NAS Build Advice

I've decided against doing my x99 build for now. Instead I decided to focus on doing a NAS Build instead. I'll be installing FreeNAS on it. I'll be using it to store my video footage while I edit the footage, and various other things I work on.

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/r9h7dC

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1230 V3 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($249.99 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H50 57.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler  ($49.98 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H97N-WIFI Mini ITX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($113.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: G.Skill NS Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($63.98 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($94.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($94.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($94.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($94.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($94.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($94.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: Fractal Design Node 304 Mini ITX Tower Case  ($78.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: Corsair CX 430W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($29.99 @ Newegg)
Other: Intel PRO/1000 Pt Dual Port Server Adapter ($43.01)
Total: $1199.87

Explaining the build: 12 TB is plenty of space for me. I will not get a hard drive with 3TBs, I had too many of them fail on me. The motherboard supports them. I think the Motherboard comes with 2 intel network adapters but I wasn't 100% so I included one. While I have no intention of overclocking this build, I went with watercooling so that I can have clearance for ram and fit all 6 of the hard drives. I went with a Corsair Power Supply because it was cheap and I know SeaSonic makes Corsair so it should be good enough for what I am doing.

 Any thoughts on the build? Should I change anything?

Pretty cool. The board does have 2 Gigabit NICs on it, however they are not the same. One is Intel and the other Atheros. You may need to scout around and look, but the last I heard is that the Atheros chip was non-functional under FreeBSD.

If you are planning on running ZFS (which is the main reason for going with FreeNAS) then you WILL need more RAM.

FreeNAS® with ZFS requires a minimum of 8 GB of RAM in order to provide good stability regardless of the number of users or size of the pool. The more RAM, the better the performance, and the FreeNAS® Forums provide anecdotal evidence from users on how much performance is gained by adding more RAM. For systems with large disk capacity (greater than 8 TB), a general rule of thumb is 1 GB of RAM for every 1 TB of storage. 

From FreeNAS Docs

A very viable option is to go with used server hardware.

For example: I recently picked up an HP DL380 G5 for $100NZD ($80USD?).
It's older hardware, running on an LGA771 Xeon E5410 @ 2.33ghz, which is plenty.
It also came with 8gb of DDR2 which, as recommended, is ECC.

Other perks are dual redundant power supplies, dual gigabit NIC, remote management (iLO for HP, iDRAC for Dell etc) server grade hardware, 8x 2.5" drive SAS bay and a few hard drives (You can use SATA hard drives in SAS drive bays). It also has an internal USB port, so you can put your bootable FreeNAS USB stick in there, rather than having it hanging out the back or front of the server.

There are a few things to watch out for though, but they're relatively easy to resolve.
First being that the RAID controller doesn't support initiator targeting, meaning it doesn't pass through the disks directly to the OS. It will only present disks as a RAID.
You can create each disk as a RAID0 disk, but this is highly NOT recommended.

Your best bet would be to get a RAID controller that can be flashed to I.T. mode. A card based on the LSI SAS2008 chipset is a favourite. An IBM M1015 can be purchased for around $100USD from eBay.
SOME cards that have the LSI 1068e (And other variants) can be used, however you won't be able to use drives greater than 2TB, so SAS2008 based cards are recommended to futureproof.

This causes another problem however. The SAS connector on the cards mentioned above is SFF-8087, and most older hardware has SAS bays with SFF-8484 connectors on the backplane.
Luckily, you can get 8087 to 8484 cables for a very good price on eBay with free shipping. You need to make sure that the cables you get are the right ones though. The 8087 end needs to be for the controller and the 8484 end needs to be for the host. THIS MATTERS.

Other advantage of using this older server hardware is for the biggest requirement of ZFS: RAM.
The server I picked up has 8 RAM slots and as mentioned, uses ECC RAM.
Again, you can check out eBay and typically find RAM specific for your server at a very cheap price.
I picked up 32GB in 8x 4GB sticks for $136NZD delivered. (~$100USD).

The downside to these servers is that they're typically in 2U form factor, so they're quite long. Storing them may be awkward. I just stuck mine on its side behind the couch in the garage.
They can also be a bit noisy. A previous Dell PowerEdge 2950 I had was quite loud, but the HP mentioned here is much quieter.
They also have the potential to be power hungry. The HP I have has 2x 800w power supplies. This doesn't mean that it's going to be drawing this amount, but it is a possibility. Dual power supplies are for redundancy, so it's not a combined total of 1600w, it's just in case one fails, your system won't go down.
On that point, replacement power supplied are also relatively cheap.

So you're looking at $100 for the server, $100 for a suitable RAID/HBA card, $10 for SAS cables and $100 for 32GB of ECC RAM.
~$310USD + hard drives.

And if you're lucky, the server may come with some other bits and pieces you may not need and can sell off. I had a PCIe SCSI card and an Intel dual port gig nic come with mine.