$500 Quiet NAS(Win 2008) Build

[jagooch]

I'm building a new NAS box to replace my old Athlon XP/Abit Mobo box running Win 2008. My goal is to find a good balance between storage, speed, power consumption, and noise. It's going to be headless running Windows 2008 server.

Services it will provide are:
File Server
Centralized Backups
Single Sign On (Active directory)
MySQL server(for my xbmc installations to sync to )
DNS
DHCP

Hardware for my build:
5x Samsung 2TB SATA 3Gbps drives

1x GIGABYTE GA-A75M-D2H FM1 AMD A75 (Hudson D3) SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
1x AMD A6-3500 Llano 2.1GHz
1x Scythe SCSK-1100 100mm Shuriken Rev. B 3 Heat Pipes CPU Cooler

2x G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900) Desktop Memory Model F3-14900CL9D-8GBXL

1x Fractal Design Define R3 Black Pearl w/ USB 3.0 ATX Mid Tower Silent PC Computer Case
1x SeaSonic SS-300ET Bronze 300W ATX12V V2.3 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply

No SATA controller needed as the system has 6 SATA controllers (5 for raid, 1 left for system/ssd drive )

 

[jmsellars1]

Looks OK to me and should be really quiet. You could fit that many drives into the Define Mini as well by the way (just in case you wanted a smaller system). That can fit 6 drives and an extra one in one of the 5.25'' slots if you use the included adapter so 7 total.

EDIT: Also I would change to this RAM to ensure that it fits under that CPU cooler:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231550

 

[jagooch]

It is really quiet! I might need to upgrade the power supply as I now have 6 drives, and want to add 3 more eventually.

The RAM was a tight fit. I was afraid it wouldn't snap in but I got it to go.

 

[jmsellars1]

That PSU should be fine for 9 drives in terms of wattage, you might need more connectors though.

 

[jagooch]

I'm giving you best answer, though the PSU did prove not to be up to the task. After a couple of days the NAS box started rebooting with the power led flashing for a bit. it was slow at first, then started becoming more frequent. Finally I pulled the 300W PSU out and placed on old 380Watt in there. I wasn't sure if it would work since the mobo has a 24pin connecter and the old PSU only had 20 pins.

I did some research and discovered the extra pins were to provide more power for power-hungry system, and were entirely necessary. Its been running fine with the old PSU, but ordered a 620Watt one since I'll be adding 4 more drives , and probably an 8-port SATAIII card and a dual-port gigabit ethernet card( so more power will be needed ) .

Thanks again!

 

[jagooch]

Best answer selected by jagooch.

 

[jmsellars1]

It may have been a faulty unit, 300W should be fine for those drives really. No harm in having a bit extra though.

EDIT: Had a typo

 

[jagooch]

True. I have the same one in my HTPC, so one day soon I'll put it into that system and see how it behaves with a much lower load( same hardware but only one hard drive )