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NAS / fileserver / webserver

T

tomvertommen

Junior Member
Hello,

I am thinking about putting together a new system:

  • Approximate Purchase Date: in the upcoming days
  • Budget Range: 300 - 400 EURO
  • System Usage from Most to Least Important: fileserver, webserver
  • Parts Not Required: keyboard, mouse, monitor, speakers, OS
  • Preferred Website(s) for Parts: cheap, trustworthy ones that deliver to my doorstep in belgium
  • Country of Origin: Belgium
  • Parts Preferences: Intel Atom D525 CPU
  • Overclocking: No
  • SLI or Crossfire: No
  • Monitor Resolution: 1280x1024
  • Additional Comments: storage, noise and power usage are important
This system is ment to be a fileserver for my home network, a low traffic webserver and a download manager. 2 TB storage is enough for now, but that should be upgradable.

What I have in mind:

Total: 331.67 EURO

That case comes with a 200W Power Supply.

Would this setup work ? Any thoughts and/or recommendations are more than welcome.
 
two things:

1. amd's zacate has been released. if you can obtain it, i would go this route.
2. i think you can get away with only 2gb (or even 1gb) of memory if all it is doing is serving up files. if you are planning to run windows, i would go with at least 2gb.
 
One more thing, tomvertommen, and welcome to the forums...

It's going to add about 100 Euro to your build, but you'll still be under 400.
Supermicro sells mITX Atom D525 boards, which have 6x SATA-II ports (the Intel board you referenced onlo has 2), Dual Intel NICS, remote management, and a PCIe slot. I've built a great many file servers with these boards, and have never been disappointed.

Spikesoldier is correct, you only need 2GB RAM.

Daimon
 
dac7nco, I looked into Supermicro. They seem to have a good product. Many sata ports and very cool remote management. Although I like the remote management, I don't really need it. And they are expensive, so I kept on looking.

Spikesoldier, after googling Zacate and reading a few reviews and benchmarks I am really starting to like this option. It gives me four or more sata ports and the reviews are good. So far I found MSI, ASUS and GYGABYTE as manufacturors...are there more options ? So far I would go with ASUS, because it's the only fanless solution.

Thanx for all the info...I guess I'll also start with 2 gig ram, I can also add more if necessary.
 
Spikesoldier said:
two things:

1. amd's zacate has been released. if you can obtain it, i would go this route.
2. i think you can get away with only 2gb (or even 1gb) of memory if all it is doing is serving up files. if you are planning to run windows, i would go with at least 2gb.
Click to expand...

:thumbsup:

OP, you also probably should invest in a Compact Flash to SATA adapter to run the OS of your fileserver (hopefully you're using FreeNAS or a similar UNIX-based server). That way your OS is independent of the storage drives and you can swap them out as you like.
 
A DNS-323 will do all that except web hosting. It can be hacked to run a web host too. (It's just a little ARM-based, Linux-running NAS)

http://wiki.dns323.info/

It's only a two-bay, but it's cheap, cheap, cheap, and very small/quiet/cool. I love mine.
 
The compact flash idea sounds appealing. Nevertheless, if I ever include that, it won't be from the start.

I hadn't decided on the OS yet. Maybe one day, I decide to install Linux, but I am going to start with Win7.

That DNS-323 looks sweet, but I want more than 2 drive bays and it has to be possible to run a webserver.

I have an updated parts list. The next problem I would like to see solved, is wich psu I need. I am looking for something quiet and offordable. The following list includes possible upgrades, so I would have a powerfull enough psu from the start. My initial build would only have one 2TB HD and one 2GB ram stick.
The manual of the motherboard says the following: For a fully configured system, we recommend that you use a 350W psu compliant with ATX 12 V specification 2.0 or later.
The board needs a 4-pin and a 24-pin power connector.
I would also need 5 sata power connectors.
When they talk about a fully configured system, they probably included a graphics card. I won't be needing that.
Nevertheless...the motherboard, the cpu, 5 hard disks, 2 ram sticks...correct me if I am wrong, but I guess a picopsu with a bunch of splitters is not an option.

What would be a good psu for the following setup ?


 
Since you're trying to keep this cheap, a good choice would be the Antec Earthwatts 380. I don't know what ASUS was smoking when they recomended a 350W PSU for a system which is DESIGNED to use 1/10th of that... I suggested the Antec because it's great, cheap, and has the SATA power connectors you'll need.

EDIT: My HTPC (#3 in my SIG) used to be OCd @ 3.5, and had a GTX275 instead of the GT-240, all on a fanless 400W PSU.

Daimon
 
Last edited:
dac7nco said:
Since you're trying to keep this cheap, a good choice would be the Antec Earthwatts 380. I don't know what ASUS was smoking when they recomended a 350W PSU for a system which is DESIGNED to use 1/10th of that... I suggested the Antec because it's great, cheap, and has the SATA power connectors you'll need.
Click to expand...

:thumbsup:

OP, you should also seriously reconsider running Linux from the start. You don't need to waste the system resources (not to mention the $$$) on a Windows license. Windows 7's server capabilities are also somewhat crap. You might as well use Linux so you get Apache from the get-go.
 
the asus micro atx zacate board is my pick too. i like the fanless design, and the two pci slots to add in inexpensive sata controllers when my NAS needs to expand.

i owned the d-link dns321 nas, the arm cpu at ~500mhz proved to be the i/o bottleneck. i switched to a p35 rig with 2gb of ddr2 and an e6420 running freenas and that bottleneck is gone.
 
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