Hello everyone, I've been lurking around the forums for about a year, hashing out which hardware I want to go with.
I'd like to use FreeNAS primarily as a storage device, but seeing as PLEX is so well viewed, I'd probably use it for that as well. I currently use a Windows 7 pc's built in DLNA feature to stream to TVs in the house.
I've gone back and forth a few times going from Xeon to Atom processors, but decided to stay with Atom, I would like very much to build a box that uses as little power as possible as it will spend the majority of its life in idle.
I'll list below my currently list of components, I would greatly appreciate any input and advice from the veterans.
Board: ASRock C2750D4I Mini ITX Server Motherboard
The price went up big time since I priced the NAS, Was $349, now it's $418. I see there's also a Gigabyte option but that's more pricey still, and then there's the SuperMicro option, but that uses 204 pin ram, and finding that in ECC is horrible
RAM: Crucial 16GB Kit (8GBx2) DDR3/DDR3L-1600MT/s (PC3-12800) DR x8 ECC UDIMM Server Memory
(I can go to 32GB if you guys think it would be better, as you know you read that you need 1GB per 1TB of storage, then others say they only used 16GB with more than 16TB and it's working great
Case: SilverStone DS380B. EDIT: The Case turned out to lack the ventilation needed for the HGST drives. I changed it for a Lian Li PC-Q26B case.
PSU: SILVERSTONE SX500-LG 500W SFX-L 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Full Modular
The biggest gold certified SFX format psu I could find at newegg. EDIT: Since the case was different, I bought an EVGA 550W GoldPlus power supply. As it turns out, my annoying noise I mentioned was caused by the Silverstone power supply.
Drives:
option 1) 6 x HGST Deskstar NAS 4TB $159 each
option 2) 6x HGST Deskstar NAS 6TB $259 each
option 3) 6x Seagate NAS HDD $225 each (roughly, I have a coupon valid till 4/1 so option might not be valid long)
UPS: CyberPower PR1500LCD [pure sine wave, if anyone cares this is a great unit, PM if you have questions]
Network:
Router: Verizon Actiontec MI424WR
Switch: Cisco SLM2008T
WirelessAccessPoint / Switch 2: NetGear WNDR3700 (it's my old router used as an additional wireless point and 4 port switch. Our house is 1 floor but is a bit longer and the verizon router is pretty far so signal wasn't strong at the other end of the house.) I have CAT6 cables running through the attic to pretty much every room in the house, so TVs and all the gizmos (except tablets) are hard wired.
Well, that's it for the hardware, as far as configuration and usage, if I understood correctly, I would have to create to zfs pools, one used for network storage, the other for PLEX server. Is that correct? So, I'd have 2 copies of say my 2015 Christmas video.
Also, regarding configuration, as mentioned earlier, I would like to setup this box to use as little power as possible, so I would like for the drives to spool down 15-20 minutes after use. I don't mind if there's a delay when I need to access it. But here comes the question, in reality, do the drives 'stay' spooled down? I'm asking because I have an old Synology 4 drive box, and with nobody at the computers, it seems like the home network, TVs, computers, whatever hunts around for devices to update their 'network devices' table and it constantly spools up the Synology drives even though nobody's pulling any real data from it. On the other hand, I also have a little network attached drive to the NetGear router via the USB port and that stays in 'sleep' mode till someone actually uses it.
Thank you again for reading, and thanks in advance for any feedback!
-Phil
------_____________------ Follow up after ordering parts ------_____________------
Edit: I just wanted to follow up to this thread with my build after purchasing the components.
So I bought the 6x HGST Deskstar 6TB drives, the rest is as listed above.
I ended up buying a Noctua NF-A8 PWD (4pin) fan to put over the large cpu heatsync.
My configuration is 6x6TB HGST RaidZ2 and added another 6TB Seagate 7200rpm I had laying around as a single drive open to network access.
Badblocks test took 76 hours to complete on each drive if I remember right, (remember to set the blocks to 4096 for you guys with large drives).
The good: performance is great, 100+ MB/sec copying data from my windows 7 machines. (using CIFS share). This performance holds true for the single drive, as well for the RaidZ2 array.
The bad: the HGST drives run HOT! I seem to have received from 2 batches. 2 drives have a serial starting with NCG, these drives run cooler (41-42C idle, 43-44C badblocks load), but seem slower (badblocks took 2hours or so longer to complete) the others start K1G, but they run hot (46-47C idle, 49C badblocks load). Meanwhile the Seagate 7200RPM is right in the drive stack sitting happy at 36C.
The case I use is a Silverstone DS380S. I had to resort to installing a cardboard divider to force the 2x120mm fans to blow through the HDD cage. This significantly cut into the airflow over the cpu (temps went up 6C roughly), so I had to buy a Noctua fan to pull some air over the CPU, now all is good.
I also have an odd "trrr-ttr-trrr' sound coming from the box, but it's not coming from the HDD cage, so I have NO clue what's causing that nose. I seem to only hear it outside the case, as soon as I open the case and put my ear in there to pin point the noise, the fans seem to drown it out. But it seems to be coming out of the motherboard somewhere.
In conclusion, the performance and everything is great, I can't wait to set it up the way I want to. I am trying to find a solution to my CIFS shares question (one share to allow guests, the other to require a user account, but to be able to have them both open at the same time). Hopefully I'll come up with something soon, then I'll try to install Plex and figure out how that thing works.
I'd like to use FreeNAS primarily as a storage device, but seeing as PLEX is so well viewed, I'd probably use it for that as well. I currently use a Windows 7 pc's built in DLNA feature to stream to TVs in the house.
I've gone back and forth a few times going from Xeon to Atom processors, but decided to stay with Atom, I would like very much to build a box that uses as little power as possible as it will spend the majority of its life in idle.
I'll list below my currently list of components, I would greatly appreciate any input and advice from the veterans.
Board: ASRock C2750D4I Mini ITX Server Motherboard
The price went up big time since I priced the NAS, Was $349, now it's $418. I see there's also a Gigabyte option but that's more pricey still, and then there's the SuperMicro option, but that uses 204 pin ram, and finding that in ECC is horrible
RAM: Crucial 16GB Kit (8GBx2) DDR3/DDR3L-1600MT/s (PC3-12800) DR x8 ECC UDIMM Server Memory
(I can go to 32GB if you guys think it would be better, as you know you read that you need 1GB per 1TB of storage, then others say they only used 16GB with more than 16TB and it's working great
Case: SilverStone DS380B. EDIT: The Case turned out to lack the ventilation needed for the HGST drives. I changed it for a Lian Li PC-Q26B case.
PSU: SILVERSTONE SX500-LG 500W SFX-L 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Full Modular
The biggest gold certified SFX format psu I could find at newegg. EDIT: Since the case was different, I bought an EVGA 550W GoldPlus power supply. As it turns out, my annoying noise I mentioned was caused by the Silverstone power supply.
Drives:
option 1) 6 x HGST Deskstar NAS 4TB $159 each
option 2) 6x HGST Deskstar NAS 6TB $259 each
option 3) 6x Seagate NAS HDD $225 each (roughly, I have a coupon valid till 4/1 so option might not be valid long)
UPS: CyberPower PR1500LCD [pure sine wave, if anyone cares this is a great unit, PM if you have questions]
Network:
Router: Verizon Actiontec MI424WR
Switch: Cisco SLM2008T
WirelessAccessPoint / Switch 2: NetGear WNDR3700 (it's my old router used as an additional wireless point and 4 port switch. Our house is 1 floor but is a bit longer and the verizon router is pretty far so signal wasn't strong at the other end of the house.) I have CAT6 cables running through the attic to pretty much every room in the house, so TVs and all the gizmos (except tablets) are hard wired.
Well, that's it for the hardware, as far as configuration and usage, if I understood correctly, I would have to create to zfs pools, one used for network storage, the other for PLEX server. Is that correct? So, I'd have 2 copies of say my 2015 Christmas video.
Also, regarding configuration, as mentioned earlier, I would like to setup this box to use as little power as possible, so I would like for the drives to spool down 15-20 minutes after use. I don't mind if there's a delay when I need to access it. But here comes the question, in reality, do the drives 'stay' spooled down? I'm asking because I have an old Synology 4 drive box, and with nobody at the computers, it seems like the home network, TVs, computers, whatever hunts around for devices to update their 'network devices' table and it constantly spools up the Synology drives even though nobody's pulling any real data from it. On the other hand, I also have a little network attached drive to the NetGear router via the USB port and that stays in 'sleep' mode till someone actually uses it.
Thank you again for reading, and thanks in advance for any feedback!
-Phil
------_____________------ Follow up after ordering parts ------_____________------
Edit: I just wanted to follow up to this thread with my build after purchasing the components.
So I bought the 6x HGST Deskstar 6TB drives, the rest is as listed above.
I ended up buying a Noctua NF-A8 PWD (4pin) fan to put over the large cpu heatsync.
My configuration is 6x6TB HGST RaidZ2 and added another 6TB Seagate 7200rpm I had laying around as a single drive open to network access.
Badblocks test took 76 hours to complete on each drive if I remember right, (remember to set the blocks to 4096 for you guys with large drives).
The good: performance is great, 100+ MB/sec copying data from my windows 7 machines. (using CIFS share). This performance holds true for the single drive, as well for the RaidZ2 array.
The bad: the HGST drives run HOT! I seem to have received from 2 batches. 2 drives have a serial starting with NCG, these drives run cooler (41-42C idle, 43-44C badblocks load), but seem slower (badblocks took 2hours or so longer to complete) the others start K1G, but they run hot (46-47C idle, 49C badblocks load). Meanwhile the Seagate 7200RPM is right in the drive stack sitting happy at 36C.
The case I use is a Silverstone DS380S. I had to resort to installing a cardboard divider to force the 2x120mm fans to blow through the HDD cage. This significantly cut into the airflow over the cpu (temps went up 6C roughly), so I had to buy a Noctua fan to pull some air over the CPU, now all is good.
I also have an odd "trrr-ttr-trrr' sound coming from the box, but it's not coming from the HDD cage, so I have NO clue what's causing that nose. I seem to only hear it outside the case, as soon as I open the case and put my ear in there to pin point the noise, the fans seem to drown it out. But it seems to be coming out of the motherboard somewhere.
In conclusion, the performance and everything is great, I can't wait to set it up the way I want to. I am trying to find a solution to my CIFS shares question (one share to allow guests, the other to require a user account, but to be able to have them both open at the same time). Hopefully I'll come up with something soon, then I'll try to install Plex and figure out how that thing works.
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