[Carjack]

Thrilled about ATV2+XBMC. Now that the HTPC part is silently taken care of, I kindly ask for your assistance in building a NAS/server that will take responsibility for running SABnzb/SickBeard/CouchPotato.

Ideals:
Low power consumption
Minimum 5x 3.5" HD bays
Gigabit ethernet
unRAID capability
Hard drives are a heterogeneous collection of 750s and 1TBs. (old)
Prefer something sub $500, but flexible


Oh yeah, and this goes out to poofyhairguy:
An angel just got their wings!

[eskro]

thats my POOFY approved NAS Rig....

(can eventually hold a total of 10 Hard Disk Drives)
......................................................................
[CPU] AMD Sempron 2.7GHz AM3 45W Single-Core ($37 + $0)
[RAM] Kingston 1GB 240-Pin DDR3 1066Mhz ($13 + $10)
[MOBO] Foxconn M61PMP-K AM3 MicroATX ($47 + $0)
[PSU] CORSAIR CX430 430W ATX12V ($45 + $4 - $20 MIR)
[CASE] Antec VSK-2000 ($44 + $0)
[TOTAL] $200 CAD

so if you buy 10 x 2TB Hard Drives, using an unRAID PRO array,
you can have a total of 18TB of media/data storage!!!

[Carjack]

Only 1GB Ram = Okay?
That looks like it'll net me 4 SATA plugs from the Mobo.
Given only one PCIe lane available, which SATA Controller card would you or Poofyhairguy recommend?

[jdwoods]

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=7998.0
This is a great link to basic builds that will support unRaid. Personally I am interested in this build:
5 Drive Budget Box
Mobo: BIOSTAR TA785G3HD
CPU: AMD Sempron 140
RAM: Kingston 2GB DDR3 1066
PSU: CORSAIR Builder Series CX430 CMPSU-430CX 430W
Case: COOLER MASTER Centurion 590 RC-590-KKN1-GP Black SECC / ABS ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Hot Swap Drive Bays: SUPERMICRO CSE-M35T-1B Black 5 Bay Hot-Swapable SATA HDD Enclosure x 1
Hard Drives: Green drives (5400 rpm or 5900 rpm), such as WD Green, Samsung EcoGreen, and Seagate LP
Cost: $350 + shipping + cost of hard drives
Capacity: 8 TB
Expandability: Expandable to the 15 Drive Budget Box with replacement of the power supply.

[eskro]

Only 1GB Ram = Okay?

thats plenty for a NAS Rig....
unless you find a 2GB Cas Latency 7 stick at $23...
that extra 1GB is not needed at all to run an unRAID server...

That looks like it'll net me 4 SATA plugs from the Mobo.
Given only one PCIe lane available, which SATA Controller card would you or Poofyhairguy recommend?

easy, this one --> MASSCOOL 2-Port SATAII PCIe ($17 + $3)

but if you think a 10 Hard Disk Drive unRAID NAS PRO Rig is not enough,
change the ASROCK motherboard for this one --> MSI 760GM-P33 AM3 MicroATX ($60 + $8)
its $21 more then the ASROCK but,
the MSI board has 6 SATAII slots.... not 4....
and has 2 PCIe slots too so, its possible to extend this up to 14 Hard Disk Drives....

so if you buy 14 x 2TB Hard Drives, using an unRAID PRO array,
you can have a total of 26TB of media/data storage!!!

but careful with the PSU choice here,
because a 10 Hard Disk Drive NAS Server will probably require between 420w - 470w PSU!!
so the CORSAIR CX430 430W is strong enough...

and a 14 Hard Disk Drive NAS Server will probably require between 517w - 567w PSU!!

Correct Poofy? thx

[xecutionx]

thats plenty for a NAS Rig....
unless you find a 2GB Cas Latency 7 stick at $23...
that extra 1GB is not needed at all to run an unRAID server...

OP also wants to run SABnzb + SickBeard + CouchPotato.

[eskro]

OP also wants to run SABnzb + SickBeard + CouchPotato.

those are runned from his HTPC...

[maxinc]

Only 1GB Ram = Okay?
That looks like it'll net me 4 SATA plugs from the Mobo.
Given only one PCIe lane available, which SATA Controller card would you or Poofyhairguy recommend?

If you are planning on installing extra programs like SAB, Sickbeard etc, I would go with 2GB of ram and a slightly faster CPU for the PAR and RAR processes.

Start with a 6 port SATA MB and unRaid Plus, then add one of these when you ready to move to the 7th drive and Pro Licence.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6816101358

If you think you may expand beyond 14 drives (26TB), look for a MB that has
multiple PCI-E slots, ideally 4x or higher.

To calculate the power requirements, a quick rule of thumb is to allocate 2Amps for each Green Drive and 3Amps for each Non-Green drive (thanks Joe.L. for the tip). This is about the maximum current they take at spin-up time and it goes down quickly but the PSU must be able to handle it. On top of that, add another 5-6Amps for the rest of the components and another 10% overall to be on the safe side. This should give you an idea of the PSU size you need.

And a single rail PSU is ideal here since it provides all the power on the same rail whereas multi-rail PSU's allocate a significant power share to the PCI-E video rail which are never used inside a NAS.

[eskro]

but the RAR processes is done by the HTPC right?
it downloads the file and unzip's it right?

but the par process is done by the NAS's CPU....

[maxinc]

PAR & RAR are done by the SAB on whichever machine it is installed. OP mentioned he would like to do that on the NAS.

[eskro]

ok then....

[Carjack]

Thank you, all, for your helpful and informative posts.

I look forward to sharing the final build once complete =-)

Kindly,
Carjack

[eskro]

I look forward to sharing the final build once complete

Please do

[speed32219]

I run raid5 and lvm2 on a 4 bay Mediasonic HF2-SU2S2 ($99) connected with esata (Rosewill RC-219 Silicon Image 2 port Multilane PCI Express card) to main htpc (Mdadm/LVM2) which serves files to 5 add'l xbmc boxes.

Going to buy another, works great and it even is set to power up/down when I start/shutdown main htpc. Also have it set to wake/power on if I turn on any of the other xbmc boxes in the other rooms using wol. It is great for now, two boxes will support up to 16TB. Biggest expense is the 2tb hd's.

[ashlar]

those are runned from his HTPC...

yeah, so one needs to keep two PCs always on instead of one. This is why I think that unRAID was a great solution some years ago and nowadays appears pretty retarded. In my humble but opinionated view, clearly.