The inspiration for this build. This is the culmination of way too many hours of research, and represents what I consider the best bang-for-the-buck for a simple, cost-effective, and expandable storage server.
This is a storage server for streaming video to my HTPC. Requirements were:
1) very low power consumption
2) relatively inexpensive
3) high SATA port density
4) PCIe gigabit NIC
5) ability to potentially use a SATA controller in the PCIe 16 slot
Components
Motherboard: Biostar A760G-M2+
This is the cheapest MB that I found that offers the following features:
1) 6 sata ports onboard
2) supports ECC memory (seriously - how awesome is that!)
3) can accept non-video cards in the PCIe-16 slot
4) onboard video can be UNDER-clocked
I have all unnecessary features disabled (sound, serial, parallel, etc.), the CPU under-volted, the on-board video under-clocked.
CPU: AMD 4050e
Sadly discontinued, this 45W TDP dual core CPU is overkill for unRAID. Shooting for lowest power, I tried disabling CNQ and manually lowering the multiplier as low as possible - system idle power consumption was identical to just leaving CNQ enabled and letting it scale as needed.
RAM: Kingston 2x1GB DDR2-533 ECC
Cheap and slow.
PSU: Corsair CMPSU-400CX
It's a little overkill now (see power consumption measurements below). It was selected primarily for future expansion, and because:
1) It's 80+ efficient @ 20% = 80W
2) Has SIX SATA + SIX MOLEX HDD power connectors
3) It's constantly on sale
4) It measures very well.
HDD's: Western Digital WD10EADS
I have three of these. Two data, one parity. They're very quiet, very low-powered, stay cool, fast sequential transfer rates - great for network storage.
Case: Coolermaster Centurion 590
Nine external 5.25" bays for loading it up with back planes or 4-in-3's, inexpensive, decent quality, and 17.5" high (so it can be shelved horizontally inside a standard 19" rack cabinet). This was the least expensive case with 9 external bays I found. Comes with one 4-in-3 HDD adapter.
OS: unRAID basic licensehttp://www.lime-technology.com/joomla/ (the free one, limited to 3 drives).
Power consumption measured using Kill-a-watt:
Network transfer speeds are nothing special. Because of the way unRAID works (parity calcs), transfers TO the server are slow - averaging around 20MB/s. Transfer speeds FROM the server depend on the host OS. Using WinXP transfers peak around 45MB/s. My limited testing with Win7 RC showed around 90MB/s (which is about the limit of a WD10EADS HDD).
Thanks for looking-
This is a storage server for streaming video to my HTPC. Requirements were:
1) very low power consumption
2) relatively inexpensive
3) high SATA port density
4) PCIe gigabit NIC
5) ability to potentially use a SATA controller in the PCIe 16 slot
Components
Motherboard: Biostar A760G-M2+
This is the cheapest MB that I found that offers the following features:
1) 6 sata ports onboard
2) supports ECC memory (seriously - how awesome is that!)
3) can accept non-video cards in the PCIe-16 slot
4) onboard video can be UNDER-clocked
I have all unnecessary features disabled (sound, serial, parallel, etc.), the CPU under-volted, the on-board video under-clocked.
CPU: AMD 4050e
Sadly discontinued, this 45W TDP dual core CPU is overkill for unRAID. Shooting for lowest power, I tried disabling CNQ and manually lowering the multiplier as low as possible - system idle power consumption was identical to just leaving CNQ enabled and letting it scale as needed.
RAM: Kingston 2x1GB DDR2-533 ECC
Cheap and slow.
PSU: Corsair CMPSU-400CX
It's a little overkill now (see power consumption measurements below). It was selected primarily for future expansion, and because:
1) It's 80+ efficient @ 20% = 80W
2) Has SIX SATA + SIX MOLEX HDD power connectors
3) It's constantly on sale
4) It measures very well.
HDD's: Western Digital WD10EADS
I have three of these. Two data, one parity. They're very quiet, very low-powered, stay cool, fast sequential transfer rates - great for network storage.
Case: Coolermaster Centurion 590
Nine external 5.25" bays for loading it up with back planes or 4-in-3's, inexpensive, decent quality, and 17.5" high (so it can be shelved horizontally inside a standard 19" rack cabinet). This was the least expensive case with 9 external bays I found. Comes with one 4-in-3 HDD adapter.
OS: unRAID basic licensehttp://www.lime-technology.com/joomla/ (the free one, limited to 3 drives).
Power consumption measured using Kill-a-watt:
- Startup Peak: 88 W
- Idle, all drives spun up: 48 W
- Idle, all drives spun down: 39 W
- Parity Check: 69 W
Network transfer speeds are nothing special. Because of the way unRAID works (parity calcs), transfers TO the server are slow - averaging around 20MB/s. Transfer speeds FROM the server depend on the host OS. Using WinXP transfers peak around 45MB/s. My limited testing with Win7 RC showed around 90MB/s (which is about the limit of a WD10EADS HDD).
Thanks for looking-
