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Thanks for the people that contributed with suggestions to my Build.

 

  What was your budget?  Up to $1000 with drives, but want to get the best bang for the buck

  Capacity? Medium expandability (starting with 3x3TB+cache=6TB useful to start but able to expand perhaps 3-4 times larger as needs arise)

  unRAID Add Ons? SABnzbd, SickBeard, and CouchPotoato, UnMenu (whatever is useful but not too complicated)

 

Other targets:

1) Silent (it could end up in my room depending where I live. Also no fancy LED)

2) Flexibility on CPU/RAM to handle some of the basic apps, I have XBMC so I don't think I'll ever need trans-code. However I wanted the possibility of running sab/nbz/etc if need arose.

3) Mounted flash drive inside case.

 

Actual Build:

 

CPU(upgrade Aug 2017): Intel Xeon Processor E3-1225 v2 ($60 used) (I needed a bit more power for transcoding at a reasonable upgrade price. The v2 is still Ivy Bridge, so lower power consumption. Seems like Haswell Xeons are much cheaper for more power, unfortunately not compatible with my Motherboard)

Motherboard: ASRock B75 PRO3-M LGA 1155 Intel B75 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX ($78)

RAM (Upgrade Aug 2017): Ballistix Sport 16GB (8GB Kit x 2) DDR3-1600 ($140) (Original memory failed, got 8GB kit in 2015 and then upgraded with another 8GB kit)

Cables: 4 x Silverstone Tek 180 Degree SATA III Cable with Non-Scratch Locking Mechanism ($7ea) (Couldn't find non-locking ones at mono price per recommendation on greenleaf)

Case: ZALMAN MS800 Black Steel / Plastic ATX Mid Tower Computer Case ($90-$30Rebate=$60)

Power Supply: CORSAIR Builder Series CX430 430W ATX12V v2.3 80 PLUS BRONZE ($40-$10Rebate=$30)

Flash: Kingston Digital DT Micro 8GB USB Flash Drive (~$8 )

Storage Drives (As of Jun 2021, Current Capacity 33TB):

1 x WD Red WD120EMFZ 12TB (Parity)

1 x WD Red WD100EMAZ 10TB

1 x WD Red WD60EFRX 6TB

1 x WD Red WD50EFRX 5TB

4 x WD Red WD30EFRX 3TB Bare Drive ($160-$20=$140ea)

Cache Drive: Samsung 850 EVO 250GB Internal SSD

Drive Cages:

StarTech.com 4-Bay Mobile Rack Backplane x 2 (These look nice, only downside is that you need to disable the power pin for shucked WD Drives)

Rosewill 3 x 5.25-Inch to 4 x 3.5-Inch Hot-swap (RSV-SATA-Cage-34) (This looks less fancy but the nice part is that I don't need to disable power pin on shucked WD Drives. Seems its no longer available)

SATA Expansion (As of Apr 2020): LSI 9217-8i 6Gbs SAS PCI-E 3.0 HBA FW: P20 IT Mode ($48)

 

UPS: CyberPower CP1000AVRLCD Intelligent LCD Series UPS 1000VA 600W AVR Mini-Tower ($107)

 

Original Parts:

CPU:Intel Pentium G2020 Ivy Bridge 2.9GHz LGA 1155 55W ($65) (Initially looked at G860, but the G2020 has the same passmark as the G860 and for $5 I upgrade to a lower TDP and Idle consumption and its Ivy Bridge, still has GPU included which I don't know any other way other than playing by putting in a video card to set up and then pulling it out later, more of a PITA)

RAM:G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 ($37) (Went for the 1333 vs 1600 since it runs at 1.5V instead of 1.65V, I didn't want issues where ram doesn't get enough voltage as I've seen over the years)

Cache Drive: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS 320GB 7200RPM SATA2 (Spare drive unused from gaming PC)

Cage: Cooler Master 4 in 3 HDD Module Device ($25) (Decided to move away from SS-400, I don't think I need to spend an extra $40 for it and would limit me to 80mm fan. Replaced fan with a silent 120mm fan)

 

Original Costs:

System price = $333

System + HDD = $753

System + HDD + UPS = $860

Initial Capacity = 6 TB

 

Update 1: System has now been running for over 6 months. Forgot to move the info into this forum. I am trying to post some images but having issues, just need to figure out best way to post them.

 

Update 7/20/17: Its been over 3 years and still running great. Upgrades include:

- Switching cache drive to 250GB Samsung 850 EVO

- Expanded array with (all WD RED): 1x3TB, 1x5TB, 1x6TB (Parity) - Current Capacity: 17TB

- Rosewill RSV-SATA-Cage-34 4x3 Cage
- Additional Apps: Sonarr, EMBY (including limited transcoding), OpenVPN, Headphones, Radarr (testing), others. Working on converting all to Dockers.

Issue 1: Ran into a slight issue on hanging during bootup which was some glitch/conflict between BIOS and Syslinux (which was part of unraid). I updated Bios and it might be fixed, though hard to know because it only happens randomly during reboot and I rarely reboot.

Issue 2: One of the memory sticks failed....had to get a new one so moved away from from my original vendor.

 

Update 6/2/2021: Hard to believe but its been almost 8 years since I got this system. I also pushed it beyond what initially planned by running Emby and doing transcoding (the original CPU helped, but new one really eased the load). Since then I have added more HDD, a SATA Expansion card and added/replaced drive cages (so much easier to just pull out the drive instead of what I had to do with my previous cage). No issues so far. Other than this I have been thinking of the future, it may be that when I upgrade my gaming pc I might use the hardware to upgrade this (i5-4690k) but its not that much different from my current build so I might just move over the GTX970 to help with transcoding instead and not mess with the overall system.

 

http://i.imgur.com/zCM7fZHl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/31LPsB8l.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/9ca0Si8l.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/nHc5fT7l.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/R2PMykGl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/KQeWx5Al.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/QV5TikJl.jpg

Edited by Necrotic
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  • 4 weeks later...

How is this setup working with Unraid.

 

I am looking to build my 4th tower and I am thinking of using the same motherboard and CPU.

 

 

Me too im interested in hearing how this CPU runs with unRAID, I have the bigger brother G2030 in another machine and using a i3 3225 in my unRAID but have considered switching them around.

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Working just fine so far...however I'm not doing anything fancy like transcoding or virtualization (for which you need a different CPU) to take advantage of the extra horsepower.

 

Update: I did end up installing Emby and do limited transcoding.

Edited by Necrotic
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