July 29, 201015 yr Well, after doing tons of reading, pulling the trigger. Below is what I've ordered, can't wait to get it all and start putting it together. I've already loaded the software onto the SanDisk Cruzer and booted it on my laptop. At least all was functional. Came up and able to access it via http://tower and copied preclear.sh to /boot Did trial of preclear.sh via USB Docking station to laptop but will wait for server build before preclearing. Would take too long using USB Docking station (only got 32.5mb/s pre-read) Not sure what add-ons I might also run so went with the 2 core [has always worked well for me in the past] instead of the Sempron. SanDisk Cruzer 4GB Flash Drive (USB2.0 Portable) Model SDCZ36-004G-A11 2x [Data Drives] Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EADS 2TB SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive COOLER MASTER Centurion 590 RC-590-KKN1-GP Black SECC / ABS ATX Mid Tower Computer Case SUPERMICRO CSE-M35T-1B Black 5 Bay Hot-Swapable SATA HDD Enclosure COOLER MASTER GX Series RS750-ACAAE3-US 750W ATX12V v2.31 SLI Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply [Future Proof] AMD Athlon II X2 245 Regor 2.9GHz Socket AM3 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor ADX245OCGQBOX 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 1x [Parity Drive] HITACHI Deskstar 7K2000 HDS722020ALA330 (0F10311) 2TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive [Router out of Ports] NETGEAR GS108 10/100/1000Mbps ProSafe Gigabit Ethernet Desktop Switch with Jumbo Frame support Furhter thoughts, while spouse is in generous mood, might need to look into UPS for this, htpc machine, and desktop. Any recommendations? Depends upon where I'm going to place unRAID server but might be able to get all 3 machines, plus modem/router/switch onto same UPS (just need to figure out how big). Mainly want something to the blips and sometimes 5min outages we're starting to get lately. Figure 10-15mins capacity would work in order to give time to shutdown everything. Another question, is there a method where once power is restored, to bring up everything cleanly? BIOS setting, or what?
July 29, 201015 yr Your build looks good to me, no incompatibilities that I notice. How many drives do you plan on eventually supporting? A 750 W PSU is likely overkill. A 400 W PSU will support around 15 green/low power drives. I recommend Corsair's 400W CX. APC is generally the most popular brand of UPS in the unRAID crowd. I use a cheap CyberPower that I found for $40 (including shipping). Mine is only 700A, though, so it can only support my server and one or two other things - I tried to put my entire home theater system on it and it whimpered and whined. If you have a Kill-A-Watt or other type of voltage meter, you can add up all the watts/voltage of your various devices and figure out how big of a UPS you will need. It may end up being cheaper to buy two smaller ones.
July 29, 201015 yr Author Yes, realize 750 is overkill but got it from a friend (NIB) for slightly over what it would have cost me to get the Corsair's 400W CX. Worse case, if I need a psu more along the lines of 750 for another machine in the future, can always swap them out. Eventually how many drives? Not sure, fairly new to htpc world and already have 2TB and thats not keeping some stuff that I might like due to current space available. Saw the writing on the wall so that is what ended up bringing me to unRAID. Just starting out with "free" 3 drive system to get my feet wet, then most like add drives along the way until max out the case then build a 2nd machine btw - forgot to put down the biostar (budget build) mb in the list. Already had that (cheaply) that just never got into a build before.
July 29, 201015 yr Yes, realize 750 is overkill but got it from a friend (NIB) for slightly over what it would have cost me to get the Corsair's 400W CX. Then you got a good deal! The CM-590 can hold 12 drives with 4-in-3 drive cages and 15 drives with 5-in-3 drive cages. If you go for external drive bays, each 4-in-3 or 5-in-3 will cost around $100. That's $300 plus the cost of the CM-590. If you think you may go past 15 drives at some point in the future, then you may want to consider a 20 drive case like the Norco 4220 now rather than later. It is a big investment, but it really will save you money in the long run (think of it as a 20 drive case for about the same price as a 15 drive case). I know it is hard to predict how many drives you'll need. I started my unRAID server with six 500 GB drives. I'm now only at eight drives, but they are all 1 TB or larger. I've also upgraded to all green/low power drives, which allows me to continue using my smallish 380W Antec Earthwatts PSU.
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