AM2 based NAS in 2015?

I have a desktop system built around 2008 which was pretty decent at that time and has a solid tower case:

Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe
Athlon64 Am2 6400+
4x2GB DDR2

I would like to build a 15 drive NAS using 3 of those 5-in-3 hotplug cages with the onboard SATA ports and additional PCI SATA HBAs.

Can I expect decent power consumption/performance balance from that build or should I look for current low power processors?. The machine will be used as multimedia storage, backup destination and download node.

The system would work fine most likely for basic file server needs, but you also have to consider it's getting pretty long in the tooth. Power consumption will be a lot more than a modern setup, but you'd have to consider the cost of entry vs. power savings (almost never pans out). I ran a Regor 250 with similar RAM in FreeBSD, and it did OK.

I'm running a x2 5000BE on WHS with 15 drives (only one 5 in 3 hotswap) but I have to say I am both surprised it still works and also very ready for an upgrade. It runs fine for fileserver duties over the network but can only handle 1 plex stream (barely) and internet transfers via WHS website don't work anymore. WHS v1 is veeeery long in the tooth and needs an upgrade, I'm going to go with 2012Essentials when I do upgrade, not sure how other OS's stack up.

Its plenty of power for a file server, I would still use a system like that.

What ever you decide, keep in mind some simple advice. Always plan what you will do when the hosts system fails.
Now I said WHEN with this hardware instead of IF due to knowing these were ordinary boards to start with. You will also need to be wary of HBA's not working in the PCI-E slots due to being designed for GPU's and they have bloody nVidia nForce chipsets.

Lost-Benji said:

What ever you decide, keep in mind some simple advice. Always plan what you will do when the hosts system fails.
Now I said WHEN with this hardware instead of IF due to knowing these were ordinary boards to start with. You will also need to be wary of HBA's not working in the PCI-E slots due to being designed for GPU's and they have bloody nVidia nForce chipsets.

Click to expand...

It will run software RAID, so swaping completely the hardware shouldn't be an issue. Is it expected to have issues with HBAs on the 16x slot of these boards?

Yes.