Super excited to build my first unraid box, any help appreciated!

 

- The goal -

 

A pure file server (mostly movies). Lot's of room for expansion (about to order a 15 bay server chassis). *Never seen an ATX Motherboard with more than 8 sata ports, so I guess that means sata expansion cards?

 

- The question - 

 

Which CPU/Motherboard? AMD vs Intel? Full size ATX pref (this box has plenty of room).

 

Not interested in running VMs/Plex/apps. I usually build a new gaming rig every couple years, so every TV in my house already has a pretty decent media center PC. Do I really need to do transcoding on the unraid if I only stream over LAN, to decent GPU's (1080TI+)?

 

I just want enough horsepower for a responsive server. I assume the bottleneck will be the disks (WD 6-10TB mix of reds/whites)?

 

*For the remaining components, I plan on using a spare Corsair 750M PSU, Samsung 1TB 860 EVO SSD (for the cache), and 16g of Crucial DDR3 ram (will I need to upgrade to DDR4?).

 

*I also have an old GTX 980TI I could throw in there, but will I even need a GPU for this build?

 

Thanks for any advice!

Edited January 7, 20206 yr by unraidun

If strictly just for storage (i.e. no Plex, VM etc.) then you don't even need cache drive. A cheapo CPU with integrated GPU (or server mobo with built-in VGA) would suffice. No need to upgrade to DDR4 if you opt for the latest-last-gen that supported DDR3.

Yeah I figured the cache drive was overkill but I have a spare one (figured it would help when adding new items to the array).

 

Any specific recommendations for "cheapo cpu"? I mean it has to be fast enough to handle the large file (10g+ blue ray movie) serving. And the MB needs to be able to handle 12+ drives.

If you think you're purely use this as a video server then a Pentium G5400 (2C4T) is low power and can be paired with a B360 board. The boards have 6 SATA, you can then add a 8 or 16 LSI SAS controller (cheap on ebay) flashed to IT mode so it just acts as a sata controller.

 

You will needs burst of CPU if you download and need to uncompress video files (unrar).

 

If you need more power later, drop in any recent intel consumer CPU.

 

The IGP can transcode 10-bit HEVC 4K without any real load on the CPU cores.

 

 

Ok so for the sata ports, one of these...

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/LSI-9267-8i-6Gb-s-PCI-Express-2-0-512MB-8Port-RAID-0-1-10-SATA-SAS-From-US-Ship/192615863604?hash=item2cd8ccd534:g:S3UAAOSwDRxbYxl8

 

plus two of these cables...

 

https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-Internal-SFF-8087-Breakout/dp/B012BPLYJC/ref=pd_sbs_147_t_0/137-3624405-7210045?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B012BPLYJC&pd_rd_r=0f71e415-9ec1-4226-a25c-dc2c5edb9779&pd_rd_w=j1m2Z&pd_rd_wg=Zbg3U&pf_rd_p=5cfcfe89-300f-47d2-b1ad-a4e27203a02a&pf_rd_r=S3D8DY7PVQ62Y4K2K1GV&psc=1&refRID=S3D8DY7PVQ62Y4K2K1GV

 

That will give me 8 drives off the card, and 4 off the MB (with 2 free ports on the MB for optional 2x cache drives)?

The cables look OK, just check if you need right angle fittings on the HDD end.

Some server cases also have a back plane so you'd use the same connector as the card at each end and then a PCB seperates the channels out into the hot swap bays with fixed sata compatible sockets.

 

 

I don't know how compatible that speicifc card is as it has inbuilt ram so I'd avoid it, I'd rather the card wrote staight to the drives and use a small UPS to gracefully shutdown in a power event.

 

This 

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Genuine-LSI-6Gbps-SAS-HBA-LSI-9211-8i-9201-8i-P20-IT-Mode-ZFS-FreeNAS-unRAID/163846248833?hash=item2625ff5981:g:shEAAOSwPKZdbst~

 

Or this 

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-H200-LSI-9211-8i-IT-Mode-for-ZFS-FreeNAS-UNRAID-SAS-HBA-Controller/163455864012?hash=item260eba8ccc:m:mNoASzT-cG7weidYbW97igw

 

look to be in your region and already flashed to IT mode.  Risk of fakes with Hong / Kong China.

 

Thread here on cards from the top of storage: 

Have a read for the specific models you find listed for sale near you. Dell H200 are often a good source but may need cross flashing.

 

Wiki here (link from the above thread)  https://wiki.unraid.net/index.php/Crossflashing_Controllers

 

 

Ah good catch, so the 512m cache is a BAD thing? So the 9211-8i = good, but the 9267-8i (with 512m) is bad?

 

Looks like Amazon has the 9211 new condition, for the same price...

 

https://www.amazon.com/SAS9211-8I-8PORT-Int-Sata-Pcie/dp/B002RL8I7M/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=8+port+PCIe+sata+Controller+Card&qid=1578522283&s=electronics&sr=1-5#customerReviews

 

Customer reviews sound good. So is this the one to go with?

 

*and there are no drive capacity/compatibility issues to worry about? Plan on filling the card with 8x WD 12TB drives.

8 hours ago, unraidun said:

So the 9211-8i = good, but the 9267-8i (with 512m) is bad?

You want a pure HBA, not a raid (megaraid) controller, any LSI with a SAS2008/2308/3008/3408 chipset in IT mode, e.g., 9201-8i, 9211-8i, 9207-8i, 9300-8i, 9400-8i, etc and clones, like the Dell H200/H310 and IBM M1015, these latter ones need to be crossflashed.

So the 9211-8i I linked from amazon ($54) is a good buy then?

 

And I just pulled the trigger on a AMD Ryzen 5 1600 AF (new 12nm version just released, seems to be getting great reviews).

 

Just need a MB now. Since I saved quite a bit on the CPU, I'd like to invest a little more in the MB (definitely want at least three pcie slots for further expansion). Strongly considering 10g ethernet too (so I can possibly edit video files right off the ssd cache)... So any good MB recommendations?

 

*oh and one other thing - am I going to need a video card? I would like to avoid it if I can (don't plan on doing any gaming/gpu work). But how will I do the initial setup?

Edited January 9, 20206 yr by unraidun

1 hour ago, unraidun said:

So the 9211-8i I linked from amazon ($54) is a good buy then?

Yes, unless it's a Chinese fake.

ASROCK X370 Taichi (with 10 SATA3 + 5 PCIE + 2 M2 with limitation on PCIE).

In this condition, no need LSI and the total cost is lower.

 

A low video card is necessary for R5 1600 AF (and any CPU without IGP). Just for serveur, GT710 or GT1030 might be suffisant.

 

I am also on going for this setup. (+ a high end graphic card in passthrough for HTPC under VM)

Edited February 23, 20206 yr by Polopretress