basic storage system 300-400 $

[wheelsx45]

What is a good headless NAS setup that would be quiet/somewhat green to serve media and files through samba/nfs to a Popcorn hour, 3 Win7 boxes, and 1 linux box. I will probably only have at most 4 Samsung F4 2TB drives? What non windows OS? Is a ZFS setup better or just separate disks? My price range is somewhere around 300-400usd for the mobo/cpu/ram/case/psu/etc, not counting the hard disks.

A motherboard and a cpu that I was looking at.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138283

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103903

 

[Dangman]

Prelim build for ya:
$105 - AMD Athlon II X2 245 CPU + Biostar A880G+ AM3 AMD 880G HDMI mATX Motherboard combo
$40 - G.Skill F3-10600CL9D-4GBNS 2 x 2GB DDR3 1333 RAM
$45 - Antec NEO ECO 400C 400W PSU
---
Total: $190 plus tax and shipping

 

[PointandClick]

I just placed an order a few hours ago.

Antec Neo posted above
Asus M4A79XTD Evo
+ Athlon II X4 635 Combo - $15 off + $15 rebate on mobo
2x2gb unbuffered ECC
3x Samsung F4 2tb

Total was like $517 then $25 worth of rebates.

My biggest concern is Solaris support with the sb750. Board inclueds 2 pci x16 (at x8) and 2 x1 slots. I don't anticipate any more than 10-12 disks at max so expansion shouldn't be a problem.

The 1056 supermicro boards are obviously popular around here (at least one person is going to tell you that's what you should get ) but honestly all you get is a few more expansion slots and some nice features such as IPMI.

Depending on exactly what you want, expandability wise, you could find something even cheaper than my setup.

 

[Vengance_01]

the SB 750 is not a bad choice. Use ZFS and use the onboard for your first pool. If you need more storage a cheap non raid card should work well.

 

[PointandClick]

I just couldn't find much information on Solaris support for the sb750. The few boards on the hcl that used it didn't report any problems so I'm hoping for the best.

 

[wheelsx45]

So is it acceptable to just the onboard SATA ports ? Would there be any complications later should a Raid card be added? what re the advantages of using ZFS for someone who will probably have at the most 4-5 disks, I just not sure if am getting over my head and should just have separate independent disks?

 

[PointandClick]

Unless you're using a hardware raid setup, using the onboard sata is fine. HW raid is going to put you over your budget more than likely. A controller can be added later, but for something like ZFS you want to make sure it will allow you to use the disks as JBOD.

The advantages of ZFS aren't tied to number of disks. http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1500505&highlight=zfs