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 This is me, switching from 4 Seagate Baracuda 3TB to 4 WD Red 3TB with the help of a lot of scrapped SATA cables, SATA power adapters and a stronger PSU (with 6 SATA power cables) ripped from the heart of my desktop PC for the duration of this operation. I got the Seagates from external USB 3.0 cases, which miraculously cost 5 less than the bare HDD itself. But since it has shown really bad noise, a high power consumption and thermal profile I decided to switch to the WD Red, which according to SPCR is one of the most silent and power saving 3TB drives. Thank god for free return after 14 days due to right of withdrawal  What I'm trying to build is a silent NAS, which made me dump the HP N40L due to its quite noisy PSU fan. So I switched to a crappy midi-tower, 400W PSU, Intel G630T and the cheapest MB with 6+ SATA ports, 8GB ram and 2 silent 120mm fans. I really like this setup over the N40L as it is not only stronger (about 4 times in CPU) but also only costs ~25% more and is scalable (Socket 1155 and Ivy Bridge compability, 4 ram slots, tower for more HDDs). I feel a little  for juggling 24TB around for fun.
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Dec 5, 2012 23:38
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necrobobsledder posted:A lot of people have swapped out that fan (it's a standard 92mm fan I think). I haven't had a problem with it in my living room because it sits inside a closed TV stand. Also, I highly doubt that your machine is more power efficient than an N40L just by virtue of the 400w PSU (even a "Gold" rated 80Plus PSU can only do so well on a load average of less than 13%). Not saying it doesn't work for you, but sounds like your needs weren't quite fitting into what people buy Microservers for honestly. It's the 40mm PSU fan, not the big one cooling the case that was the real noisemaker. Switching out the PSU for a PicoPSU or something similar would've pushed it to about the same price I smashed my server together for, so I opted for the more powerful one I can scale and customize more. If it weren't for the different PSU the SPCR review said to be unnoticeable (their model at least) I would've kept the N40L though. I'd heartily recommend it for anyone who doesn't have an issue with noise.
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Dec 6, 2012 23:30
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Chuu posted:I was trying to find a Mini-ITX motherboard that supports ECC memory with 6 SATA ports to serve as the base for a 6 drive Raid-Z2 FreeNAS system. I could not find any. Tons of consumer ITX motherboards with 6x slots but don't support ECC. A couple Xeon ITX boards that support ECC but only 4x SATA on board. Am I missing something or does this product not exist? The ability for ECC in Intel chips comes from their integrated memory controller and therefore only the Xeons (and new server based atoms like the S1200) can do this. I'm not really sure about what chipset the MB needs to be, but I think it is irrelevant as long as it mounts a Xeon. I could also be very wrong 
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Dec 14, 2012 00:30
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The Seagate Barracuda 3TB are consuming about twice the power of a WD Red, also getting quite a bit hotter by that account. If you run them constantly for a few years their price difference vanishes in the electric bill. Their more silent operation is also more reassuring than the occasional cirp by the Seagates.
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Dec 14, 2012 16:05
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DrDork posted:While you probably don't need ECC for a home rig, in that it literally costs $1-$2 more for 8/16GB of ECC vice non-ECC RAM, there's really no reason not to get it. I want to live where you get your ECC ram so cheap. Here it costs 90 over 50 for 16GB for cheapo ones.
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Dec 19, 2012 15:47
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The N40L supports up to 6 drives and has no capacity limit. 4 slots are swappable, the other two can be reached with 5.25"->3.5" adapter and a few more cables. It also supports up to 2 8GB ECC sticks. If you can live with a little bit of noise from the PSU, this is the best low cost customizable NAS you can get.
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Dec 28, 2012 23:21
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In my experience the N40L used a whole core (50% cpu) for a 100Mbit transfer to a raid-z1 pool while the Pentium G630T used less than 1/10 of that (3% cpu), so I guess it is quite a bit more powerful. The G630T with a cheap B75 MB is in the same price range of the N40L, but you'd have to build the whole box yourself (case+psu+cpu+mb+ram[+nic]) for slightly more  . If you want more (ECC, VT-d, HT, Turbo Boost) then you might want to take a look at the Xeon E3-1220LV2, which offers all that. All these CPUs hover in the green 10-30W range for 24/7 use.
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Dec 29, 2012 01:26
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tarepanda posted:Thank god, because a Microserver costs less than half what it would run me to set up an i3 system that would end up being twice as big and probably more of a power hog. The N40L strikes with a small profile and low price, but features a weak cpu and limited scalability. The low end of self-built systems should only cost about 20% more than a N40L with CPUs like the Pentium G630T or a cheaper AMD equivalent, in a cheap midi tower. Cubed cases usually cost a lot more and this is the reason the N40L is so good - it's cheap AND small, if you need it. The power consumption is about equal, 10-25W in idle and regular use scenarios. You'll lose this advantage if you decide to go for higher power CPUs like i3 or Xeon E3s that aren't specified for this use. If you don't care about expanding, just fetch the N40L and never lose much thought again in this matter.
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Dec 30, 2012 17:08
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I looked a bit around on cpubenchmark.net and it seems like the Turion II Neo K625 (aka N40L) is a bit stronger than the usual Atom processor you get these days and probably on netbook level. The Pentium G630T (T is more expensive but consumes less power) has a 2.5 times higher score and is even 30% better than my good old P8600 notebook processor I got about 3 years ago. There have been a handful of reports that the G630T runs at 20-25W idle easily with some hdds. My system isn't underclocked/-volted yet, I can do a few numbers some day. When it comes to noise I disliked the N40L for having a quite noisy PSU fan, which the SPCR review didn't have as they had another PSU model in it. You better stash the N40L in a closest or another room you don't want to have a constant low hum in if you get one of the louder PSU models. In the end there's nothing better than a nice fan controller for 5, two 120mm fans and the stock intel cooler at 20% pwm. None of the fans (psu+cpu+case) are audible anymore. Sure it's bigger than the N40L, but it's silent and I can put anything in it I want. Regarding the choice of cpu for [low cost low power] self-built systems I've found that the Pentium G2120 supports ECC and should also provide low power consumption due to it being an Ivy Bridge. Its CPU score on cpubenchmark looks to be 30% higher than the G630T and should offer plenty of underclocking opportunities.
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Dec 30, 2012 18:19
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The G630T and G2120 are quite powerful for anything but the fastest transcoding kind of things, and they're an excellent bargain. The next step up (in the Xeon range) are the E3-1220L V2, which is roughly double the G630T performance and half of that of a i7-2600K, to compare it against a desktop processor. One more is the E3-1265L V2, which is about on par with the i7-2600K. The V2 stands for Ivy Bridge and the L for lower clock and consequently lower TDP. But you'd have to shell out a lot of money for this performance.
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Dec 30, 2012 19:25
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tarepanda posted:Yep. Selection tends to be relatively narrow. I mean, many people don't have computers as it is, and when they do, they tend to be laptops... so not only is the desktop market proportionally smaller, but inside the desktop market, the tweaker/modder/custom build market is smaller still. raidz-1 works best with 3,5,9 drives as without the parity you hit power of two for distributing the stripes across the drives. I personally went for 4x3TB Reds and don't care about performance. My giant copy from 4x3TB Seagate Barracuda to 4x3TB reds with my G630T was running at 90MB/s over all the 8 SATA ports on this crappy MB, so it's well over Gbit-capacity. Scrubs show a zpool iostat of well over 250MB/s. If you like your data very much and have anxiety issues losing all of it while resilvering one disk in your raid-z1 you might switch to raid-z2 with 4 or 6 disks. Since you got the G2120 I might ask, did you also get ECC ram? Might be interesting to know if this combo runs on any MB.
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Dec 31, 2012 13:50
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So I just accidentally put the ethernet plug into the other than usual of my two connections on my desktop mainboard after getting a new silent case with a sweet array of 140mm fans and a fan control. The transfer speed to my NAS jumped from 60MB/s to 95MB/s. The reason: One was a Realtek, the other one was an Intel one. 
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Jan 4, 2013 19:43
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At first I thought this was a bit weird, as my NAS has a RTL8111E chip onboard, which had to be on par with my Intel one. Then I checked again and noticed my particular MB version had a RTL8110SC instead of a RTL8111E, which is connected via PCI instead of PCI-E. The limited bandwidth of the RTL8110SC seems to be in line with tests found elsewhere. 
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Jan 4, 2013 21:15
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Finally got around to measure the power consumption and I was shocked how much it actually needs. 20W if the server is completely off (10W with the PSU switch to off), 50W without 4x3TB WD Reds and 70W with them. Unplugging one of the ram sticks and the two 120mm fans didn't make a huge difference (roughly 1W). 4x 4.4W with 80%+ efficiency seems to fit here, so the meter is working correctly. I don't mind the disks using 20W if they run, but the 20W standby and 50W idle is quite high for a system that's supposed to have a 35W TDP cpu in it. Judging from a quick "N40L power" googling those seem to run at 3W off and 40W idle. My older modular 550W PSU is in the same ballpark as my new server PSU with a worse efficiency. Will I get a better result switching to a PicoPSU? Additionally, are there any ways to make FreeNAS use S1-S3 power saving states?
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Jan 5, 2013 02:50
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Turns out my power meter doesn't like the range below 20W, as the measurement of a lamp (45W) with the NAS together wielded no 10-20W off/standby consumption whatsoever. The NAS itself still runs at 45-50W w/o hdds though. I enabled powerd in the advanced tab and confirmed it working by looking up the frequency via sysctl dev.cpu, it shaved a good 5-7W off. FreeNAS uses C1 states by default, but I'd like it to use C3/C6 (ACPI C2/C3) too. I found this guide giving a detailed approach. Does anyone have tried this out yet? Particularly the C2/C3 and Intel GPU bits I'd like to get on my NAS, but I'm currently failing trying to manipulate the /boot/loader.conf file due to it being mounted read-only from the usb stick  edit: using 'mount -uw /' makes the /boot/loader.conf and /conf/base/etc/rc.conf (use this one instead of /etc/rc.conf) writable, but it hasn't shown a great improvement in power usage with C3, 100hz interrupts and reduced timers, maybe 3-4W less. It'll run with all disks spinning at 60W in idle and spun down at 45W. Next step would be to get a better PSU, maybe a powerful PicoPSU. yomisei fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Jan 7, 2013 |
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Jan 6, 2013 18:56
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What are you custom-built NAS people using as a system disk? I'm trying to get suspend-to-ram (S3) working in my FreeNAS setup and basically the USB stick shits itself after resume due to the usb controller being fully powered down, so I have to switch to a disk. I thought of using a SSD of maybe 64GB size. Wake-on-LAN and STR would be a powersaving dream. Any SSD recommendations?
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Jan 7, 2013 19:59
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I know the SSD doesn't save any power per se, but I'd like to have the NAS in suspense and able to wake up on lan in a few seconds, which I can't do via USB stick. Compared to it running 24/7 (at 45W) it would make up for its cost in about half a year.
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Jan 7, 2013 20:10
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Math works differently in Europe, where you have to pay ~0.25/kWh 
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Jan 7, 2013 20:58
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Looking at MB idle power consumption charts makes me want to kill myself. The power draw often is a big unknown when looking for a good board and with a 30-50% difference in the baseline consumption between those boards you can save quite a bit of money through the electric bill. Sadly those small ones are expensive like hell.
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Jan 10, 2013 06:34
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If you intend to stash more than 8-10TB on 4+ drives you'd better get a custom-build NAS in a sizeable tower of your choice. Their price can be kept well below of the purchase price of a Synology and you can customize it to all your liking. Power consumption shouldn't be an issue with the right choice of parts, as with a good amount of HDDs they're the big consuming part, and even those can be spun down on inactivity after a set amount of time. My best guess would be
These components are the most cheap ones in their category and still give a lot of power and low power consumption. This kind of setup could go into the 25-30W range idle and should cost maybe 1/3 of that of a Synology 8-bay. The choice of OS is yours, but most people here tend to throw FreeNAS onto USB sticks and put a raid-z1 or -z2 (1 or 2 parities) on their drives. This setup will give you a huge load of scalability and competitive power consumption to that of a commercial NAS. Since your data is already on your other drives you'd have to get new ones. My personal favorite are the 3TB WD Reds due to their low power and excellent performance. Other 3TB drives like the WD Caviar Green or Seagate Barracuda XT are a bit louder and need slightly more power.
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Jan 15, 2013 00:43
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Bent98 posted:THis mobo only has 3 SATA III ports. Do you have to purchase a raid controller? Too bad it doesnt have onboard video. SATA2 is more than enough for HDDs as only SSDs can utilize the bandwidth of a SATA3 interface. In my attempt to switch from 4x3TB Seagate Barracuda XT to 4x3TB WD Reds I managed to put them all onto my ASRock MB (with a little help of my desktop PSU and Molex->Sata power adapters) and managed to copy the whole volume over with 90MB/s. The Intel Pentium P2120 has integrated graphics, which works totally fine with the MB's video connections. In today's time no MB has integrated GPUs anymore, it's in the CPU now. Finding a proper case is probably the biggest part of building your custom NAS, as there is little variation in low cost internal parts to chose from. Plus all the joy unpacking and sticking things together 
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Jan 15, 2013 01:05
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Bent98 posted:Any MB you know that have a good intel nik out of the box? Does freenas allow you put different size drives in like SHR on the synology or do they have to be the same size? The RTL8111E chip on the ASRock board is fine, I get 95MB/s on FreeNAS with it, and I'm using an Intel 82579 NIC on my Win7 desktop. The F version does have some bandwidth problems though due to being connected only via PCI. As for the rest, I already gave you a recommendation of RAM size and PSUs to chose from. Depending on your frugality you can pick a Pentium P630T, P2120 or an i3 3*** CPU, but they're mostly the same in performance and more than enough (~15-25% cpu) to stream at 100MB/s over GBit-Lan. One thing to keep in mind is that this system will run at 25-50W, so a well rated low power PSU is always worth the investment. Efficiencies at 5-10% load tend to vary strongly between 65% and 80% in different models. There's also the PicoPSU option, but that doesn't work out well with scalability and a bunch of 3.5" HDDs.
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Jan 15, 2013 14:58
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You can use ZFS on different sized HDDs, but only the lowest capacity will be available to the pool. One thing to keep in mind is that ZFS can't be upgraded on the run by adding more drives, instead one common way is to replace one drive at a time with a higher capacity and resilver it. After replacing the last lowest capacity one you'll have a bigger pool available.
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Jan 15, 2013 16:02
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Since you will need to plug in the power somewhere, would lan over powerline adapters be an option?
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Jan 15, 2013 23:39
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If you want a future proof setup you should reconsider a custom-built NAS over a commercial one. Not only you save the better part of that expense you could use later on for upgrades, but you gain a considerable amount of scalability and flexibility. The choice of a good case is the most important one, it sets the tone about space, easy swapping and small things like proper HDD mounts. It's like browsing the Synology's product list, look around for case you like. Towers are considerably spacier though. All current MBs and cases should offer USB 3.0 controllers and ports too, even the cheapest of case+MB I got for myself had 2 of those. And in case something new comes up like less expensive Thunderbolt PCI-E cards and applications, you're ready to pop one in into your custom-built NAS. You also can swap your CPU and RAM every time of the day. I've posted a small list of inexpensive components a page back if you're not interested in picking components yourself. My G630T/ASRock B75 Pro3-M/16GB/4x3TB WD Red runs at 30W idle and 43W HDDs spinning, so power isn't really a concern. And that's with a lovely PSU I carelessly picked before I knew about the good ones. I run FreeNAS and a raid-z1 on my 4 Reds, and in case I ever need to grow this array by adding one or two disks, I either unplug one of the old ones and plug 5 new ones in (8 Sata interfaces on that MB) and create a new raid-z1 on the 5 new disks and copy from the other 3, or simply get a Sata expander card for more disks. The PSU can easily handle that much HDDs. yomisei fucked around with this message at 08:39 on Jan 18, 2013 |
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Jan 18, 2013 08:36
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Intel is announcing its low cost Ivy Bridge Celeron/Pentium processors today. Featuring the Celeron Dual-Core G16xx line (2MB L3, slowest memory controller) at 42-52$, Pentium G20xx line (3MB L3) at 64$ and G2130 (additional ECC capability, G2120 has been out for a while). The G1610 and G2020 will offer same-priced T-versions for a reduced clock and TDP. None offers VT-d or HT, nothing surprising at those prices. First (T) one with HT is the i3-3220T, with VT-d the i5-3470T. At this price point you'll be able to switch to a Xeon E3-1220LV2 with a lower TDP of 17W. If you are looking for the graphics part of these processors, all offer the 3rd gen IGP. Celerons and Pentiums have the HD Graphics without hardware accelerated decoding (CVT HD) or en/transcoding (QSV). Starting at the i3 you'll get the HD Graphics 2500 with those features enabled. Some Xeons have an IGP included, usually ending in a '5' instead of '0' in its 4-digit code. These are HD Graphics 4000 with more execution units. So keep this in mind if you want HW-transcoding on your server. I'm personally interested in the G1610T, as it's twice as cheap as my current Pentium G630T and could offer a potential power saving and maybe even performance boost if the loss of 1/3 of L3 cache is made up by the Ivy Bridge tech. Could even make money back ebaying the G630T  Sometimes it makes me wonder what the T-versions actually are. Sometimes it looks to me as they're just clocked down and get a lower TDP number attached. edit: IGP notes yomisei fucked around with this message at 12:12 on Jan 21, 2013 |
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Jan 21, 2013 11:53
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If you want to go really cheap yet still some good power, Intel just recently announced the Celeron G1610 (T-version also available) which costs like 50$, instead of a proper i3. All you miss is HT, RAM clock and some L3 cache. For hardware trans-/encoding you're required to get at least an i3. As for a MB I've recently recommended many ASRock B75 Pro3-M boards, which got loads of ram/sata/pci slots and is light on the wallet.
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Jan 26, 2013 10:14
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Tedronai66 posted:I'm upgrading (well, converting) my RAID5 server to more of a lower-power NAS box. I've ordered this mobo/cpu/vga combo. For low power systems you'll get way more bang for the buck with low watt gold rated PSUs like the Sea Sonic G-Series 360W or one of the amazing FSP Fortron/Source EGA/EGN(90) OEM PSUs that you probably never find on the open market. PSUs seem like a huge pitfall to me in these times, all these 80+ ratings and stuff, but all that matters is low watt + good reviews (i.e. good low watt efficiency). FreeNAS and consorts mount memory disks for volatile data folders like /var and the rest is mounted read only, so no, it won't wear out.
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Jan 29, 2013 21:41
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Phone posted:I'm still looking onto FreeNAS stuff, and I saw some documentation about the file system. How much faster is NFS vs CFIS? I have Win7 Pro so I can go through the hassle of getting the Unix stuff. Afaik you need the Enterprise edition for the native NFS client. But CFIS is fast enough and integrates much cleaner into windows. To clarify, NFS/CFIS aren't filesystems (zfs is), they're protocols for network sharing. Both type of shares can easily be set up in the GUI anyways, even in parallel on the same path. I don't have a single problem with CFIS as my G630T handles 95MB/s without coming near dangerous high cpu loads. It's just a matter of apples and oranges, pick your poison.
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Jan 30, 2013 17:39
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For a low power system you need a low power PSU, for example the Sea Sonic G-Series 360W. Not only will you never use the maximum load, ever, you primarily need to have good efficiency at low loads like 30-50W, for which this PSU is often recommended for. The other one I can recommend is the LC-Power LC7300. The CPU fits your HTPC needs, and if you need a more powerful GPU you can also pick the i3-3225. 8GB RAM also seems fine for 6-8TB with ZFS. Intel 330 and WD Reds are very solid choices. And if you're open to other cases, I'll throw the Fractal Design Arc Mini/Midi into the mix. I'm suspicious of the Gigabyte MB though, it seems like a feature-packed and power hungry board. Do you actually need all those fancy ports? There are way cheaper boards like the ASRock B75 Pro3-M, which could make the difference in getting another WD Red for more space. I'm not sure how good the Atheros NIC on the Gigabyte will do, but I can tell you the RTL8111E on the ASRock is doing just fine with 95MB/s in my NAS. yomisei fucked around with this message at 12:16 on Feb 3, 2013 |
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Feb 3, 2013 12:09
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I have no experience with Lian Li cases and only got myself a Fractal Design Define R4 for my desktop system. Fractal Design cases feature movable HDD cases with nice trays and look really smooth in general. You also get enough fans for a perfect airflow, throw in a Xigmatek Monocool on those fans, reduce stock Intel cooler to 20% and enjoy a silent server. It's a fashion choice, mostly. My Pentium G630T+ASRock B75 Pro3-M+16GB+4x3TB WD Red NAS runs at 29.5/43W in idle with hdds spun down/up+reading. AnandTech reviewed several mini-ITX Z77 boards where the difference in power consumption could be as high as 15W, which is quite stunning. Personally I'd stick with a normal board and when the time comes a Thunderbolt PCI-E adapter. It'll be cheaper, more mature / power efficient and won't be stuck in your MB.
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Feb 3, 2013 15:02
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taqueso posted:After that experience, I don't see any reason to mess around with Realtek. I bought a couple dual-port Intel NICs on ebay for less than $35 each. Basically free in business terms. I'm going to play around with link aggregation, just for fun mostly. I never had an unpleasant experienc with Realtek NICs. The RTL8111E can push 95MB/s under FreeNAS 8.3, where I'm not even sure if that's the bottleneck or if I could get improvements with jumbo frames, another switch or an Intel NIC, or if the the Intel NIC on my Win7 desktop is the culprit. On the other hand I can tell you you get what you pay for, i.e. the RTL8110SC 2nd NIC on my desktop can only reach about 60MB/s, where the PCI (no express) connection takes the blame for. This number fits the rough numbers for what PCI connected devices can reach in bandwidth under normal circumstances. This depends on the actual chip and which driver you use. If dual port isn't required, single integrated Realtek NICs can do the job just fine.
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Feb 3, 2013 15:16
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g0del posted:First, will my 430 watt power supply be able to handle the extra 6 drives? Typically a modern 3TB drive will suck up to 1 Amp over the 12V rail on initialization, of which there is plenty of in your 430W PSU. You only have to get a lot of Sata->2xSata or Pata->2xSata power adapters to actually fit them, but those come in very cheap. And ebay is the recommended way to snatch a M1015.
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Feb 6, 2013 11:41
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Little update from the power saving fanatic: I replaced the Pentium G630T with a Celeron G1610 and the Cougar A400 with a LC-Power LC7300. Power usage went down from 29.5W/43W to 23.5W/36.5W with disks spun down / up, reading. The PSU did 5W, the G1610 1W of that. Not only is the Celeron twice as cheap as the G630T, it's also a little bit more efficient and powerful. So is the LC7300, cheaper and consumes less power. Without the 4x3TB WD Red the system used 17W in idle, that's 6.5W for 4 spun down Reds and 2 120mm fans at ~20% speed. The rest of that should be consumed by the ASRock B75 Pro3-M. Time to ebay the rest off
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Feb 8, 2013 18:51
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Jago posted:I see a lot of talk in the last few pages of this thread about freeNAS and other roll your own setups. What's the best, cheapest thing for running a drive or two that'll serve NFS? I really have to spend 150+ just for a driveless tool? Can they torrent effectively? Look around for the HP N40L, it's the most easy and cheapest way to get a NAS rolling. FreeNAS is easy to setup and can fulfill all your torrenting needs as it already packs plugins for this purpose.
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Feb 8, 2013 22:08
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bsmack posted:Welp, I've been using a Sans DIgital 4 bay enclosure (RAID 5) which came with a RocketRaid 622 eSATA card. It was working alright for a bit, but then inexplicably caused Windows 8 to bluescreen. I tried formatting my OS drive, and without fail whenever it tries to access the drives it bluescreens. I plan on trying a few things (different OS, possibly rebuilding the array), but I'm pretty much calling it a wash and planning to start over. There is always something more powerful and less expensive waiting for you in a self-built server than taking one of the QNAP/Synology/Drobo boxes. All it requires you is to be willing to find a case you like or need and to put some components together. The advantages are a stronger cpu, more ram, more space in the case (depending what you pick), and pcie slots for future upgrades like thunderbolt when it becomes attractive to the public instead of only the apple mob. It also comes at a 1/2 to 1/3 price than a 8-bay box. On the side of components I recommend the Celeron G1610 and ASRock B75 Pro3-M, 8-16GB RAM, quality PSU like LC-Power LC7300 or Sea Sonic G-Series 360W. The Asrock deliers 8 working Sata ports and a good Realtek NIC while the Celeron is not only the cheapest option available but is quite powerful and way more than enough for simple streaming purposes (gets rated like 70% of a Q6600 performance). If you want video transcoding on your machine you need to step up to a Core i3-3220 to get a HD Graphics 2500 with hardware capability for this. To get more network bandwidth there's also always the ebay option of a HP NC360T and Intel Pro/1000 Dual for link aggregation. One thing I want to stress out is that a quality low power PSU is worth it in what this system actually pulls (17W for the G1610 + ASRock + 16GB RAM for me on a LC7300). The only thing left is what you pick for a case. If you have space you can safely pick a midi-tower to stow away in a corner. I've found that cubed cases similar to the size of the commercial NAS boxes often come at a higher price than a simple tower. Throw in a USB stick with FreeNAS, slap ZFS raid-z1/2 on your harddrives and stream away.
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Feb 14, 2013 10:54
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Splinter posted:On the same note, any recommendations for 2TB or 3TB hard drive for use in an external enclosure? I've seen a lot of talk about WD Red drives recently, but are those ideal here only for NAS? If not, something like a WD green? A 7200 RPM drive seems unnecessary for my uses and it seems like it would be bottlenecked by USB (especially 2.0) anyway, but correct me if I'm wrong. The WD Reds actually consume a lot less power than WD Greens and even other 3TB drives. They also disable IntelliPark, which would park the head on drive inactivity, which is counterproductive in a NAS due to creating too much wear on its components. WD's reasoning behind 7200RPM is that 5400/5800RPM never saved that much power anyways over a proper 7200RPM one. They're newer than the Greens and I can only guess that they either dump the Greens or update them to follow the power saving route the Reds have taken if they update them.
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Feb 20, 2013 22:11
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Ziploc posted:I think it's time to start thinking about a NAS. Start with a Celeron G1610 + ASRock B75 Pro3-M combo and work your way up to what you actually require, i.e. i3-3220 for a HD 2500 integrated GPU for hardware-transcoding or some i5 for VT-d. If you are just streaming media there is no need for a fast cache drive, the usual 3+ drives in a raid-z1 (or -z2 if you desire more security and have money for more drives) will satisfy your needs. For each N in -zN you will lose that drive as capacity, but gain it as security. 6x2 TB drives in a raid-z2 would give you 4x2TB usable space and a security net of 2 failing drives. For most software raids you'll end up with the common lowest capacity, i.e. mixing M 2TB and 3TB drives always nets you M*2TB capacity.
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Feb 21, 2013 16:51
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Splinter posted:Anyone have any thoughts on or pros/cons of these options? You are not required to get a raid-controller. If you have enough Sata ports available on your MB you can just stick a bunch of new drives in there and use a software raid available on windows like snapraid. If not, replacing the MB for one with more ports will likely be cheaper than to get a good raid controller or a NAS box. e:f;b
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Feb 22, 2013 22:04
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 17:59 |
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If the vibrations actually come from the fan(s) you could try slowing them down with cheap fan controllers like the Zalman Fan Mate 2 or Xigmatek Monocool (if you have more than one), or rubber pins to hold the fan in the screw holes. On the other hand if the drives cause vibrations that the case resonates on, maybe switching drive positions will reduce the noise generated.
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Feb 23, 2013 12:37
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