Building a budget NAS (UK)

Hi guys,

Basically I've been looking into building a NAS recently (interest increased after the crew's video a while ago) and I am in need of dire help.

I'm looking into running a 24/7 NAS operating FreeNAS with enough storage for all of my media / backup needs now and the foreseeable future - so about 4-6TB useable storage. I think that the WD Red drives are suitable for this - although for ZFS I believe I'd need at least one 2/3TB on top of the usable storage for redundancyl

RAM: Probably start with 8GB ECC - with the view to upgrade within a reasonably amount of time. 

Case: probably Node 304 as it has a decent amount of SATA ports etc.

PSU: the most appropriate PSU for the job.

Now for the hard parts; I'd really appreciate some help in choosing a CPU and motherboard. The CPU needs to be capable of up to 4 streams of transcoding MKVs etc for streaming via Plex. Furthermore, I think that the CPU should be from the Haswell family for low TDP and temperatures if possible.

The motherboard from what I have gathered should have an Intel Nic and a fair few SATA ports (probably no more than 6 at the most though). 

If it's any help the Plex will stream to a mix of mobile devices (tablets and phones), Roku boxes and normal PCs - though no more than 3 at any one time. 

I'd really appreciate your help - I have tried to put together builds on PC part picker myself but they're invariably too expensive - I'm looking at £350-500 max if at all possible.

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/3z14p

Needs ECC ram, which will take it over the 500 lb budget... (or you could sack a 2TB deskstar) but this will do everything you need...

Thanks DrunkenPanda :) I have just two queries: the motherboard's info says it does not support RAID? 

And are the DeskStar HDDs reliable? (Sorry I've never really heard of that series before)

 

edit: I can't spell

Most probs not as it is only a B85 chipset. However if you are running ZFS it would be a hindrance to ZFS to use a RAID configuration. ZFS prefers JBOD arrays or software RAID (using RAID-Z).

The Hitachi Deskstar is the most reliable HDD on the market... period... that's why you're paying a little extra for it...

if you want to run a RAID config there's other motherboards you could choose that have built in RAID controllers, I just selected a cheap reliable mobo to run a Xeon...

What RAID config do you want to run? In some cases you may need a RAID controller... you may need a different mobo, I didn't see mention of RAID in the OP... I saw ZFS which is a software configured RAID-Z... if you want automated backup with RAID, then you're going to have to expand your budget a bit

Thanks for fe clarification regarding the HDDs. And apologies for the RAID comment - it's been a long day and I confused myself for a while about the whole ZFS thing hahaha. Thanks or the clarification; and indeed I do only plan on using ZFS in the rig. 

 

One more question if you be kind enough to answer it; if I had a little more money and wanted to spend it on a different mobo (and let's say I also had ECC RAM) - which (more expensive) motherboard would you recommend? 

 

Thanks for the clarification there :) I just confused myself a little - it's been a hard day hahah

Asus H87 Pro would be the super nice option, albeit a bit unnecessary for a NAS