New Cheap Xeon Build on a tight budget

[VioletDragon]

Howdy folks.

Im building a FreeNAS machine on a tight budget.

Hardware ive choosen
Intel S3420GP
Xeon X3430
8GB ECC DDR3 Buffered
Dell Perc H310 Flashed to IT Mode.

Old hardware i know but problem is that prices of new hardware here in the UK is ridiculous. Can get older parts at a good price.

Im wondering will this hardware work okay? all im using it for is Storage & Plex it will be having 4 3TB Disks.

What do you think? I have ordered the Parts.

Thanks,

Jack.

 

[nightshade00013]

Can't check MoBo since that is a generic model number.

CPU will work ok for FreeNAS and A single Plex stream however it is too old for Bhyve to work correctly so any thoughts on VM's are dead unless you start off with something newer. Period. No chance. Not even a little. So if you had even an inkling of thought of hey maybe I can setup a VM at some point you may as well put a bullet in it's head and lay it to rest.

Thin on RAM IMHO. If you are going to run Plex you need at least 4GB beyond minimum specs. And 8GB is the bare minimum so spend more money on it. 16GB is recommended for FreeNAS to just run not to include Plex so I would say at least 20 to 24 GB is a good place for your build and maxing the CPU to 32GB is better.

Since you ordered already and then asked I hope that you didn't buy 4GB sticks of RAM and have a thought about VM's cause you basically ordered parts for the bin.

 

[VioletDragon]

Can't check MoBo since that is a generic model number.

CPU will work ok for FreeNAS and A single Plex stream however it is too old for Bhyve to work correctly so any thoughts on VM's are dead unless you start off with something newer. Period. No chance. Not even a little. So if you had even an inkling of thought of hey maybe I can setup a VM at some point you may as well put a bullet in it's head and lay it to rest.

Thin on RAM IMHO. If you are going to run Plex you need at least 4GB beyond minimum specs. And 8GB is the bare minimum so spend more money on it. 16GB is recommended for FreeNAS to just run not to include Plex so I would say at least 20 to 24 GB is a good place for your build and maxing the CPU to 32GB is better.

Since you ordered already and then asked I hope that you didn't buy 4GB sticks of RAM and have a thought about VM's cause you basically ordered parts for the bin.

Hi im not going to be running VMs its just for Storage and Plex but dont use Plex Transcoding.

 

[nightshade00013]

Still need more RAM

 

[VioletDragon]

I do plan on upgrading to 16GB.

 

[LIGISTX]

Yea 8GB of ram is hard, but 16 should be fine. I run 20GB, have a few VM’s, and run plex and all is totally fine.

I do agree tho, that CPU is pretty old. I’m not sure if you have looked into other OS’s, but if it’s hard to come by new hardware, and you are on a tight budget, it’s possible FreeNAS and it’s ZFS filesystem isn’t quite what you are after. I have used openmediavault in the past and it worked very well for me.

Maybe you do want the flexibility and robustness or ZFS (it is very, VERY nice for those reasons) but it comes at a price, and that price is hardware specs. Just have to weight your options.

Hope that helps.


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