Kodi Community Forum

I'm currently planning a media server. I've already made the choice to go WHS 2011/FlexRaid rather than unRaid.

I have an old full tower case that will do for now to house everything. It has 6x 5.25" external bays and some internal 3.5". To allow for multiple drives I was thinking of adding in:
Silverstone CFP52B

I like the idea of the caddies in this even if you don't add in the hot swap stuff (at £5 a drive) when compared to the slightly cheaper Cooler Master offering. If I can find a cheap 5 in 3 caddy, then I may go that route. Xcase do the Norco 5 in 3 hotswap caddy (rebadged) for £60, but currently out of stock, and the pics show the older variant.

For the MB/CPU I'm currently thinking of:
Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H (I know it's currently slightly cheaper at dabs)
i3 3220

This combo would give me 4x SATA II and 4x SATA III on board along with 2x PCIe x8 slots to add in Supermicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 cards at a later date for 8x SATA III ports per card.

I'm looking at something that's possibly slightly overkill as I'm also thinking of using it for encoding when required. Also need to go IB when going the Intel route afaik to get the 2x x8 slots.

Not picked out any memory or PSU yet.

I currently have 2x Samsung F204UI and 2x Hitachi 500GB drives. I'll add a 3TB parity drive in (probably WD green)

I may well go with an SSD for the OS, though it doesn't need to boot up quickly.

I'm open to comments/suggestions

Forgot to add that I also currently have a slim BD Rom drive, so was also thinking of adding MyMovies and ripping with that.

On the OS drive side, I was browsing Crucial's UK site and note that they now do another range of SSDs called V4 that are cheaper, but only SATA II. Looking at £43 for the 64GB V4 compared to £58 for the M4, and £63 vs £81 for the 128GB drives.

Save yourself some $$ and go with this motherboard instead http://www.scan.co.uk/products/gigabyte-...d-hdmi-atx

Really, the only difference between the Z77 and H77 is that the Z77 can be overclocked, however only the K series Intel CPU's can be overclocked. If you are getting a non-overclockable CPU then the Z77 is a waste IMHO. For SSD I would go with the M4, great reliability results, and fast.

Depending on your needs, the cheaper Pentium G2120 CPU may be sufficient as well, instead of the i3-3220

Thanks for that, but I'm still preferring the Z77 board. My reasons are that the Z77 can be had for £95 at Dabs, so only marginally more expensive than the H77. The Z77 has 2 extra SATA III ports available out of the box, which are a potential benefit to start with.

I'm also thinking long term and wanting 2x PCIe x8 for the SAS2 cards (if I eventually go as far as needing 24 SATA ports ) As far as I can tell, you need to be using a Z77 board/IB CPU to do this. Again it may be overkill wanting to go with the SAS2 card to get SATA III rather than the older SAS card with SATA II (which only needs a x4 slot).

I had looked at the G2120 and pencilled it in as a possible alternative.

Hi Andori,

Did you end up purchasing the Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H? I'm looking at buying it myself as there is a sale on it today. I'm wondering if you've had a chance to see how well it works. I'm planning to put a G860 cpu in it and am looking at it for the same 8-SATA port reason. Also, if you are up and running, would you mind letting me know what version of Unraid you're running with? I'm assuming the 5 beta/rc due to the 3TB drive you were looking to get.

Thanks and hope things worked out!

Jacob