5LD2-VM only support 4), and that it is as *low power consumption* as possible.

 

So I need recommendations for:

1. Motherboard

2. CPU

3. RAM

4. Add in SATA cards if required

5. Case w/power supply

 

Thanks in advance-

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Some bits I came across whilst researching bits for my UnRaids...

 

Motherboard - Even though onboard gfx keeps things tidy, sometimes these boards cost more than one without and a v.cheap gfx card.  If you have a spare gfx card lying around even better!.  Just make sure you have 4 satas onboard at least.

 

CPU when searching eBuyer & Scan here in the UK, the slowest CPUs weren't necessarily the cheapest.  The socket 775 Celerons here tend to come with a heatsink & fan that work just fine and are pretty quiet. 2.4ghz is fine & REALLY cheap.

 

Memory 2 x 256mb Ram will do just fine.

 

Sata Card - Sunsway/ST Lab PCI SATA RAID 4P, SiL3114 is a cheap 4Channel Sata150 card that a pal confirmed worked in an UnRaid, they are available ik the UK here for £25 but I bet they are available in the US (I assume you're in the US?)  I went for a more expensive Sata300 card myself.

 

Case with PSU.  If you are intending to run 8 HDDs I'd be thinking in terms of buying the case separate from the PSU.  Even if the rating is ok the quality of PSU that tend to come bundled arent usually that good.  If you take this advise the the CM-Centurion case is a VERY good case for smaller UnRaids.  They are very cheap here in the UK, they always seem to be on "Today Only" offer somewhere.  They have 5 internal 3.5" bays with a small cooler fan on them and 5 5.25" bays which can easily be used with HDDs if you buy brackets.  If you were to spend a bit more and use caddies... With a Cremax 5-into-3, a Cremax 3-into-2 and the internal bays this case could hold 12 or 13 HDDs.  You can see it in the Ultimate UnRaid Thread.  I used one of these for one of my UnRaids, you have to bend some brackets if you want to use the caddies I mentioned though.

 

For PSU, go for something with reasonable power on the +12V rails (Thanks for that info Joe..I'm passing it on already :)), look for models that claim to be energy efficient.  Think how important your Data is to you, that's why you're raid protecting, don't risk a crap PSU, if the power gets unreliable the problems may not be immediately apparent and could affect too many HDDs to recover from parity.

 

Hope these help, I look forward to other peoples input with interest.

 

Mark.

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