Low powered/cost/noise NAS build?

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1

I saw the pfSense vid talking about a router/nas build which was great. However, I'm looking at building just a box specifically for NAS. I'm looking for a cheap setup at first with the option to expand in the future. I want a two drive setup simply mirrored for redudency but would think about expanding that to a more secure setup in the future.

FreeNAS seems to be the way to go OS/software wise. RaidZ looks good but my understanding is that it needs a fair amount of RAM to work well and of course extra drives.Mobo/CPU: So here its either intergrated or not. I'm open to all suggestions.

The wish list: six SATA ports would be ideal, fanless, mini-itx.

PSU - PicoPSU: http://www.mini-box.com/Power-Supplies-Kits No technical knowage on this at all but I beleive that power bricks use less power than ATX. Some further advantages to using these is that the heat is taken away from the enclosure and space is freed up.

Anyone built anything/have any suggestions?

Thanks.

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If you're not going to do anything cpu intensive I'd go with an atom. I know, the name might sting a little but they're cheap and the 2xxx series aren't that bad. You are also right about the efficiency, but keep in mind that those don't have alot of expandability. Also, fanless is great, but sticking a fanless cpu, 2 or more drives and ram in a system without any airflow whatsoever isn't a good idea. Either get a very silent casefan to blow over the drives or use an atx psu positioned so that it sucks out some of the heat.

For drives: I like the wd red drives, I think mines a 1tb model and it's a single platter making it light, cool and quiet.

Good luck!

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Hey broski, 

You say you want low cost but haven't actually told us a budget...

I mean depending on how much you want to spend you could look at the HP N54L. You get 4 x drive bays (with one other on board that is meant for an ODD), You can Run atleast 8GB of ECC memory in it (Maybe 16 in this model), Gigabit NIC and its low power. Noise is reasonable...

I am runnig the N40L with 8TB physical almost 4TB usable in Raidz2 freenas 9.1 Release and its rockin along nicely. Streaming all my media from it. Transfers are great if your hard wired. Wireless transfer aint super fast but streaming is no worries.

 

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I would go for an Atom aswell. A NAS most straining job is still hard drive related. You can really skimp on raw cpu power. Also those thingies dont consume anything and are very easy to cool!