I am looking to build a NAS unit (or small home server) that is power efficient and would appreciate your input regarding parts. I would like it to have the following requirements:
1. MB should be mini ITX and have a minimum of 4 SATA 6Gbs ports (preferably 6 or more for expandability). Could look into uATX but I already have several mini ITX cases as possibilities, plus I don't want this huge thing that looks like another PC tower next to my regular PC.
2. Regarding the CPU, I guess that depends on the above. I want this to be power efficient, to sip power in a similar way as pre-built NAS boxes from Synology/QNAP. I've looked at some Ivy Bridge i3 35w CPUs and there is even a 17w Xeon (more expensive though), but I don't see any ITX MBs that have the SATA ports that I require. On the AMD side, all I can think of is their Trinity APUs, but those do not go lower than 65w TDP and have a lower performance than i3s from Intel. Maybe getting the AMDs to sip power would be a feat.
3. This is mainly going to be a NAS box, in which I would like to have access to my files locally and when traveling. But I guess this is included in things like FreeNAS, OpenMediaVault, etc. Maybe some other minor modification here and there (again, probably included in the software). However, I would like it to be powerful enough to run something like Windows Server Essentials 2012 if needed (more likely if my FreeNAS/OMV, etc., installation fails or gives me too many headaches).
4. This NAS will run software RAID (again, FreeNAS/OMV) preferably on ZFS so I would like the MB to support 8GB or more of RAM. And if I run WSE 2012 the RAM will come in handy.
5. I am planning to have 4 3TB hard drives in mirrored or RAIDZ2 to start with, Possibly add more capacity at a later time (hence the extra SATA ports).
Any help and comments are appreciated. Thanks!
1. MB should be mini ITX and have a minimum of 4 SATA 6Gbs ports (preferably 6 or more for expandability). Could look into uATX but I already have several mini ITX cases as possibilities, plus I don't want this huge thing that looks like another PC tower next to my regular PC.
2. Regarding the CPU, I guess that depends on the above. I want this to be power efficient, to sip power in a similar way as pre-built NAS boxes from Synology/QNAP. I've looked at some Ivy Bridge i3 35w CPUs and there is even a 17w Xeon (more expensive though), but I don't see any ITX MBs that have the SATA ports that I require. On the AMD side, all I can think of is their Trinity APUs, but those do not go lower than 65w TDP and have a lower performance than i3s from Intel. Maybe getting the AMDs to sip power would be a feat.
3. This is mainly going to be a NAS box, in which I would like to have access to my files locally and when traveling. But I guess this is included in things like FreeNAS, OpenMediaVault, etc. Maybe some other minor modification here and there (again, probably included in the software). However, I would like it to be powerful enough to run something like Windows Server Essentials 2012 if needed (more likely if my FreeNAS/OMV, etc., installation fails or gives me too many headaches).
4. This NAS will run software RAID (again, FreeNAS/OMV) preferably on ZFS so I would like the MB to support 8GB or more of RAM. And if I run WSE 2012 the RAM will come in handy.
5. I am planning to have 4 3TB hard drives in mirrored or RAIDZ2 to start with, Possibly add more capacity at a later time (hence the extra SATA ports).
Any help and comments are appreciated. Thanks!