first build for a FreeNAS for cheap, too much overkill of a power monster?

[BigBin]

Hi all, I am new to the forum so if this is the wrong place to post please let me know how/where to move it.

Basically I watched a couple videos from linus tech tips on server hardware, then I started hunting. Most of the stuff I got from ebay for really cheap except for a case bought new for 60 bucks, here are my specs:

CPU: dual Xeon E5640 plus server heatsink/fan: $54.47
Mobo: tyan s7012 $60
RAM: Dell server 1066 ddr3 ecc ram, 32gb: $54.99
Case: rosewill rise glow: $60
PSU: 600W thermaltake 80 plus (upgrade leftover for my main PC)
cpu psu splitter

that plus a bunch of old hard drives/ssds and a WD red 4tb as the main storage.

It has been pretty exciting and fun to research, plan and finally put the stuff together. When the system first post, I was so happy :)

Learnt that windows server free trial for half year, start trying that out, not really sure what I was doing but I did get something around 810 score for cinebench, 8 core 16 thread is pretty insane.

Also tried to install windows pro, put my 1060 on the system and boom, witcher 3 60 fps, awesome gaming setup actually.

Also tried vmware esxi with gpu passthrough to a windows vm, pretty cool.

Unraid, straight up won't install for some reason. But hey, I don't care, I have enough stuff to play with.

Finally put it back to what I intended to use it for, FreeNAS. Works great, setup plex/transmission etc, I can have something like 5 transcoded stream plus a direct play of 4k movie. So far so good, this is actually my first PC that I planned and built from pieces, from what I saw it runs everything I wanted to run no problem. Tried version 11 and 9.10, latter seems way more stable and less problem, but that seems obvious.

Problem: too much noise, too much power consumption
Noise is not too much of a problem since I can put it in the basement. but this sucker is consuming 160w idle that translate to about 150 dollar/year, so within a year or two, the money I saved by getting cheap hardware will be offset by the power cost, only plus side of that is in winter I might save a couple buck on heating lol.

Need some thoughts from you guys, is there more powerful stuff I can do with FreeNAS to make it worthwhile? or should I maybe just sell it and build something from newer hardware that's more efficient?

Appreciate your advises.

 

[BigBin]

oh and of course, the use cases. I have 1 pc 2 laptops, my wife has 1 laptop, so this will be the server for large file storage for the two of us, plus streaming plex content to my tv. I use 1080p content for the most part for do 4k once in a while. and that's about it. I actually don't imagine my plex needing to serve more than 2 stream at once.

 

[Stux]

Nice little westmere system you have there. Of course, the reason enterprises offload this stuff that still 'works great' is because it's not economical to run.

Maybe you should consider building a less overkill lga1151 system?

 

[BigBin]

Thanks for the reply, this is actually the first reply of my first post! I mean, aside from my own clarification.. anyways. Yes, I am looking into some 1151 or 1150 builds on pcpartpicker lately, before ditching this puppy I do want to keep playing around to see what else it can do though. It's kind of my first self built pc afterall. Just heard 11 is officially released today, guess I can run some vms and what not and see how it goes. The RCs of 11 wasn't very stable for me.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

[Stux]

1151 supports up to 64GB of RAM and 8 Sata ports from the chipset (c236?).

For this reason I'd suggest skipping 1150.

The forum tends to recommend supermicro X11 motherboards.

 

[BigBin]

Nice little westmere system you have there. Of course, the reason enterprises offload this stuff that still 'works great' is because it's not economical to run.

Maybe you should consider building a less overkill lga1151 system?

Just took a look at your primary and back up system specs, that seems way beefier, may I ask what kind of use case/performance do you have with them?

 

[BigBin]

1151 supports up to 64GB of RAM and 8 Sata ports from the chipset (c236?).

For this reason I'd suggest skipping 1150.

The forum tends to recommend supermicro X11 motherboards.

hmm, got it, will keep that in mind then.

 

[Stux]

Just took a look at your primary and back up system specs, that seems way beefier, may I ask what kind of use case/performance do you have with them?

The primary is designed to be a 10gbit smb/AFP/iscsi server.

It's primary function is as a large backup target for many machines and file serving. For this reason high clockspeed (SMB) Ie 4+Ghz

Secondary function is to run transcoding and VMs. For this reason, 6/12 cores/threads.

Can upgrade to circa 20 cores one day.

Lga2011-3 brings lots of PCIe lanes and massive memory capacity (Up to 1TB)

This machine is designed to last an SMB business for 5-10 years.

Meanwhile, the backup is something I had laying about ;)