BUILD New hardware build sanity check

[Cthulhu]

New to the forums, not new to DIY hardware builds, though I haven't done a build in a few years and my experience is with performance gaming rigs rather than server hardware. As such, I'd like to get a sanity check on my component selection before I order. I have done a fair bit of reading on FreeNAS hardware recommendations for what that's worth.

This build is for a home NAS system that will be used for media storage/sharing, backups of a few Windows 7/8 systems, and general file sharing. Nothing particularly intensive, I'd just like to get rid of some of the ad hoc solutions I currently have and provide for some redundancy.

Originally I had planned on re-purposing a system that I no longer use, but I have concerns about it's reliability and it only supports 8GB of RAM, has a single craptastic Realtek ethernet port, and doesn't support ECC. Three strikes, it's outta here.

So the new plan is to re-use the enclosure (plenty of cooling) and 650W power supply (don't recall the make/model, but I have always invested in good power supplies). I'll check the rated 12V amperage and such before committing to it.

Everything else will be new and purpose-selected for FreeNAS:

• Supermicro X9SCL-F-O motherboard
• Xeon E3-1220 b2 quad core 69W 3.1GHz
• 2x Crucial 8GB 240-pin DDR3 1600 ECC Unbuffered SDRAM (PC 12800)
• 4x Western Digital Red 3TB NAS hard drives WD30EFRX

The drives are SATA 6Gb/s, and the MB has SATA 3Gb/s ports - I don't think this is an issue.

This bill of materials comes in at just over $1100 US which is pretty much the budget (I could go up to $1300 US if necessary).

Any comments / criticisms / suggestions?

 

[Hash]

Hmmm I just want to point out that the motherboard you posted only has 6 sata ports. So you prob wont need 8 drives unless you plan to have a couple backups. If thats the case make sure you test them thoroughly. Always sucks and finding out years later that its a bad drive. xD


Other then that it looks like a good build to me. You don't need to worry about it being 3Gb/s instead of 6Gb/s unless a solid state is on the slot. Its backwards compatible.

 

[Yatti420]

You may want to not use a xeon and buy more ram depending on your needs.. WDIDLE will be need to be run 0n the reds to check timer..

 

[Cthulhu]

Hmmm I just want to point out that the motherboard you posted only has 6 sata ports. So you prob wont need 8 drives unless you plan to have a couple backups.

Ugh - that was supposed to be 4x. 4 drives. Dunno what I was thinking when I typed that.

 

[Cthulhu]

You may want to not use a xeon and buy more ram depending on your needs.

Any particular reason to not use a Xeon? What would you recommend instead, and why?

 

[Lordadmiral Drake]

Based on your use cases you don't need the raw power of a Xeon and can easily do with a Pentium DualCore or even a Celeron G

I have a Xeon E5430 in my box (which does just about the same stuff you are planning to do with yours) and my average CPU usage is below .5%

 

[Cthulhu]

Based on your use cases you don't need the raw power of a Xeon and can easily do with a Pentium DualCore or even a Celeron G

I have a Xeon E5430 in my box (which does just about the same stuff you are planning to do with yours) and my average CPU usage is below .5%

Point taken, and I appreciate the advice.

I didn't mention that I may opt to run a Plex server and transcode on this box so I don't want to leave myself short of cycles. I currently run a Plex server (and client) on a i3-3220 based consumer system that is more than adequate - but a Roku 3 is a much more power friendly client. I'd like to retire that box and save a bit of power. I think that substituting a decent i3 for the Xeon would be adequate for file services and transcoding, but the up-front cost savings t isn't that great (about $75) - and it's my philosophy that all else being equal, too much CPU is better than too little.

Of course power costs are a concern and so I'm going to give some thought to that. Problem is, published TDP specs aren't much good to predict anything but worst-case power consumption, and a home NAS is going to be relatively idle a lot of the time (but how much?) - and I'm fairly ignorant with respect to actual power consumption of such a system under my use case. It would make sense to spend more for a reasonable ROI on power costs, or pay less for "just enough" CPU that happens to have a favorable power consumption profile. Thing is, I'm a software guy, not an EE, and the real world implications of such decisions are somewhat mysterious to me.

Then again, I have a habit of overthinking such things, particularly when I don't think I have adequate data.

 

[Yatti420]

If you want to transcode.. Get the xeon and try to max the ram.. I wouldn't worry about power.. Unless you plan a really big build..

 

[Cthulhu]

Ordered the drives this morning and everything else yesterday. Opted for the E3-1230 v2 and the X9SCM-F-O.

 

[kc10kevin]

Ordered the drives this morning and everything else yesterday. Opted for the E3-1230 v2 and the X9SCM-F-O.

I just upgraded two of my Freenas boxes with that same setup. Absolutely LOVE it, especially the IPMI functionality. A little overkill for my purposes (Shares, and 3 plugins: Sabnzbd, Sickbeard, couchpotato), but leaves a lot of room for expandability in the future (CPU never goes over 15%). You'll be very happy with the setup.

 

[Cthulhu]

Just to follow up - I finally had a chance to assemble everything a few weeks ago and got FreeNAS installed and set up ZFS. Everything is working great, and once I burn it in for a few more weeks, I'll start transferring data over to the server.

 

[hibble]

Thinking of just the same set-up. let us know how this works out for you.

If i went with a Intel Core i3 3240 Ivy Bridge Dual Core Processor would I notice a significant performance drop? main use would be as a CIFS shares(map'd drives) for 2pc's, 2 laptops and streaming HD video to XBMC.

 

[pschatz100]

I have the X9SCM-F motherboard and Core i3 3240 processor and it works great. You'll have plenty of power for your setup. Just be aware that you need firmware v2.0 or greater on the motherboard to support an Ivy Bridge processor. When you get your motherboard, verify it has a recent bios update.