BUILD Mini ITX build verification

[dev77]

Hello everyone,

I am thinking of building a new NAS which is way more capable than my QNAP TS259.

Here is what the NAS will do:

• Serve HD media content to 2 boxes running XBMC. They won't necessarily be used simultaneously.
• Sabnzbd, couchpotato and sickbeard configuration. So there will be quite a bit of unraring.
• Transmission.
• File server for storing thousands of family pictures and videos
• Upload backups to Google Drive.

Here is the setup I was thinking of:

Motherboard:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00G9TZHSQ/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER


RAM:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008EMA5VU/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER


CPU:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00J2LIE9C/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_3?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER


Case:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ET0OFJY/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_4?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER


Power Supply:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151114

I am thinking of booting the FreeNAS off of a USB flash drive.

Is this a reasonable build?

I also have some questions.

Is the Celeron CPU fast enough or I should go for an I3 or I5?

I don't want to invest in the storage too much at the moment. What's the minimum number of drives I need to install to get the redundancy benefits of ZFS?

Should I buy the hard drives marked as "NAS" hard drives?

I've seen some builds with 5400rpm drives. Is that the way to go?

I've read somewhere that I might need a *controller* hardware for FreeNAS. What's this controller?

Thanks in advance.

Cheers.

 

[Dennis K.]

CPU:View: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00J2LIE9C/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_3?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

This is a Haswell refresh CPU. Chances are high that your mainboards BIOS needs an update before that CPU is supported. In your case you need at least version 2.00 released on 5/8/2014 (See http://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=E3C226D2I#Download). The catch is that you need a working CPU to update the BIOS.

Power Supply:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151114

Do you actually need a TFX PSU instead of a normal ATX one?

I am thinking of booting the FreeNAS off of a USB flash drive.

Yes, thats the recommended way. There's also a USB port directly on the mainboard, so thats perfect.

Is the Celeron CPU fast enough or I should go for an I3 or I5?

You should always check for ECC support. The i5 for instance doesn't support ECC. Performance wise i can't really estimate the 'oomph' of a Haswell Celeron. Most people here either get a:

• Haswell Pentium for low performance needs
• An Haswell i3 for more performance and AES-NI support (hardware encryption).
• Or a Haswell Xeon when they are planning to do video encoding or need VT-d for running FreeNAS in an ESXi environment

Note that XBMC doesn't depends on the NAS to reencode the video. It only needs a windows share or something similar. That only necessary for the Plex media server.

I don't want to invest in the storage too much at the moment. What's the minimum number of drives I need to install to get the redundancy benefits of ZFS?

The minimum would be two drives in a mirroring setup. You should read http://doc.freenas.org/index.php/Hardware_Recommendations#RAID_Overview. Or better, read the whole page. Expanding a pool later can get difficult, as you can't expand a vdev. Make sure you understand that, otherwise you could end up with a pool without redundancy.

Should I buy the hard drives marked as "NAS" hard drives?
I've seen some builds with 5400rpm drives. Is that the way to go?

Yes. Most go with WD Reds. 5400rpm means less heat development and power consumption and are more targeted for storing raw data.

I've read somewhere that I might need a *controller* hardware for FreeNAS. What's this controller?

Those controllers provide more SATA ports. In case the number of onboard SATA ports is insufficient.

 

[dev77]

Sorry for the late reply. I did not realize the PSU was not a regular ATX one. Thanks for pointing it out. Also thanks a lot for your detailed answers. I appreciate it.

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