Your opinion on this build I'm thinking about...?

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1

Hi guys

Well, I'm going to do things the other way round and post my ideas for you to judge and advice upon :-)

So I would like to build a new desktop machine where I would like to see following things

  1. I want it to have a ZFS mirror set of 2x4TB, containing an archive of old files and data, as well as my current media (music/video/pictures) and data. It is important to note this will not be a NAS device, it will be off most of the time during the day. The media I actually used, are synced with a media center. My documents and files I need are synced between all my devices as well. The new system will also sync its archives with an online backup service on a regular basis.
  2. I need it to be able to do video rendering. This is new for me, but following changing family circumstances here I would like it to be beefy enough so a 1080p video edit of say one hour does not take 3 days to render. I will not be using Adobe software. If any I will learn Lightworks or Blender, but use open source tools to start with.
  3. It needs to do fantastic gaming on 1080p. Mostly first person shooter. Think Crysis 3 and the likes.
  4. I'm willing to invest some money but it should at least get me forward a couple of years, you know :-)

Other ideas...
- I'd like to use ECC RAM so the data is protected.
- Since I will be using an external graphics card, and seen the fact I'd like to use ECC RAM, I need to go XEON for the CPU.
- For the graphics card, I'd like to use NVidia since I use Linux and I know my way around NVidia on Linux for quite some years now
- I'm no overclocker really. Not my cup of tea.

So here goes:
- Motherboard: ASUS P9D WS (http://www.amazon.com/P9D-server-grade-Workstation-Motherboard-entry-level/dp/B00CY9PNC0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1438021014&sr=8-1&keywords=P9D+WS). I supports ECC, has a lot of expansion slots, and with 6 sata3 ports I should be able to facilitate the drives I have in mind. I like this motherboard, it seems good price/quality.
- CPU: XEON E3 1241v3 (http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Processor-E3-1241v3B-Cache-BX80646E31241V3/dp/B00KB4A7HG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1438021184&sr=8-1&keywords=xeon+1241v3). This should be beafy enough to do some serious work?
- Memory: Crucial 2x ECC 8GB DDR3 1600 (http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-DDR3L-1600MT-PC3-12800-CT2KIT102472BD160B-CT2CP102472BD160B/dp/B008EMA5VU/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1438024365&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=Crucial+CT2KIT102472BD%E2%80%8B160B). Not sure whether 1600 MHz will make a difference?
- Boot drives: 2x Kingston V300 120GB (with RAID0 work area) (http://www.amazon.com/Kingston-Digital-SSDNow-SV300S37A-120G/dp/B00A1ZTZOG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1438024514&sr=8-1&keywords=kingston+ssdnow+v300+series+120gb+2.5+solid+state+drive)
- case: Define R5

So what do you think about this price/quality wise?

I am still need a few things, but not sure what to get for it.

  • What could be a recommendation for a decent, quiet CPU cooler? Quiet is important for me throughout the build.
  • And then the graphics card. If I want to play 1080p games with all bells & whistles, would a 970 be sufficient? Or what cards would you recommend? I'm not hooked too on Nvidia, it's just what I've known over the past decade on Linux on trust more or less.
  • I still have a certified modular gold 650W Corsair power supply I can recover.

The additional drives I'll buy later. Probably WD Greens.

So let's hear it :-)

Krgds

2

Well I have a single gtx 970 pushing to 3 1080p monitors so I think youll be fine with that grapics card. I do have a few questions. Why ZFS for what sounds like a workstation and that all important data is already backed up? And why raid0 the two SSD's? From what ive heard raiding SSD's does not offer much of a performance boost over a single SSD of the raided size, plus less chance of a failure.

Personally I would install OS on one SSD, then your programs on the other SSD. Then I would use motherboards RAID to do a raid0 on the two 4tb drives. or what I do and have 2 1tb drives in raid0 and another 21tb drives in raid0. Then make sure whatever your working on is split by those two 2tb raids. What this will allow you to do is run the just the OS off one SSD and thats it, run your programs off the other SSD and thats it, then have your working files such as your raw videos on the first 2tb raid, then have your encode output on the second 2tb raid. This will make it so your never trying to read and write to the same disk at the same time.

This will make a fast and powerfull workstation/gaming station and just keep anything you cant afford to loose backed up. This is the type of setup I am running now and it is solid.

3

Hi,

Thank you for your contribution!

I use ZFS for a number of reasons.

First of all, while the data I can't afford to lose is backed up online, I'd like this machine to be consistent in itself. With ZFS the data is properly checksummed and secured, and I can verify that. I feel confident knowing I have a plan B, it also enables me to access the data when I am elsewhere, and I use it to share files with my family, but I sincerely hope I never have to do a full restore from this online dataset.

I am invested in ZFS advanced capabilities as well. I rely heavily on snapshots for backup/rollback as well as replication and lz4 compression. Furhtermore, I can do a lot of online migration by using smart partitioning (although ZFS is not as flexible as btrfs) if I'd ever want to replace the underlying disks.

All of the time, I am in control and that feels comfortable. I feel more confident when I know exactly where my data is. I can manipulate the datasets, break the mirrors when needed, or uses a mix of RAID0 and "RAID1" (let's say data redundancy as technically it is not a mirror) in 1 zpool.

Portability is a thing as well. I can take out a disk, import it on another machine, and do some fast local data copy.

I'd use 2 SSDs because I have the SATA connections available, and as such I could double the throughput for more or less the same cost (get 2x120 instead of 1x240). Using Linux the OS activity should not get in my way too much (I put /home elsewhere and OS temp files are in RAM anyway).

But yeah, I'm not sure yet how to do the disk layout. Food for thought :-)

4

I'd consider better quality ssd's, wouldnt want to get a pair of the early v300's which were turds of things. You should be safer with samsung, intel, crucial + a few others (higher end sandisk, kingston, adata etc).

5

Didn't know that actually. Thanks for pointing out!