Official Budget FreeNAS option?

[bramblyBush]

Wondering if we could put a sticky up with the current cheapest ACCEPTABLE hardware solution for people trying to figure out how to get started in FreeNAS. I know I spent a lot of time looking for the most affordable hardware piecemeal so I bet there are more out there wasting time too.

I don't know if I found this on the forum here or somewhere else but right now I think the current holder of the title has to be this Lenovo TS140 upgraded with a stick or two of compatible RAM and stuffed with your favorite WD Green or Red drives. It has everything built in and you don't have to worry about compatibility. 280W PSU, motherboard, fans, 3+GHz Intel chip, 4GB ECC memory with limit of 32GB, 3 drive bays plus additional room if you remove the optical drives. Don't know about the network card. It's far from the best but it meets the criteria. As long as you are backing your stuff up, you should get your money worth. With 12GB total memory it totals to just over $300 right now.

If anyone can come up with a cheaper option they should post it.

 

[flyinfitz1]

That's basically what Im going with. I bought 4X3TB WD Red drives as well. Plan to use it with Plex, CIFS and FTP.

 

[cyberjock]

If you want Plex, you shouldn't have less than 12GB of RAM.

 

[flyinfitz1]

If you want Plex, you shouldn't have less than 12GB of RAM.

That makes sense. I plan on buying an 8GB stick with the TS140.

Cyberjock, have you heard anything good or bad about the TS140?

 

[cyberjock]

I know its been mentioned a few times on the forum. I've not heard any complaints that the hardware isn't compatible or has any serious drawbacks, so I think it's a fairly solid "entry level" server.

 

[marbus90]

The internal layout re disks is extremely weird. no two HDDs are in the same place. One is mounted on the bottom, one upside-down, another one in one 5.25" bay by himself, the 4th in a 5.25" bay together with a slim ODD. The Dell T20 isn't as bad.

 

[adrianwi]

I know they get knocked for the fairly lightweight AMD processors, but IMHO the HP Microservers are a good entry into the world of FreeNAS.

OK, so if I were building again knowing what I do now I'd buy something with a little more grunt, but the N40 and then N54 have been good test beds and both still work fine on 9.3 running jails for PMS, PlexConnect, ownCloud and openVPN.

Pretty good bang for your buck (or pound over here) as my N54 with 16GB RAM and 4x4TB NAS drives was probably ~ £600

 

[flyinfitz1]

The internal layout re disks is extremely weird. no two HDDs are in the same place. One is mounted on the bottom, one upside-down, another one in one 5.25" bay by himself, the 4th in a 5.25" bay together with a slim ODD. The Dell T20 isn't as bad.

I agree the layout is pretty wonky. The T20 is $80 more and has a far weaker processor though. I still think best bang for the buck is the TS140 and that includes building your own.

 

[marbus90]

I know they get knocked for the fairly lightweight AMD processors, but IMHO the HP Microservers are a good entry into the world of FreeNAS.

The Gen8 have Intel CPUs but I saw a price bump to almost 500$ on these.

And at 269EUR for the T20 w/ the Xeon E3-1225v3 I won't complain. Was the sale price on end of November.

 

[flyinfitz1]

The Gen8 have Intel CPUs but I saw a price bump to almost 500$ on these.

And at 269EUR for the T20 w/ the Xeon E3-1225v3 I won't complain. Was the sale price on end of November.

Oh ya that's cheap! I haven't seen any anywhere near that!