jschwartz Posted May 26, 2007 Share Posted May 26, 2007 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! Quote Link to comment
cheezdog Posted May 26, 2007 Share Posted May 26, 2007 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. Quote Link to comment
jschwartz Posted May 26, 2007 Author Share Posted May 26, 2007 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 Quote Link to comment
RobJ Posted May 26, 2007 Share Posted May 26, 2007 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). Quote Link to comment
goofygrin Posted May 29, 2007 Share Posted May 29, 2007 To answer your question on the ethernet, they are supported in the 4.0 version, not sure on the 3.x. Quote Link to comment
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