BUILD New mini-itx build, control check and suggestions

[enemy85]

Good morning at all,
after having spent few months on a "small-test-nonECC" FreeNAS system, in order to learn how not to lose and destroy my pool...I'm planning to buy new suitable hardware for a brand new box.
My needs:
- backup solution for 4-5 PCs
- media server (using Plex transcoding for 1-2 clients)
- Bit torrent client (using Transmission)
- 2-3TB of data at the moment

After many weeks of thinking and studying and searching on the forum, finally I decided that a mini-itx solution "would" still be suitable for me (I know as always CJ says is not advisable because of higher temperatures and almost non-existent upgrade possibilities, but I think I did my homeworks...)

MOBO: Asrock mini-itx E3C226D2I (LGA1150, 6 sata ports, 2 LAN+IPMI)
-> I know for sure the mobo works quite fine without big issues with FN 9.1.1;
CPU: Intel Core i3-4130 (LGA1150, 3.4Ghz )
-> The 3,4 Ghz would be good for SMB transfer, supports AES encryption and is ok for Plex transcoding too, the xeon e3-1220V3 is double expensive, and i think would be overkill for my needs...(QUESTION: should be enough for an encrypted volume in case I decide to go for it?);
HDD: 4x 2TB WD20EFRX RED (NEW) + 2x 2TB SEAGATE (already owned) RAIDZ2 setup
-> this would give me 5,8TiB of FreeNAS usable space (8TB=7,25TiB filled at max 80%) that is more than enough for now and for future upgrade i can replace the 2TB disks with 4TB;
RAM: 2x8GB kingston KVR1333D3E9S/8G ECC unbuffered ram
-> 1333Mhz value ram but I think should be ok and supported right?
CASE: Fractal Design Node 304 Black MINI-ITX
-> it's the only mini-itx case i found that allows 6x3,5" disks and provides excellent HDD temperatures thanks to the 2x90mm + 1x140mm fans it comes with;
PSU: Seasonic G-360 80 Plus Gold
-> unfortunately it's not modular and it comes with just 4 sata connectors, so I'll add 2 molex 4 pin to sata converter, but it has great efficiency even at 20% load and I could find something better for my build.

So this is my build plan...PLEASE feel free to criticize my thoughts and to advice for better solution...as still a FreeNAS "noob" I'm open to suggestions!
Thank you

 

[Veti]

check out the new silverstone case
http://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=452&area=en

 

[enemy85]

check out the new silverstone case
http://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=452&area=en

really really nice, but hard to find and double the price... but could be interesting for a future upgrade with 12 disks!

 

[SweetAndLow]

Your build is very similar to mine. I have the 1230v3 because I use plex. And I have 6x3tb drives in raid Z2. What protection level are you going to use? Another thing to keep in mind with CPU choice is resilvering time is affected by CPU power. With my larger disks I wanted to be able to rebuild as fast as I can.

 

[enemy85]

Planning a RAIDZ2 with 6 x 2 TB wd disks (the 2TB choice is because I already own 2 disks...)
I will use plex too, but not for streaming to more than 2 clients at the same time, and people with i3 4130 confirmed it works without any issue.
Do u have the asrock mobo? If so, what ram model do you use?
Thanks

 

[SweetAndLow]

Here is my build:
http://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/haswell-c226-itx-build.16641/

 

[enemy85]

Here is my build:
http://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/haswell-c226-itx-build.16641/

So u are running 6 disks in the same case i will...if u don't mind "couple" of more questions for u...
1) can u please report ur disk temperatures?
2) have u ever measured ur plug power consumption?
3) was it hard the internal cabling with all the case full?

sorry for all the questions but it's hard to find people with the same setup I wanna buy! ;)

 

[SweetAndLow]

So u are running 6 disks in the same case i will...if u don't mind "couple" of more questions for u...
1) can u please report ur disk temperatures?
2) have u ever measured ur plug power consumption?
3) was it hard the internal cabling with all the case full?

sorry for all the questions but it's hard to find people with the same setup I wanna buy! ;)

here are my temps right now. Sitting idle.

Code:

[root@FreeNAS ~]# for n in 0 1 2 3 4 5; do smartctl -a /dev/ada$n | grep 194; done                                                 
194 Temperature_Celsius    0x0022  128  118  000    Old_age  Always      -      22                                         
194 Temperature_Celsius    0x0022  126  118  000    Old_age  Always      -      24                                         
194 Temperature_Celsius    0x0022  126  115  000    Old_age  Always      -      24                                         
194 Temperature_Celsius    0x0022  126  115  000    Old_age  Always      -      24                                         
194 Temperature_Celsius    0x0022  125  114  000    Old_age  Always      -      25                                         
194 Temperature_Celsius    0x0022  127  115  000    Old_age  Always      -      23                                         

2. power usage measured with kill-a-watt is around 80 watt at idle if I remember correctly. I should probably double check this one.

3. internal cabling took me a little while to get right . The hard part is all the sata cables. I attached a photo of the freenas build as well as my desktop build to give some perspective of my acceptable cable management. I'm still not super excited about the cabling but it allows airflow and is kind of organized. I'll probably go back and fix it up in a couple months just for fun.
FreeNAS:

Desktop:

 

[enemy85]

Thank you very much!
So air flow and temperatures are ok and a 360w psu is more than enough!

 

[joelmusicman]

This build is very similar to mine. Asrock 224, G3220, 8gb ram. I'm running 6x3tb 7200rpm Seagates and they're a bit hot. Under disk load & fans on high the disks occasionally hit 40c. I'm wondering if a different PSU would help, as my Antec GP380 has an 80mm fan and I think it's just dumping its heat straight into the case. At least a 120 fan PSU would intake from the bottom. I don't mind the noise as the server's in a spare room that I'm rarely in.

Plex studders a bit with this processor though. :(

 

[enemy85]

Thanks for your reply too! Just a question, how is it going the 6x3TB raidz2 with just 8gb of ram? Ever checked with dd test? If so could u please post ur results? Thanks!

P.s. I guess ur higher temperatures are due both to 7200rpm disks and 80mm psu vent!

 

[joelmusicman]

So far it's going ok. From my understanding the memory size requirement is more related to actual used storage, and I'm only about 3.5TiB obligated. I've got a bunch of jails running too so I'll probably upgrade when (if) I hit 6TiB. LAN file transfers are averaging 80-90 MB/s reported from Windows so I'm not quite maxing my gigabit though.

Not sure how to run dd test, could you help?

 

[enemy85]

http://forums.freenas.org/index.php...rmance,-Benchmarks-and-Cache..981/#post-93389

 

[joelmusicman]

Re temps: I agree about the bad combo. I was trying to cheap out on the HDDs instead of getting WD Reds, already owned the PSU, and I was also having some major indecision with different form factors.

I started this foray by:
1. bought a Lenovo TS140 for a really great price ($220 including an i3 & 4gb ECC ram!), added an extra 8gb stick for a chassis cost of $300.
2. Decided I didn't like the TS140 case, which had some pretty silly limitations with the case only holding 4 drives in a pretty strange arrangement.
3. So no problem, do a case swap! Enter Antec P100 (now at $380).
4. I swapped the TS140 components into an Antec P100, had major issues with the TS140 mobo with proprietary headers everywhere (Couldn't even hook up front USB or a standard PSU!). Also only had 5 SATA ports & I had 7 drive spaces.
5. Decided that all of the above was way too big, had stupid hardware limitations & I could get a much smaller setup for just a little bit more $$.
6. Bought the current setup. Hardware wise I'm now pretty happy except for the HDD temps.



Next step: Suck it up and buy a Seasonic G360. I'm sure if nothing else the extra intake will help.
My other PC will be happy to have the GP back. :) If I have issues with the HDDs out of warranty I'll replace with NAS spec'd models too.

 

[joelmusicman]

Write:

Code:

51200+0 records in                                                                                                                 
51200+0 records out                                                                                                               
107374182400 bytes transferred in 261.470702 secs (410654737 bytes/sec)      

Read:

Code:

51200+0 records in                                                                                                                 
51200+0 records out                                                                                                               
107374182400 bytes transferred in 159.975428 secs (671191718 bytes/sec) 

 

[enemy85]

thinking about buying 3TB disks instead of 2TB...I know that I'll be stucked for a while with the 2 old 2TB disks, but I'll increase 1,5 times the storage capability once I'll replace the 2 old disks with new ones... probably it's worthy for 80€ more...

 

[joelmusicman]

Sure thing. Just know that you'll need to override the configurator in the GUI when you're building your pool due to the size differences. It'll probably try to make 2 vdevs, just click on "manual" and change it to one RAIDZ2.

I went with 6 3tb drives for future proofing, one of which I already owned. I also have a 2tb, but I was unable to use it due to needing the space for the data migration. I have 10.9TiB total pool size, I'm using about 3.8 right now, and that's with a 2000ish title movie library too. Fun fact: 118 days of nonstop playback as reported by XBMC!