BUILD Build advice choice needed

[Sarlaith]

Hey everyone,

I newly signed up here after reading and reading for ages.
My current NAS is due replacement so I've started searching for a better replacement.
I then ended up with my choice of FreeNAS and started researching Hardware.

Ofcourse I started with the build being completely wife proof...
Anyway, Option 1 = Wife proof Option
Option 2 = the "normal/midway" build
Option 3 = the overkill?/highend build

However I would like some advice from the people who actually know what works and what doesn't and have some experience with FreeNAS.

Use Cases:
1. Storage of personal media, pictures, etc
2. Storage of Movies and TVShows, being played on 2-3 devices by devices running OpenElec/Kodi.
3. Depending on it's power and speed, replace my download machine! (So it will run Jails of SabNZBd, Couchpotato, SickRage and maybe Transmission)
4. MAYBE run a Jail of MySQL to host the database used by Kodi to Share played-state.
5. Future-Ready, I want to be able to upgrade it later on, either by replacing Harddisks or adding a LSI card.
6. It's attached to a Gigabit network with Gigabit WAN(Fiber). Mostly running 2Gigabit PortChannels between switches throughout the house.

General Items:

• 6x 3TB WD Red drives
• Corsair RM550x

Option 1 - Wife proof:
CPU: Pentium G2140 $98
Mainboard: Supermicro X9SCM-F $210
Case: Fractal Node 304 $73
Memory: Crucial CT2KIT102472BD160B 1X $117

Option 2 - Normal/Midway Build:
CPU: Intel Core i3-4170 $116
Mainboard: Supermicro C10SLL+-F-O $223
Case: Fractal Design R5 $102
Memory: Crucial CT2KIT102472BD160B 2X $234

Option 3 - Overkill?/Highend Build:
CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2660 $232 (maybe a E5-1620 v2)
Mainboard: Supermicro X9SRH-7F $454
Case: Fractal Design R5 $102
Memory: Samsung M393B1K70DH0-YH9 8X $0

It appears I already have the 64GB of ECC Reg Memory needed for the board. Hence the Option 3 build suddenly became a lot cheaper. (only ~100$ more than option 2, but is that worth it and is it actually better/faster?).

I plan to boot from 2 mirrored USB Sandisk Cruzer's.
However, should I for example get an SDD extra for SLOG/ZIL? or is that overdone?

Any advice for a newby to FreeNAS? :)

With kind regards,
Sarlaith

 

[Ericloewe]

The major limitation with your first two options is the 32GB RAM limit. If you feel that won't apply to you for the foreseeable life of the server, there's not much of a point to spending more money.

 

[rsquared]

I have to second ericloewe here. Nothing you've mentioned you want to do requires high end hardware. I'm doing pretty much everything you list on an ASRock C2550d4i (MB with a built-in Atom CPU) with 16 GB RAM.

 

[Sarlaith]

Well the thing is, I don't know if I would ever need more than 32GB of RAM.
I will probably upgrade the disks in a few years to be 6TB disks instead of 3 or add more disks instead of replacing, but other than that I don't see the system doing much more than what I intend it to do at the moment.

So if the 200-300 bucks is better spend otherwise, im not complaining!
The only thing im afraid of is that Option 1 would have a bottleneck when Downloading (SSL Encrypted), Unpacking AND streaming data to two HTPC's.
Beeing new to FreeNAS I honestly have no idea how much performance it would cost me. Probably not near enough to warrant build Option 2 or 3.

However, if you @rsquared can run the same things on a ASRock C2550d4i, It shouldn't be a problem on the Option 1 build im proposing either.

I tend to go waaaaaaaay overboard when it comes to buying new stuff ^.^'

 

[rsquared]

I actually have Sonarr set to pop up an alert in Kodi when a new episode is ready (i.e. the unpack just completed) and I've never seen even a stutter in the streaming around that time.

One thought if you're saving money on the board/CPU is to look into 4 TB drives. You may find they give you a better $/TB value when looking at total build cost. It should allow you to go a little longer before upgrading too.

 

[Sarlaith]

That might actually be a good idea!
Well atleast I know im on the right track and was going to spend too much money on the "wrong" things, or atleast, can tone down the build a bit.

Thank you!