BUILD Plex + FreeNas. Thoughts on this build?

[Supa]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

Case: Fractal Design Node 304 Mini ITX Tower Case ($72.99 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 360W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply ($59.99 @ Amazon)
Other: ASRock E3C224D2I Mini ITX Server Motherboard ($190.00)
CPU: Intel Intel Xeon E3-1220V3 Haswell 3.1GHz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1150 80W Quad-Core Server Processor ($205.00)
RAM: 2 X Kingston KVR16E11/8 DDR3-1600 8GB 1Gx72 ECC CL11 Server Memory ($172.00)
HDD's: 3 X WD Red 3 TB NAS Hard Drive -- Tiger Direct ($330.00)
Total: $1029.98
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-01-11 11:16 EST-0500)

 

[JohnK]

I would go with Kingston ram from SuperBiiz. With shipping you can get it for around $190. Also I would do the 360W PSU. It is not modular, but has so few cables that it does not matter. Will save some money upfront and hopefully in the long run. <= of course I'm biased owning two of these.
Lastly if you wait for rebates/specials, you can get WD 3tb Red for around $110 from TigerDirect. They have been running these twice a month. Much better cost per TB.

 

[Supa]

I would go with Kingston ram from SuperBiiz. With shipping you can get it for around $190. Also I would do the 360W PSU. It is not modular, but has so few cables that it does not matter. Will save some money upfront and hopefully in the long run. <= of course I'm biased owning two of these.
Lastly if you wait for rebates/specials, you can get WD 3tb Red for around $110 from TigerDirect. They have been running these twice a month. Much better cost per TB.

This stuff? http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=W8GE16K or this samsung ram? http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=D313GR8GS3

It does run at a higher voltage.

 

[JohnK]

I didn't see the lower voltage. You could still get the lower voltage Kingston, but if you read around on the forum you would see that very few people actually go for the lower voltage ram.

 

[Supa]

I didn't see the lower voltage. You could still get the lower voltage Kingston, but if you read around on the forum you would see that very few people actually go for the lower voltage ram.

Updated the OP. Good call. the 1.35 V vs 1.5 V won't make much of a difference right if the box is running 24/7?

I'll have to wait till those drives fall in price again.

 

[JohnK]

I don't believe the voltage makes a big difference. I'm sure there are far more clever people who can comment.

TigerDirect is due for one of their rebates. If I see it, I will post it in the Off Topic section.

Are you planning on transcoding? Generally people say you need a Xeon for that, but I've seen people doing it with an i3. As far as just running Plex, you can even get away with a G3420.

 

[Supa]

I don't believe the voltage makes a big difference. I'm sure there are far more clever people who can comment.

TigerDirect is due for one of their rebates. If I see it, I will post it in the Off Topic section.

Are you planning on transcoding? Generally people say you need a Xeon for that, but I've seen people doing it with an i3. As far as just running Plex, you can even get away with a G3420.

I've compared my processor to the i3 and the xenon out-performs it. With plex it does have to handle transcoding.

 

[JohnK]

I've compared my processor to the i3 and the xenon out-performs it. With plex it does have to handle transcoding.

There is no question about the performance of the Xeon when transcoding, but I use Plex a little without transcoding and it works just fine and at $120 and $70, the i3 and pentium is much cheaper.

 

[Supa]

There is no question about the performance of the Xeon when transcoding, but I use Plex a little without transcoding and it works just fine and at $120 and $70, the i3 and pentium is much cheaper.

Which CPU you running? How many 1080p streams can it handle? i3-4130?

 

[JohnK]

My specs are inside my signature. I have tested my Pentium g3420 streaming 1080p to four TVs running Zotac AD12 with Openelec over Cat6 No problem, but also not using transcoding. The CPU barely taxed. To put things into perspective, I could stream 1080p to 4 TV using my previous Linkstation LS-VL running some integrated Kirkwood processor.

I believe you want to start transcoding once going over wireless or to inferior hardware i.e. ipads..... :D