Greetings and opinions on new NAS build

[Tabmow]

Hi All,

I'm finally taking the plunge and building myself a home NAS box.
This will be used mostly for storage of video, the odd FreeBSD jail and backups.
My requirements are at least 6 drives in a 'small' package.
This is what I have came up with and I would like to know peoples opinions:

Fractal Design Node 304 Mini ITX / DTX Case USB3.0
$125.00
Antec NEOECO-450C 450W 80Plus Bronze certified PSU
$65.00
ASUS H87I-Plus Motherboard
$142.00
Intel Core i5 4430 3.0G 6MB LGA1150
$208.00
G.Skill DDR3-1333 16GB Dual Channel [NT] F3-10600CL9D-16GBNT
$149.00
WD 3TB Red SATA3 64MB for NAS WD30EFRX
$158.00 x 6
Sandisk 8GB Cruzer Force CZ71 FUSSAN8GBCZ271FO
$13.90

I want something small so I went with the ITX case from Fractal Design. It supports 6 disks.
Power supply was the only ITX PSU I could find from my suppler (probably a bit overkill here).
M/B is geared more towards Home Theatre but has 6 onboard Intel SATA3 ports and Intel LAN. (will compatibility be an issue here? I heard the H87 chips are supported but are brand new)
Was debating whether to go a Low Power CPU on the old revision, but I figured I would be mostly idle anyway so the savings for the price are minimal.
Max out at 16GB RAM. Could change to Kingston or something similar here for $5-$10 more.
I've heard mixed reviews about all disks but I figured these would be a good fit. Any suggestions here?
It comes in just over $1600.
I would love to hear people's opinion or suggestions on where I can improve or possible save money?

Thanks,
Tabmow

 

[cyberjock]

And if you look at going with a Supermicro motherboard(X9SCM-F-O comes to mind), ECC RAM, and a Xeon processor like the e3-1230v2 you'll find that you can have a far more reliable system with proper ECC support, no audio hardware(power savings) etc for very little extra money.... You also get IPMI with the board I just mentioned....

And now you see why the sticky in the hardware section exists.. and should really be followed...

And.. the Supermicro board lets you go to 32GB of RAM if/when you need it.

16GB of ECC RAM should be within $20 or so of what you are already buying, the motherboard I mentioned is about $20 more than your ASUS choice, and the Xeon is about $50 more. So for less than $100 more you are buying much higher quality components, lower power usage, and more upgradaability in the future if you want more RAM.

 

[Tabmow]

I read through that sticky, out here in AU I find it very hard to get server grade components at good prices.
I'm not a big fan of ordering parts etc. online as well as I have been burnt before.
Also, there is almost no (unless my googling is weak) ITX boards which support ECC and also have 6 SATA ports.
Well I did find a few different Supermicro options actually: http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/QM77/X9SPV-M4.cfm
Anyway I cut it, I would either have to go bigger and more expensive, which I don't necessarily want to do.
If I was putting this in a mission critical / production type environment, then by all means I would definitely put in server grade hardware for the $$ I need to spend.

 

[cyberjock]

Ok. Be careful with going ITX. You may end up with hard drives that are cooking themselves in such a small case.