I am planning a home media server, and this product REALLY looks promising.  In consideration for going 'whole hog', I think a Stacker case, IcyDock trays, and a bunch of WD 5000AASK 500 Gig drives would be my jumping off point.  I would pair this with a Celeron D (Cedar Mill, or Conroe-L if it gets released by then)

 

My main concern is the motherboard.  In my research, it looks like the ICH8R is by far the fastest south bridge to get on a MB.  Add to that the (eventual) need for SATA add-in cards, and I was considering a MB with at least two 4X Lane PCI Express slots (6 Standard SATA + 2 PCI-Express cards for 4 each, a total of 14 drives... seems like a nice number  ).  It is my understanding the PCI Express is point to point, rather than a shared bus ala PCI, so would be preferable.  Are all my assumptions correct up to now?  (I am still a noob at the storage side of performance)

 

So my question:  The cheapest two boards I could find (on the egg) that fit the bill were :  (They both seem to have GigE on PCI-E also)

 

MSI P965 Platinum http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130055

Lan Controller: Realtek RTL8111B

 

ABIT AB9 QuadGT http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813127019

Lan Controller: Realtek RTL8810SC

 

Does unRAID support those lan controllers?  Do these MB look like a go?

 

Any other (potential) issues I have not considered?

 

Thanks!

Do you know which pci-e sata controller cards you will be using? I haven' done a bunch of in depth research on the subject but...It seems like any pci-e sata controller I have found is either very expensive or only has 2 ports. I'd be interested in finding an inexpensive 4 port pci-e card for my server.

The plan is to integrate one once I pass the 6 drive mark, but browsing on newegg, there are a couple of PCI Express 4X 4-port SATA II controllers under $200.  I don't know if they are compatible with unRAID, but I should probably check

 

SoNNeT TSATAII-E4i PCI Express x4 SATA II Controller Card RAID 0/10 was $169.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816122014

 

and

 

HighPoint RocketRAID 2310 PCI Express x4 (x8 and x16 slot compatible) SATA II Controller Card was about $129.99 IIRC

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115027

Do you know which pci-e sata controller cards you will be using? I haven' done a bunch of in depth research on the subject but...It seems like any pci-e sata controller I have found is either very expensive or only has 2 ports. I'd be interested in finding an inexpensive 4 port pci-e card for my server.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115029

 

This one (HighPoint RocketRAID 2300 PCI Express SATA II Controller Card) seems to be the cheapest ($110) I've seen, supports 4 SATA II ports, PCI Express X1, no port multiplier support mentioned.  I don't know if it is supported in unRAID yet, but users were successful with it in Gentoo and FreeBSD setups, so Linux drivers are coming.  For only 4 more drives, a pair of SiI3132-based 2 port cards would be cheaper, $60 to $70 total, and include port-multiplier support for future expansion (when unRAID supports them).

 

To answer your question on the ethernet, they are supported in the 4.0 version, not sure on the 3.x.