hardware build, thoughts on suitability for my usage?

[jaloon]

I am putting together a Freenas box with some hardware I have around and have collected from previous projects. Ideally, this will morph into a more permanent build for backup storage and streaming at home.

Current specs from existing hardware are:

Intel i7 4790K cpu
MSI G87 GD65 Gaming mobo
16gb non-ecc ram
Thermaltake Smart700 80+ power supply
Corsair H80i liquid cooling

4x Seagate Barracuda 2TB hard drives
Patriot 16gig thumb drive (boot)
Samsung PM851 SSD 120gig (possible boot drive or cache drive?)

Mid-tower case with plenty of cooling (forgot the brand)

My plan is to build this to use mostly as a media streaming server for the umpteen devices in my house and familiarize myself with different ways to configure and use Freenas (Plex server, etc.) and to eventually move these hard drives to my old Buffalo NAS and install 5 or 6 8TB drives in this case for mixed media backup/streaming and possibly some work file backup (might use the Buffalo NAS for this, not sure yet.)

Would this hardware setup work for my needs for the next few years? Also, would I be better off using the small SSD as a boot device over the thumb drive? Not sure I'd see much if any performance gain with it as a cache drive and from what I've read it might actually slow the system down somewhat. Any input would be helpful.

 

[PhiloEpisteme]

Hi @jaloon. As you likely know using gaming gear is less then ideal. But, many folks are looking to repurpose stuff they already have and you can save a lot of money that way. Just be mindful that using non-server grade gear may result in earlier wear since gaming gear isn't usually meant to be on 24/7 as a server is. You're also sacrificing ECC memory, though as with most things it isn't an absolute deal breaker.

One thing I would definitely change about the build would be to boot from SSDs and not thumb drives. Toss that thumb drive and use an SSD or two and you'll get significantly improved reliability.

I'm also not 100% how good the support for your board's network controller will be. Since you already have the system though you can install FreeNAS and see how it goes. Folks have reported annoying or slow performance with some non-Intel/Chelsio chips.

I also wouldn't add any cache drives until you build the system and see what performance you're getting. Identify the bottlenecks and then consider bumping specs from there.

 

[jaloon]

Hi @jaloon. As you likely know using gaming gear is less then ideal. But, many folks are looking to repurpose stuff they already have and you can save a lot of money that way. Just be mindful that using non-server grade gear may result in earlier wear since gaming gear isn't usually meant to be on 24/7 as a server is. You're also sacrificing ECC memory, though as with most things it isn't an absolute deal breaker.

One thing I would definitely change about the build would be to boot from SSDs and not thumb drives. Toss that thumb drive and use an SSD or two and you'll get significantly improved reliability.

I'm also not 100% how good the support for your board's network controller will be. Since you already have the system though you can install FreeNAS and see how it goes. Folks have reported annoying or slow performance with some non-Intel/Chelsio chips.

I also wouldn't add any cache drives until you build the system and see what performance you're getting. Identify the bottlenecks and then consider bumping specs from there.

Thanks for the advice! Agreed, this board has dual Killer NIC ports and I'm curious about how driver support for them will be. At least it'll give me a chance to try out the port aggregator on my router maybe if they work halfway decent. I'll use the ssd to boot rather than the thumb drive. Not planning on using more than 5 data drives for this so power and sata connections won't be an issue using it. We shall see. I'm basically re-purposing most of my old video editing computer for this now for something usable while I try to get my toes wet with Freenas while I'm studying for my CCNA exam. More reliable hardware will be an issue in future, more permanent builds.