Use new or old hardware for new build

[Wiggum]

I have a P8Z68-V Pro and 8GB of ram on hand. I have a rather large case. I'm looking to make something that would hold 4-5 HDD's. I have a 600 watt power supply in the case but I'd like to replace it with something smaller and try to make this build as fanless as possible. This is an Intel 82579 LAN controller

I need to buy a CPU still for it.

Looking to use it for backups and in the near future steam movies and such to no more then 4 TV's (2 at once in most cases). Currently using a DS411+

This MB has

Intel® Z68 chipset :
2 x SATA 6Gb/s port(s), gray
4 x SATA 3Gb/s port(s), blue
Support Raid 0, 1, 5, 10
Support Intel® Smart Response Technology on 2nd generation Intel® Core™ processor family
Marvell® PCIe SATA 6Gb/s controller : *2
2 x SATA 6Gb/s port(s), navy blue
JMicron® JMB362 controller : *2
1 x eSATA 3Gb/s port(s), red

or would something smaller and all in one combo MB be a better fit?

 

[jgreco]

The main reason I can see to buy something smaller would be if you wanted to be more power-efficient. There is also some extraneous hardware on that board that may not be useful. As long as you don't have any plans to build a desktop for yourself or family/friends, that's fine, but basically once you build a FreeNAS out of it, those features essentially sit there unused for the lifetime of the NAS.

You probably do not need a huge, beefy system to serve data out to a handful of devices. "Streaming movies" is often suggested as though it is some rough task, but unless you're doing it at very high bitrates or doing transcoding on the fly, not so much... if a 2 hour movie is a 5GB file, that's only 1.4 megabytes per second, or around 11 megabits. Even at ten times that, or basically Blu-Ray data volumes, you're not likely to find too many FreeNAS devices that have a problem serving up 110 megabits times two or three clients (and Blu-Ray clients actually end up being capped around 40Mbit/s). Adding memory so that ZFS can do its file level prefetch is probably more significant for that than a fast CPU.

 

[cyberjock]

I agree with jgreco. I know nothing about AMD, so I can't vouch for if such combination exists, but if there were an Atom CPU based motherboard that support 16GB of ECC RAM it would be a FreeNAS heaven for alot of people.

 

[Wiggum]

The main reason I can see to buy something smaller would be if you wanted to be more power-efficient. There is also some extraneous hardware on that board that may not be useful. As long as you don't have any plans to build a desktop for yourself or family/friends, that's fine, but basically once you build a FreeNAS out of it, those features essentially sit there unused for the lifetime of the NAS.

You probably do not need a huge, beefy system to serve data out to a handful of devices. "Streaming movies" is often suggested as though it is some rough task, but unless you're doing it at very high bitrates or doing transcoding on the fly, not so much... if a 2 hour movie is a 5GB file, that's only 1.4 megabytes per second, or around 11 megabits. Even at ten times that, or basically Blu-Ray data volumes, you're not likely to find too many FreeNAS devices that have a problem serving up 110 megabits times two or three clients (and Blu-Ray clients actually end up being capped around 40Mbit/s). Adding memory so that ZFS can do its file level prefetch is probably more significant for that than a fast CPU.

I do want to be much more power efficient and the size of the current board is just going to leave me with a huge case. Hard to fit in the closet. I stream movies just fine from my Synology DS411+ with zero problems. I just want to build somethingg because I don't have faith in the Synology long term since I have had two go on me under warranty. I have that set in a RAID 10 and afraid that if it goes I will lose everything. (Not sure you can put those disks into a non Synology machine to save your stuff?)

I figured for about 700-800 I can make a decent setup that will serve me well. 4HDD (3TB), 1SLC SSD, case, MB, etc. That will serve me plenty. I'll probably use the Freenas as a backup unit until the Synology pops out on me.

 

[survive]

Hi Wiggum,

If all you want to do is 4 drives then check out the HP Microservers. They just released an updated model, the N54L which should run around $350-400.00. All you need to add are drives & RAM.

-Will

 

[Wiggum]

Hi Wiggum,

If all you want to do is 4 drives then check out the HP Microservers. They just released an updated model, the N54L which should run around $350-400.00. All you need to add are drives & RAM.

-Will

That's actually not a horrible idea. I'll do some research on it. I don't anticipate needing more then 4 drives.