Parts Question for Freenas 8

[Levi]

This i really difficult to choose the parts but, I have narrowed down to this and have a coulple of questions about the things... hobe some can give som feedback.

1 Motherboard: ASUS M5A78L-M/USB3 760G AM3+ M-ATX

Its a new modell with AM3+ sokkel but the card does not have raid 5 which i thought i will use with 6 harddrives which will give me about 10 TB of space. Should you have a motherboard with raid 5 for this or does everyone use softraid instead?

2 Memory: Kingston KVR1333D3E9SK/8G 8GB 2 models unbuffered ECC

Ive tried to look for compability with this one, its an unbuffered ECC module, does it have any more protection comparing to normal memory on the system, will the system be more "crash" protected. Is 8 GB enought for 6 harddrives with is 2 TB each?.

3 Processor AM3: Im very confuse here, thougth of Phenom II X2 555 BE 3,2 but will this give performance advantade you notice compared to AMD ATHLON II X2 250 3.0GHZ.

4. Networkcard: Can i stick with the mothereboards inbuild lan or otherwise is this card good: INTEL GIGABIT CT DESKTOP ADAPTER PCI-E EXPI9301CT.

5. PSU: How many watts do I need for this system to run 6 of 2TB harddrives, anyway I was thinking of this CORSAIR TX 650W V2 or is it overkill ?

6. Harddrives: I have heard of the 4K issuse... but havent really read to much about it, any suggestion on which harddrives to use, I was thinking of the more moderate 5400 rpm modells or there is a 5900 rpm which seems god deal, western digital green or segate barracuda green.

I really dont know what to buy but really like to hade a "budget" server like this and it sould manage to stream full HD 1080 which are not compressed data.
Is there parts enought? are they good? or do you have examples of other things. I do like the AMD processors cause the price and the compability, they last longer, intel is changing sokkel models every singel time.

Thanks, and the irc chatt forum is really good, thanks for a lot of tip but is just not working this time.

/Levi

 

[headconnect]

Hi, some quick opinions from me:
1. Freenas with zfs prefers NOT to have your disks in any sort of raid configuration, freenas provides the 'best' raid available. If you're planning on 6x2TB, zfs and raidz2 are ideal for your proposed setup (will give you 8TB usable). Should you really need 10TB, raid-z is possible but more risky than raid-z2 (naturally)
2. Memory compatability is always tricky, though should work. 8gb should be fine for your needs.
3. From what I've been reading, you don't need an amazing processor for local performance, but if you're going to be serving to windows clients, I would go for the phenom due to cifs sucking processing power.
4. The intel is a highly recommended NIC, there are lots of reports of problems with builtin NIC. I don't think you'll be affected - but better to be safe than sorry, worth the extra bit.
5. Green disks consume appx 5w each, aside from that i doubt your system uses more than 150-175w. So, i yhink you don't need any bigger than 400w
6. I've just ordered the barracuda disks myself, but blindly since i haven't heard from anyone else running them. No matter what disks you get, you probably won't be the only one doing so. As a side note, the majority here (it feels like) are running 2TB WD EARS or EURS. They would probably be 'safe' :)

Hope this helps a bit :)

 

[Bohs Hansen]

@Power: What drains most power in most systems is the gfx card, without a big of those the systems don't take much. I got a powersaving setup where my mainboard only takes 49W at load, so I'm far on the safe side with 300W power supply.
Another thing, even though your PSU can deliver lets say 750W, it doesn't drain that much all the time. So it'll only hurt on the extra buy costs.

@Ram: Best to check the manufacturers official guidelines on that, learned that the hard way.

@HDD's: I'm very happy with my Seagate V35.5 - 2GB drives. They are enterprise class drives designed for NAS and surveillance server and don't cost much more then the consumer green drives.
I know of no one else so far using them and I found them by "accident". The cheap 2TB sata3 consumer drives would have cost me around 620 dkk, and these instead for around 700 dkk each. (750 dkk ~100euro).