First Build - *Budget* 12 drive capacity mid-tower - $262 (not including drives)


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Finally outgrew my Dell mini-tower that I had re-purposed as an entry level Unraid box 3 years ago. It worked OK, and even ran Sab, SB, and CP, but I couldn't pass up the Cyber Week deals this year!  ;)

 

It's not the greatest build, but I feel I did OK for the money (tight budget over here at the moment). I think it's a huge upgrade over the Dell Vostro 220 I was using. Plus, I get to put my apps on a cache drive now.  :o

 

I already owned the drives, so the $262 I paid was for everything else. The below prices include all discounts and mail in rebates. I also got $20 off a Tigerdirect order for checking out with "V.me" when I bought the Motherboard and CPU. All my links are to newegg for consistency, even though I may have gotten a couple things from Amazon, Tigerdirect, etc.  ::)

 

 

 

OS at time of building: Unraid 5.0-rc8a Plus

CPU: $50 AMD A6-5400K Trinity 3.6GHz

Motherboard: $85 GIGABYTE GA-F2A85XM-D3H Socket FM2 (8 SATA III ports on-board)

RAM: $50 G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM 1600 (PC3 12800)

Case: $20 Rosewill LINE GLOW ATX Mid Tower

Drive Cage(s): 8 stock internal 3.5", plus a $24 Cooler Master 4-in-3 Device Module Cage

Power Supply: $25 CORSAIR CX500 

SATA Expansion Card: $13 SYBA 4 port SI-PEX40064 PCI-Express x1 Low Profile Ready SATA III

Cables: $2 each 2 X Rosewill 8" Sata Power Splitter Cable Model RCW-302

$1 each 4 X Rosewill Model RCAB-11036 36" SATA III Black Flat Cable

$7 2 Port USB 3.0 A Female to 20 Pin Header Motherboard Cable Internal Connection (for install of USB flash drive inside the case)

Fans: All stock included with case & 4 in 3 cage 3 x Front Blue LED 120mm; 1 x Top Blue LED 120mm; 1 x Rear 120mm

 

Parity Drive: 2TB - Seagate Barracuda LP ST32000542AS 5900 RPM 32MB Cache 3.0Gb/s

Data Drives: 2 X Western Digital WD Green WD20EARS 2TB 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s

2 X Seagate Barracuda Green ST2000DL003 2TB 5900 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s

2 X Western Digital WD Green WD10EADS 1TB 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s (1 in the array, 1 not pre-cleared yet; pending upgrade to Unraid Pro)

Cache Drive: Fujitsu MHW2120BJ 120GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 2.5"

Total Drive Capacity: 12 drives

 

Primary Use: Media download & streaming to HTPCs throughout the house, and other data storage.

Likes: Cost, cool temps, low power, room to expand, parts could easily be used in other desktop systems down the road.

Dislikes: Will be a pain to swap out drives in the 8 stock 3.5" drive bays. Oh well, I shouldn't be doing this much in theory (hopefully)! Cable management wasn't the cleanest. A more expensive modular PSU would help with this.

Add Ons Used: preclear, unMenu, SABnzbd, CouchPotato, SickBeard

Future Plans: set up cache_dirs and crashplan. Eventually fill the 4 slots in the Cooler Master 4 in 3 drive cage with some WD Red drives (3 or 4TB?)

 

Boot (peak): 175 W

Idle (avg): 57.3 W

Active (avg): 97.3 W

Light use (avg): 61.2 W

 

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I decided to purchase and install the 4 port pci express sata card & also the 4 in 3 drive cage, even though I won't need them for a while. The card was only $13 after the Newegg discount & rebate!  :D  Hopefully I don't have any problems with it down the road.

 

As you can see on the attached Unraid GUI screenshot, my warmest drives during a parity check are at 31C, so I guess the 5 x 120mm stock fans are doing their job?

 

Please feel free to comment, criticize, offer insight for my next build, whatever. I always enjoy reading and learning from all the experienced Unraid gurus on this forum. I took some advice from a couple while putting together these parts. Thanks to garycase especially. I know "budget builds" aren't his thing, but he was nice enough to come down to my playing field and offer assistance.  ;D

 

Thanks for looking!

Matt

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

I built my first server using this exact same configuration.  I am getting a lot of stuttering playing a 720p movie.  I'm not an expert or anything but I think I need more processing power.  Attached image shows the CPU load wh ile I am playing this movie to 1 Roku box.  My network is all wired with Gig connections.  CPU is at 100%

 

 

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The CPU in this build is marginal for Plex ... it likely can't handle the more complex transcodes needed for many devices.    Simply streaming to a device that supports the native format you've stored your media is would not be a problem (virtually any CPU would do for that) ... but a CPU with a Passmark in the 2100 range is simply not enough "horsepower" for reliable Plex transcoding.    Assuming that's what you're using, I suspect the Roku stream required transcoding, whereas the SmartTV either did not or required a less CPU-intensive transcode.

 

 

 

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