newbie fileserver

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push

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 20, 2010
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184
So I'm a bit of a fileserver newb. Up until this build I just had automated backups go to my old gaming rig. I want something with a bit more capacity that I can throw some extra drives in as I get the money. Not sure if I need/want a RAID setup since there isn't anything mission critical. Important stuff like family photos will reside on the source system, my old backup pc, an external drive, and this new FS. So short of my house burning down one of the drives should retain the data. This will mostly serve to host files to my Boxee Box and some redundant data backup. Here is my build:

Cooler Master centurion MicroAtx mini tower $54.99
Asus M4A78LT-M AM3$69.99
OCZ modxstream 500W 80plus certified $65
AMD Athlon II x2 250 Regor 3.0 GHz 65W $59.99
Kingston ValueRAM 2x2 DDR3 1333 ECC unbuffered $52.99

Total cost of rig (minus drives) - $302.95

I'll probably start off with one or two WD 1.5TB green drives for hosting

What do you think\recommendations? Like I said nothing too mission critical, that stuff has some redundancy with my backups. If I lose my shows/movies it would suck, but not the end of the world. Tried to build it with price as my primary concern. Don't want it to be expensive to build or keep running 24/7.
 
North Bridge
AMD 760G
South Bridge
AMD SB710

I would get something at least of the 8xx family. Especially SB8xx southbridge would be nice so you have SATA 6Gbps support; would be nice for the future and reusability of hardware, not that much at the moment though. But if you can find a cheap board with more modern chipset that would be preferable.
 
I was trying to, but it's a PITA to try and find a Micro ATX board with ECC support. Know of any off the top of your head?
 
DOH, found the M4A88T-M. Supports the AMD 880G northbridge and sb710 southbridge, no SATA 6 though. Know of a good micro atx that has sata 6 support with ECC?

I also see it comes with a Realtek NIC onboard. Is there really that much of an advantage running an intel nic over marvell/realtek?
 
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You don't need SATA 6Gbps support, because those drives won't come even close to taking advantage of it. You'll only get extra performance out of certain SSDs (C300 + some upcoming ones).

Also, I'd recommend Samsung drives.
 
Ditch that Coolermaster Centurion case: It does not have free shipping so it's gonna cost $72 shipped, which is stupidly overpriced for a case worth not more than $35. In addition, it does not come with fans. I recommend this cheaper case instead:
$50 - Cooler Master Elite 341 RC-341C-KKN1-GP mATX Tower Case

Actually comes with a fan and has relatively cheap shipping.

Ditch the OCZ PSU as well: You can get the significantly better quality Antec PSU for the same price:
$64 - Antec NEO ECO 520C 520W PSU

Motherboard wise, I recommend the following:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138191
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131654
 
I do plan on using the m4a88 now, will swap out the cases and psu. thanks
 
everything you have listed will work fine for what you want it to do.

Changes I would make?
Your case: I recommend this Antec 300 Has good airflow and and some room for future expansion, and free shipping. I have no problem with the coolermaster suggested to you, I just like room for future expansion is all.
Hard Drives: I would buy 3x drives probably. 2x drives just to hold your data, and one drive who sole purpose is to do a weekly/monthly backup of your "omg i don't want to lose this" files. Of course you could do this manually to DVD or BLU ray or something, but I tend to get lazy/forget every month.
 
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You DO NOT WANT a motherboard NIC based on a Realtek. Not if your ever intend to run any virtual machines through it. I had nothing but trouble trying to use Hyper-V through several different Realtek chipsets (different motherboards and plug-in cards). All of which instantly went away (with no config changes) upon using Intel-based NICs.

As such I strongly recommend people AVOID boards with Realtek network chipsets. RUN AWAY.

As for motherboards, be careful about ones with a single PS/2 port if you intend to use them through a KVM. I've got eight machines running through a single KVM, using PS/2 ports for keyboard and mouse, along with VGA video. I've tried on several occasions to use the single-port PS/2 motherboards with it and met with failure each time. This is undoubtedly due to bad interactions between the mobo and the KVM. Using PS/2 to USB adapters did not work. Could well be a KVM issue, but it happened with more than one make/model. Just a warning if you're considering a KVM setup.
 
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Think I may pick this case up instead. Has 4 internal 3.5" and I can always run a 5.25"->3.5" for some extra drives if i need to down the road. I want to keep the box smallish so that's why I want to keep it to a microatx. I may piece together a full out atx but not quite sure, I guess ATX cases are only a little bit bigger.
 
Question, do I really need ECC memory? Seems like there are a lot of mixed opinions, especially with ECC on consumer grades mobos/cpus.
 
push said:
Question, do I really need ECC memory? Seems like there are a lot of mixed opinions, especially with ECC on consumer grades mobos/cpus.
Click to expand...

If your mobo can support it then you should put ECC
You should also try to make sure your mobo can support it
 
wkearney99 said:
You DO NOT WANT a motherboard NIC based on a Realtek. Not if your ever intend to run any virtual machines through it. I had nothing but trouble trying to use Hyper-V through several different Realtek chipsets (different motherboards and plug-in cards). All of which instantly went away (with no config changes) upon using Intel-based NICs.

As such I strongly recommend people AVOID boards with Realtek network chipsets. RUN AWAY.

.
Click to expand...


Dramatic much, almost every consumer board out there uses realtek nics and they work fine for %99 of the people out there, if not realtek then marvell, either way i have been running VM's for a few years now with no issues with realtek NIC's, but i also use VMware and not Hyper-V,

If your are running virtual machines, ya, use a good quality Intel NIC if you need this for more important things then just a home computer system.
 
MrGuvernment said:
If your are running virtual machines, ya, use a good quality Intel NIC if you need this for more important things then just a home computer system.
Click to expand...

And if you want to use Hyper-V then plan ahead and avoid the Realtek NICs entirely. Else you'll end up wasting a lot of time trying to figure out why their crappy driver doesn't work properly.
 
look at:
Supermicro X8SIL-F

i would say, one of the best micro atx server boards

gea
 
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