Hi all,

 

I currently have a QNAP TS-412 with 4 2Tb drives, and a MacMini (i3 with 8gb) that I use as a small server for some VM but mostly as Plex Media Server and download station.

 

My idea is to get rid of this double configuration, replacing it with a single unRAID box, more powerful and with less power consumption.

The box should have the following characteristics:

 

1) Being able to transcode Plex media, just 1 at time. I didn't have any issue with the MacMini i3 cpu so far: I only transcoded 1080p, but being able to transcode also 4k would make it future proof.

2) Have a very small power impact. It should stay up 24/7, but the CPU would be mostly idle or with a very small load. My idea is to place a small SSD (128 gb would be probably enough) to cache data that should get moved to the drives once a day, to avoid to spin them up if I don't really need data in them. 

3) Cost me more or less zero: I will sell the QNAP box and the MacMini, I expect to get around 500€, so I would like to spend more or less the same.  As hard drives, I would reuse the 4 that are mounted in the QNAP, so they are excluded from the budget.

4) Have a small size. Ideally, more or less the same size as my QNAP. So ideally being mini-ITX.

5) Be quiet

6) Have space for 4 drives + the cache SSD, but having space for an additional drive would be better.

7) Not needed, but being able to setup link aggregation would be a plus. Having space for a 10gbE card to be added in the future too. 

 

I'd like to have some suggestions on components. Right now I find difficult to find mini-ITX motherboards with low prices and 5-6 SATA ports. 

I will update the post with the components I find.

Edited June 9, 20179 yr by alessandroorru

1) transcoding 4k is unpossible at your pricebracket, unless perhaps you can get old of some older server gear, but then 2) then becomes a problem.

2) The Fujitsu D3417-b21 s1151 motherboard has excelent power characteristics. If you search on the net, you'll find a guy with 4 x wd reds a pcie ssd and a celeron (i think) at idling at 10W! The board is excelent quality, but unfortunately it's also mAtx which makes it problematic to make as small as you qnap box.,

Note that the PSU will have a great impact on power usage, and most a quite bad below 100W. Do some research, the 80 plus qualitification is not a good marque for efficiency at low loads.

4)

Consider Node 304, Chenbro SR30169, In win ms04-01 for compactness. Supermicro also makes a mini itx case. All are < 20 liters and fairly close to dedicated NAS boxes in size.

Consider Node 804, Lian-li PC-M25, Supermicro SC731-300b for mAtx compatibility. 

Discuss with yourself if you want easy hardware access or compactness - bigger cases are considerably easier to work in, which is nice when a disk fails.

 

Example build:

Pentium G4560 ~ 60 eur

Gigabyte H270N ~ 150 eur

4 GB ddr 4 ~ 50 eur

Node 304 ~ 90 eur

Seasonic SSp300SFG ~ 50 eur (SFX, so you'll need a converter like Silverstone's PP08)

 

~ 400 euroes. 

 

Example build mAtx:

Pentium G4560 ~ 60 eur

Fujitsu D3417-b21 ~ 175 eur (make sure you get the revision which supports kaby lake)

4 GB ddr 4 ~ 50 eur You could also go ECC here.

Node 804 ~ 110 eur

Seasonic SSp300SFG ~ 50 eur (SFX, so you'll need a converter like Silverstone's PP08)

 

~440 euroes.

 

The 60-100 eur can be used on a better CPU cooler, fans, 4 GB ram more.