Opinions on My 2nd FreeNAS system

[pincorrect]

My first system is an ancient Mini-ITX system with just 2 (mirrored) drives. I can't count on it lasting too much longer, though it served me well. So I hope to move up to the latest and greatest with storage I won't run out of for a long time. And I'd like to explore a bunch of other uses beyond being a filer, including a transcoding project.

This is, I think, a straightforward SM X11 (Skylake) build that I hope does not stray too far off the beaten path. Any suggestions will be appreciated.

Chassis: Cooler Master HAF 932 http://www.coolermaster.com/case/full-tower/haf-932/ (I already had this from a workstation project I never started. It's a tower with 6 5.25 external bays in which I plan to put cages for 3.5" drives. Lots of fans and lots of perforated panels for airflow.)

Power Supply: Seasonic X-850 (Using jgreco's great Proper Power Supply Sizing Guidance post, I came up with a peak load of 651W and increased by 25% to pick the 850W model. However the Extreme Outer Vision calculator (http://outervision.com/power-supply-calculator) suggests a 288W peak load, recommends a 338W minimum size, and suggests buying a 500W power supply.)

Motherboard: Supermicro MBD-X11SSH-F

CPU: Xeon E3-1240 v5 (About $30 more than the 1230)

Ram: (From SM QVL for this MB) 4 x 16Gb (64Gb total) Samsung M391A1G43DB0-CPB

SSD: Intel SSD 600p Series 128G M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 (At $65, the cheapest M.2 PCIe SSD on NewEgg. Wanted to save all the SATA ports for hard drives.) (This is a PCIe 3.0 x4 drive. The M.2 slot on the MB is x2. I think this will work, but will just get x2 speed, which doesn't really matter because it is just for booting.)

Hard drives: 8 x WD Red 4Tb 5400RPM (OK to buy all the same?)

Drive cages: either 3 Icy Dock cages that put 3 3.5” drives in 2 5.25” slots (horizontal) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...94052&cm_re=MB453IPF-B-_-17-994-052-_-Product), or 2 Icy Dock cages that put 5 3.5” drives in 3 5.25” slots (vertical) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...198058&cm_re=MB975SP-B-_-17-198-058-_-Product).

All advice and comments welcome. One additional question: can you recommend an appropriate UPS for this size machine?

 

[Ericloewe]

owever the Extreme Outer Vision calculator (http://outervision.com/power-supply-calculator) suggests a 288W peak load

Ignore it. 8 drives are going to imply a peak load of 240W just by themselves, and we have data that backs this up.

can you recommend an appropriate UPS for this size machine?

How much runtime do you want?

 

[pincorrect]

Ignore it. 8 drives are going to imply a peak load of 240W just by themselves, and we have data that backs this up.

Yes, their estimate seemed low.

How much runtime do you want?

Power outages around me are infrequent and usually brief (< 15min). Occasionally an ice storm or something will cause a long outage. It would be nice to keep running in the former case and gracefully shut down in the latter. So I think 30 min would be adequate, but 1 hr would be great.

 

[Ericloewe]

Something like the APC Back-UPS Pro 750 should do the trick, maybe closer to 850-950 if you want to make sure you don't trip the circuit breaker if you somehow manage to completely load your 850W PSU. Runtime for all of them should be at least 40ish minutes, probably more (definitely more for the higher-end models).

If you want a true sinewave UPS, you can't beat the APC Smart UPS series.

 

[pincorrect]

Just a couple updates.

First, I checked with Supermicro tech support about using a PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD in the M.2 slot, which is only x2. They confirmed it would be OK (but of course would only run at the bandwidth provided by the 2 lanes, which doesn't really matter). The recommended sticking to their recommended list, but since they only have some hard-to-find Toshiba's on it, I think I will overlook that advice. They also noted it needs to be UEFI bootable.

Second, even though I have an available Cooler Master case, I might get this NZXT H440 case https://www.nzxt.com/products/h440-white which holds 11 3.5" drives because I might end up paying almost the same for the Icy Dock cages. This does lose the hot-swapability, but this doesn't seem too important for my use. A search on the site did not turn up any discussions of it, but it did appear in some members' signatures, so it looks like it's been put to this use before.

Other than that, I hope my shopping list is complete (and sane!).