New to Unraid Please critique my planned build.


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I was about to purchase a Synology 1817+ unit but after doing the math paying almost $1K for a that unit is a total rip off, specially since I had an 4790K  laying around from a build I did last year. 

 

The Server will be use primarily as a Nas Storage server, Plex Server and an Torrent lowlander/seeding box. I need to be able to trans code 3 streams at once to be happy. Most of the hardware going into this server came to be from my main gaming pc that is currently being updated. 

 

 

I also need a good Sata Expansion card but I have no idea of what to buy, I have 8x and 16x PCIe slot available in the motherboard

 

 

 

 

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Hello and welcome.

 

That build should be fine for your requirements.  Both the Define R5 and the NZXT H440 have been used with lots of success, but it is worth considering buying a case like the Antec 900 and adding hotswap bays like the SuperMicro CSE-M35T.  Get an LSI based sata expansion card, the IBM M1015 and Dell PERC H310 are popular on eBay, as is the LSI 9201-8i and similar - search here, there are lots of discussions.

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2 hours ago, tdallen said:

Hello and welcome.

 

That build should be fine for your requirements.  Both the Define R5 and the NZXT H440 have been used with lots of success, but it is worth considering buying a case like the Antec 900 and adding hotswap bays like the SuperMicro CSE-M35T.  Get an LSI based sata expansion card, the IBM M1015 and Dell PERC H310 are popular on eBay, as is the LSI 9201-8i and similar - search here, there are lots of discussions.

 When it comes to the case, its going to be showing inside my home office and I rather have it look nice and sleek. The case you mentioned although functional is not my style :).  hotsawp bays is something I dont want to spend the money just now.

 

Will the LSI based sata expansion cards play well in a non-hotswapable system?  I see the ones that you can connect 4 HDDs per port are those any good?

 

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You might also want to look at the Silverstone DS380/CS380/CS381 - they built in hotswap bays at a reasonable price and have a door to make them look sleeker.  I wish there were more options with internal hotswap, Lian Li makes the only ones I know of.  The reason for this recommendation is that cabling issues are the most common cause of array disruption at some point in the future.  In other words, you go to add a drive or replace a failing drive - and inadvertently cause another problem by dislodging a cable to a good drive.

 

I run an IBM M1015, flashed to IT mode.  There are different kinds of cables, but I use it with an 8087 forward breakout cable.  This type of cable has a SAS connector where it attaches to the card, but then breaks out into 4 standard SATA connectors at the other end.  This allows you to attach to standard SATA hard drives or hotswap cages, your call.  The card has 2 ports so you can connect 8 drives.  The LSI based cards are the current recommendation, there are lots of threads about them here on the forums.

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I just ordered this SAS HBA Card from Ebay. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Genuine-LSI-6Gbps-SAS-HBA-LSI-9201-8i-9211-8i-P20-IT-Mode-ZFS-FreeNAS-unRAID/162958581156?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649  I hope that it works fine with out having to flash the IT Firmware. I ended up Ordering the part already. Decided to go with the Fractal Define R6, sorry but I really dislike those hotsawp cases, at least I know the reason why they are a better option, I will be extra careful with the sata cable when I find myself servicing the server. 

 

 

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On 4/30/2018 at 8:14 AM, NGMK said:

Hi,

 

Not a proponent of Water-cooled kits and systems, but that's just me in general -- I recommend a suitable cooler from Noctua. Do with that suggestion as you may.

 

 The Samsung EVO are nice drives. I just picked up a 860 last week myself. There is an issue with 860's where in unRAID when the partition is created, that it's not aligned (just learned about this myself) - drive works fine, but lose some write performance. Sorry, I can't find the link to the forums where I found the issue on, I'll try again later tonight on another computer. If one wants to squeeze every last bit of performance, the partition can be moved over using a gparted-live boot. 

 

Hope you enjoy your build.

Edited by Jcloud
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On 4/30/2018 at 4:14 PM, NGMK said:

Corsair CP-9020137-NA HX750 750W 80 Plus Platinum High Performance Power Supply

Isn't this power supply a little over powered for a NAS?

The average TDP of this is 123 watts with it peaking at just under 330 watts under load?

Even overclocked a 750 watt power supply is a little excessive for this unless you're planning on putting a GPU in for VM passthrough for gaming?

Just a thought :)

Link: https://www.tomshardware.co.uk/core-i7-4790k-devils-canyon-overclock-performance,review-32968-9.html

Good luck with your build :)

 

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18 hours ago, Jcloud said:

Hi,

 

Not a proponent of Water-cooled kits and systems, but that's just me in general -- I recommend a suitable cooler from Noctua. Do with that suggestion as you may.

 

 The Samsung EVO are nice drives. I just picked up a 860 last week myself. There is an issue with 860's where in unRAID when the partition is created, that it's not aligned (just learned about this myself) - drive works fine, but lose some write performance. Sorry, I can't find the link to the forums where I found the issue on, I'll try again later tonight on another computer. If one wants to squeeze every last bit of performance, the partition can be moved over using a gparted-live boot. 

 

Hope you enjoy your build.

Jcloud, I already have a Corsair H100i laying around which is a AOI Cooler that I 've been using for the last two years without any issues, so since I'm also trying to keep cost down by using spare part is the reason why I decide to reused that cooler. The 860s Evo just arrived today from amazon, I wished I had found out about this issue before. I will try them out but if I see any issues I will return them. Try to find that link for me please.

 

7 hours ago, Connor Moloney said:

 

 

 Connor Moloney, I have built many Gaming rigs and the gamer in me always have picking gaming parts and overpowering system. I do have  2 GTX 970s used in an SLI setup laying around and I might one day install one of them in the NAS. I do plan on having at least 10-16 HDDs if I manage to make them fit in that case.

 

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36 minutes ago, NGMK said:

down by using spare part is the reason why I decide to reused that cooler. The 860s Evo just arrived today from amazon, I wished I had found out about this issue before. I will try them out but if I see any issues I will return them. Try to find that link for me please.

Keeping costs down, reusing known good part, logic is sound to me. ;)

I did forget last night, sorry about that, work is rather dull today so I think I can spend some more time in forums, and get paid for it -- I'll keep looking. 

 

I wouldn't worry about returning ssd, again just opinion. Easy fix is to pre-partition the SSD using gparted live disk, then slap it into or reboot into unRAID.

EDIT: Just found the link I was referencing:


Also, here are the instructions dnoyeb was nice enough to give me, to check for this:

 

SSH into the unraid, then run the command "parted /dev/sdx"  where x = the drive sdx is your drive's address.

once in there run "print" to see a list of the partitions, then run the following command

align-check opt n

Where n = the partition you want to check, will probably be 1.

It'll tell you if your alignment is right..  When you do the print, it'll tell you what sector you're starting on.

End of given instructions.


I had data on my disk, so I made a gparted live-usb and moved the partition over; with a blank drive it should go much faster than what it took me.

I hope that helps!

 

Edited by Jcloud
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1 hour ago, NGMK said:

 Connor Moloney, I have built many Gaming rigs and the gamer in me always have picking gaming parts and overpowering system. I do have  2 GTX 970s used in an SLI setup laying around and I might one day install one of them in the NAS. I do plan on having at least 10-16 HDDs if I manage to make them fit in that case.

 

Oh okay :) Well best of luck should be a good build 

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Well I build my server. The initial learning curb can be overwhelming but am so glad I decided to go this route rather than the Synology way. I was able to find cheap (169.99) WD Red Nas drives from Bestbuy 8TB each. Question I was initially planing on having a 16GB of RAm but one of may ram stick failed, the server is running fine now with 12GB DD3, at the moment i'm only running ruTorrent, Plex and PiHole, I do plan to play around with couple more dockers and even possibly a VM. Should I be lucking at a 32GB ram kit or not. Ram is expensive right but If I need it then it is what it is . 

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13 hours ago, NGMK said:

Well I build my server. The initial learning curb can be overwhelming but am so glad I decided to go this route rather than the Synology way. I was able to find cheap (169.99) WD Red Nas drives from Bestbuy 8TB each. Question I was initially planing on having a 16GB of RAm but one of may ram stick failed, the server is running fine now with 12GB DD3, at the moment i'm only running ruTorrent, Plex and PiHole, I do plan to play around with couple more dockers and even possibly a VM. Should I be lucking at a 32GB ram kit or not. Ram is expensive right but If I need it then it is what it is . 

I haven't played around with vm's yet but I guess it depends on what you want to be running on it? If its just a small one for browsing the internet then you won't need much ram dedicated to it but if you want to do anything more powerful on it you should probably put more in :)

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