Build Confirmation

[heyyouthere]

So I've been reading through resources for the last couple weeks trying to plan my first build. I've got most everything sorted out but was hoping someone with a little more experience could reassure me that I'm going in the right direction.

Here's what I have so far:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1240 V5 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($287.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Supermicro MBD-X11SSM-F-O Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($211.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Samsung 16GB (1 x 16GB) DDR4-2133 Memory
Memory: Samsung 16GB (1 x 16GB) DDR4-2133 Memory
Storage: Corsair Force LS 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($145.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($145.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Fractal Design Define R4 Blackout with Window ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply: SeaSonic 520W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular Fanless ATX Power Supply ($119.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $911.94
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-02-05 14:38 EST-0500

Is the fan the comes with the Xeon sufficient for the most part? I'm blazing through around $1400 by the time it's all said and done and that's a little more than I wanted to spend. I just wanted to leave some room for expansion as I plan on hanging on to this thing for a while.

Am I missing anything other than maybe buying another sata cable? I think the mobo only comes with two and I wasn't sure if the hard drives came with any. I've got an old UPS I plan to use until I can get another one ordered and I plan on incrementally adding more storage as I get the money.

Thanks in advance for any advice you guys can throw my way.

 

[Stux]

The 1240 is a powerful CPU.

The E3-1230v5 is only 4% slower but 10% cheaper or so.
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/w4dFf7/intel-cpu-bx80662e31230v5

Of course, if you don't plan on running VMs etc then you could perhaps save some more dollars on the CPU by stepping down to a 1220 (no hyperthreading) or an i3 (only two cores)

What are you planning on running on this server?

And you're going with just two HDs?

 

[heyyouthere]

My plan is to use it for Plex and Time Machine. I'm running an Ubuntu box right now with nginx pointing to an html landing page for my plex and other plugins (couchpotato, sabnzbd, blah blah.)

So I'd like to run all or most of those on the box in dockers. I would expect it to be able to handle that but I really have no idea how much I can throw at it.

Plex is the biggest thing. A few of my family members use my plex server so there are times when there are three or four streams going at once.

I use dropbox but would like to eventually experiment some with owncloud or something similar.

And no, I planned on buying two for now and more as I get the money to add them. If that makes sense.

 

[ChriZ]

Hi!
For starters you should describe your intented workload...
Without this, there are still some things I can comment on:
1. The calculated price of $911 does not include the Ram and the case. Do you own those parts already? If not, then I estimate the cost at around $1200+
Since you are mentioning future upgrades, then save yourself $150 and start with 16GB of Ram.
Save another $50 and get an e3-1230v5. Depending on your workload you can even save $200 if you go for a Pentium. But even if you go for a Xeon, I doubt there is any workload where the 1230 won't be enough. (If there is, then most likely neither will the 1240.)
You can even save another $50 and opt for 2 USB drives for boot, but I wouldn't do it myself.
Regarding the CPU fan: I am not sure that it comes with a fan ( I think skylakes don't come with fans anymore). So please double check that. If it does come with a fan then that fan is certainly fine..
These few from me.
( I saved you $200 - $400. I think I deserve some nice pictures as soon as you finish your build :);):p )
Good luck!!!

Edit: @Stux beat me to it.. I'm on mobile, so...

 

[heyyouthere]

Hi!
For starters you should describe your intented workload...
Without this, there are still some things I can comment on:
1. The calculated price of $911 does not include the Ram and the case. Do you own those parts already? If not, then I estimate the cost at around $1200+
Since you are mentioning future upgrades, then save yourself $150 and start with 16GB of Ram.
Save another $50 and get an e3-1230v5. Depending on your workload you can even save $200 if you go for a Pentium. But even if you go for a Xeon, I doubt there is any workload where the 1230 won't be enough. (If there is, then most likely neither will the 1240.)
You can even save another $50 and opt for 2 USB drives for boot, but I wouldn't do it myself.
Regarding the CPU fan: I am not sure that it comes with a fan ( I think skylakes don't come with fans anymore). So please double check that. If it does come with a fan then that fan is certainly fine..
These few from me.
( I saved you $200 - $400. I think I deserve some nice pictures as soon as you finish your build :);):p )
Good luck!!!

Edit: @Stux beat me to it.. I'm on mobile, so...

Thanks for the reply,

I must have replied to Stux the same time you were posting yours.. Haha

I may go with the 1230 since you guys both recommended it if you guys think it will be enough for the workload I mentioned in the second post.

Priced on newegg the whole build is just over $1400. Dropping the ram for now probably isn't a bad idea.

Newegg showed the 1240 shipping with a fan.

I'd be more than happy to send you all the pictures you can handle! I haven't built any type of computer in a long time so I'm pretty excited about it.

 

[heyyouthere]

On the topic of hard drives, I could get a couple more red drives with the money @ChriZ saved me.

3 drives will allow raidz1 right? Is that still a viable option or has it kind of gone by the wayside? Redundancy isn't incredibly important as I have regular backups with crashplan but I'm still trying to wrap my had around the vdev / zpool concept.

Raidz2 would require a minimum of 4 drives and z3 would require at least 5? And if I'm using 4tb drives then my available storage is around 8tb?

 

[nojohnny101]

Build looks good. I'll echo going with the 1230 as that can handily serve your needs as described. Also you definitely don't need 32GB of RAM to start, go with a single stick of 16GB (makes future upgrading easier).

All of the things you described can be done currently and from what I understand, much more "elegantly" in FreeNAS 10 which should be released sometime this year. The current build (9.10) uses jails while FreeNAS 10 will use dockers as you described.

Good luck!

 

[Stux]

@Stux beat me to it.. I'm on mobile, so...

Me too

Your reply is more detailed ;)

1230v5 is certainly the way to go for plex.

 

[Stux]

Re HDs, the issue is that you can't easily expand a vdev after the fact by adding additional HDs.

With mirrors you can, but then you'll always have 50% storage efficiency

In order to grow from a 4 disk Raidz2 to a 6 disk rsidz2, you need to backup, format and restore.

Which might be a valid thing.

 

[heyyouthere]

@Stux I see what you're saying. I re-read cyberjocks PowerPoint after I posted this.

I guess I'm just trying to figure out how much redundancy I need since I back everything up regularly.

Stupidly, I never really put a lot of thought in to that part when planning how many hard drives I should buy initially.

 

[heyyouthere]

So I took the recommendations given here and made some adjustments. I think I've came to this:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1230 V5 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($251.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Supermicro MBD-X11SSM-F-O Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($211.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Samsung 16GB (1 x 16GB) DDR4-2133 Memory ($179.99)
Storage: Corsair Force LS 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($64.99 @ Corsair)
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($145.99 @ B&H)
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($145.99 @ B&H)
Storage: Hitachi Deskstar NAS 4TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($145.99 @ B&H)
Storage: Hitachi Deskstar NAS 4TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($145.99 @ B&H)
Case: Fractal Design Define R4 (Black Pearl) ATX Mid Tower Case ($109.99 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 520W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular Fanless ATX Power Supply ($119.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $1522.89
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-02-05 20:31 EST-0500

I added two more hard drives for around the same price as I had everything initially. So maybe run a raidz so I have just a little redundancy then continue my crashplan backups.

Anyone have any other ideas before I pull the trigger?

 

[bobbob]

On newegg there is a "Combo Deal" for your motherboard/processor for $429.98: https://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.3362728

 

[heyyouthere]

On newegg there is a "Combo Deal" for your motherboard/processor for $429.98: https://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.3362728

Thanks for that!

 

[nojohnny101]

Also you can save some money by going with a cheaper SSD.

This one is $20 cheaper and is very reliable. Many people have used it with success.
https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-120G...id=1486354143&sr=1-7&refinements=p_89:SanDisk

 

[Ericloewe]

Just a reminder that PCPartPicker links are strongly discouraged. Please avoid them. Thanks.

 

[heyyouthere]

Got everything ordered. Looking forwarded to seeing how many times I can break it before I get it set up how I want it.

Thanks @Stux @ChriZ @nojohnny101 @bobbob @Ericloewe for all the help!