I benefited heavily from the many threads in this forum, so I wanted to share back my successful build. My goal was to run FreeNAS w/ Plex and pfSense as my home router safely together in a virtualized environment, and wanted room to grow. I read up a lot on virtualizing FreeNAS before diving into this build, but in the end it worked out and seems to perform well. In a simple stress test, I had six streams transcoding on my local network. I already had two WD Red drives, and I added four other drives (2 SeaGate 3TB, 2 WD Red 4TB) with the thought of varying the wear out time. I'm running these six drives in one pool as RAID-Z2, and I have 10.5TB of space. While not necessary, I upgraded all the fans to Noctua to reduce the noise from the stock fans. The base server without the UPS, networking gear, or hard disks was $1,082.
Motherboard: ASRock E3C224D4I-14S Extended mini ITX Server Motherboard ($230 @ NewEgg)
Memory (32GB): Kingston 8GB 1600MHz DDR3L ECC CL11 DIMM 1.35V KVR16LE11/8KF ($59 * 4 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Noctua Low-Profile Quiet CPU Cooler NH-L9I ($40 @ Amazon)
Power: SeaSonic G Series SSR-550RM 550W 80 PLUS GOLD ($80 @ NewEgg)
Case Fans:
ESXi VM Datastore: Kingston HyperX Savage 240GB SSD SATA 3 2.5 SSD SHSS37A/240G ($94 @ Amazon)
UPS: CyberPower PFC Sinewave Series Mini-Tower 850VA UPS CP850PFCLCD ($111 @ Amazon)
Disks
Switch: NETGEAR GSS108E 8-Port Switch GSS108E-100NAS ($59 @ Amazon)
Wireless Access Point: Ubiquiti UBUAPACLRUS UAP-AC-LR-US 802.11ac ($108 @ B&H Photo)
Hardware
Case: LIAN LI PC-Q25B Black Aluminum Mini-ITX Tower Computer Case ($120 @ NewEgg)Motherboard: ASRock E3C224D4I-14S Extended mini ITX Server Motherboard ($230 @ NewEgg)
- SAS Controller from MoBo: LSI 2308 (Flashed to IT Mode, Drivers v20)
Memory (32GB): Kingston 8GB 1600MHz DDR3L ECC CL11 DIMM 1.35V KVR16LE11/8KF ($59 * 4 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Noctua Low-Profile Quiet CPU Cooler NH-L9I ($40 @ Amazon)
Power: SeaSonic G Series SSR-550RM 550W 80 PLUS GOLD ($80 @ NewEgg)
Case Fans:
- Noctua NF-F12 PWM Cooling Fan ($20 @ Amazon)
- Noctua 140mm Premium Quiet Quality Fan NF-A14 PWM ($23 @ Amazon)
ESXi VM Datastore: Kingston HyperX Savage 240GB SSD SATA 3 2.5 SSD SHSS37A/240G ($94 @ Amazon)
UPS: CyberPower PFC Sinewave Series Mini-Tower 850VA UPS CP850PFCLCD ($111 @ Amazon)
Disks
- WD Red 4TB NAS Desktop Hard Disk Drive 3.5 Inch - WD40EFRX ($150 * 2)
- Seagate 3TB NAS HDD - ST3000VN000 ($105 * 2)
- WD Red 3TB NAS Desktop Hard Disk Drive (Previously Owned * 2)
Switch: NETGEAR GSS108E 8-Port Switch GSS108E-100NAS ($59 @ Amazon)
Wireless Access Point: Ubiquiti UBUAPACLRUS UAP-AC-LR-US 802.11ac ($108 @ B&H Photo)
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