BUILD Newbie Build, Looking for Advice/Suggestions

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EpOxY

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Aug 14, 2014
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Hello!

I've searched through the forums and I'm pretty sure the stuff I'm planning on buying will build a pretty good system and most of the parts are being used by other people. My only concern is if I'm building too much of a system for what I need, because it's a little more expensive than I had hoped. If it's what's needed, then it is what it is, but I wanted to hear some suggestions. I want it to be stable, cheap, and quiet. In that order... but cheap and stable are neck-and-neck. :P

Mostly, I want a system for torrenting, automated backups for a couple computers/desktops/mobile phones, maybe FTP, hosting videos, and saving pictures/videos from family vacations/etc. I'll probably want to create a Plex server that will probably be transcoding 2-3 streams at most, usually just one at 1080p. I'm not really a tweaker, so I want something that will hopefully last. I've currently got two 1.5TB drives (older Seagate, not identical) that I want to include. I'm nowhere near capacity for 3TB yet, but I don't know enough about system backups to know how much space I would need.

Motherboard - SUPERMICRO MBD-X10SLM+-F-O
Seems like these are pretty popular and well recommended. My only concern is the CPU and the BIOS upgrade. In one of the other threads, someone suggested that it was only a matter of time before the old BIOSes would be sold out and the new one would be pre-installed. How long do we expect the wait to be?

Also, it comes with this: Koutech IO-PESA220 PCI Express x 1 Low Profile Ready SATA II (3.0Gb/s) Controller Card
Would I even need this? I'm new to NAS, so I'm not 100% sure what RAID I want to do, but I want to do whatever is the most safe (I know nothing is 100% safe, but whatever is most likely to be safe)

CPU - Intel Core i3-4150
I was thinking about a Intel Intel Xeon E3-1220V3, but thought it might be too much and I'm trying to keep costs down. This is one of the newer chips, so see concerns about the Mobo.

Heatsink/Fan - ARCTIC Freezer i11
It seems like a lot of people are staying with stock cooling, or a fan-less solution. I'm used to building desktops, so I don't really know if this is necessary for a NAS.

PSU - SeaSonic G Series 550-Watt
Was going to go with the 450, but on Amazon this was only $2 more, so what the heck.

HDD - 2x HGST Deskstar NAS 3.5-Inch 3TB 7200RPM SATA III 64MB Cache Internal Hard Drive
I don't know much about NAS HDDs and these were pretty highly rated on Newegg (well, the 4TB were really highly rated). Again, I'm not sure how much space I'll really need since I haven't even filled 3TB, so going up to 9TB total seems a little much to me, but I know some of you guys are using a lot more. Should I just ditch the 2 1.5TB drives I currently have? Am I adding unnecessary risk using them?

Case - Nanoxia Deep Silence 4 Mini Tower Case
I know a couple people are using this, I wanted something smaller. I plan on tucking this away in a corner with my Router/Modem and running it headless.

RAM - I want to go with 2 x 8GB DDR3 1600 ECC RAM, but it seems like it's becoming increasingly tough to find compatible RAM for SuperMicro. Anyone have any suggestions? Would I be better off with another Motherboard?

Flash Drives - SanDisk Cruzer Fit 8GB USB 2.0 Low-Profile Flash Drive
Is a USB 3.0 necessary/useful? I'm only getting 8GB because on Amazon it's cheaper than the 4GB.

I wouldn't be surprised if I missed something important, so please let me know and I'll update. Also, does anybody know of a good UPS to use with FreeNAS? Maybe something that will automatically shutdown the NAS if there's a power issue?

TIA!
 

Pharfar

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Ericloewe

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Forget about that SATA controller. It just screams "rubbish".

Stock cooler is fine.

If you want to transcode 2-3 streams, the Xeons are a safer choice.

Assume the motherboard will come with the old BIOS (mine was bought last month and had the 1.xx BIOS).

The 1.35V kit recommended by Crucial for this motherboard has been validated by Supermicro (I can personally confirm that the model number it reports is the same found on the Supermicro website) and is typically easy to find - and can be bought directly at crucial.com.

Avoid 7200RPM drives - the extra heat is most undesirable.

As for storage configuration, this oughtta help:

http://forums.freenas.org/index.php...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/
 

Yatti420

Wizard
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Aug 12, 2012
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My system is pretty cheap..

Sent from my SGH-I257M using Tapatalk 2
 

EpOxY

Cadet
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Aug 14, 2014
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Forget about that SATA controller. It just screams "rubbish".

If you want to transcode 2-3 streams, the Xeons are a safer choice.

Assume the motherboard will come with the old BIOS (mine was bought last month and had the 1.xx BIOS).
/

Because we're using FreeNAS and ZFS, a SATA Controller is unnecessary anyways, right?

Do you happen to know if the Xeon will have the same BIOS issue? Is there any way to tell (without physically trying it?)
 

EpOxY

Cadet
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I don't have powerpoint, but I read through the PDF for the HDD Config info... Enlightening and terrifying...

So based on what he's saying, if I want redundancy, I should have at least 4 identical drives so I can run RAIDZ2. Or I should just by 6 off the bat, because an additional VDev of 2 Drives would be pretty useless and potentially dangerous. So if that's the case, a Z2 of 6 3TB drives would give me 12TB usable, which is probably a lot more than I actually need... I mean, I might fill it over time, but especially as a first-time builder (and a freeBSD newbie)... Would it make more sense to do 6 2TB drives for 8TB usable? Because with just 4 drives, I lose 50% of the usable space, but with 6, I only lose 33%. So doesn't it follow that having more smaller drives is better? (because I actually get more space? 4x4TB is 8TB Usable, but 8x2TB is 12TB usable?) Although it would mean that I have a greater probability of losing 2 HDDs simultaneously I suppose. Am I understanding it correctly?
 

Ericloewe

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I don't have powerpoint, but I read through the PDF for the HDD Config info... Enlightening and terrifying...

So based on what he's saying, if I want redundancy, I should have at least 4 identical drives so I can run RAIDZ2. Or I should just by 6 off the bat, because an additional VDev of 2 Drives would be pretty useless and potentially dangerous. So if that's the case, a Z2 of 6 3TB drives would give me 12TB usable, which is probably a lot more than I actually need... I mean, I might fill it over time, but especially as a first-time builder (and a freeBSD newbie)... Would it make more sense to do 6 2TB drives for 8TB usable? Because with just 4 drives, I lose 50% of the usable space, but with 6, I only lose 33%. So doesn't it follow that having more smaller drives is better? (because I actually get more space? 4x4TB is 8TB Usable, but 8x2TB is 12TB usable?) Although it would mean that I have a greater probability of losing 2 HDDs simultaneously I suppose. Am I understanding it correctly?

Yes, but you're overthinking it somewhat.

Define how much storage you need/want. Figure out which disk size is cheapest right now, per TB. Figure out how many disks you need of that size. Start thinking from there, comparing it to other layouts.

Because we're using FreeNAS and ZFS, a SATA Controller is unnecessary anyways, right?

Do you happen to know if the Xeon will have the same BIOS issue? Is there any way to tell (without physically trying it?)

No, you obviously need something (the SATA or SAS controller) to interface with the disks. However, using whatever piece of garbage is thrown at you or found at the bottom of a bargain bin is a recipe for headaches (this applies universally). For up to 6 disks, the motherboard's SATA controller will do the trick.
 
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