I only semi know what I’m doing as this is the first real build I’ve done. The case is a bit overkill, but I’m not bothered by it too much via space. If anything I forgive it will be easier to do everything. I’ll have around 4-6 drives for now. I already have thermal paste and fans built into the case. The price for everything was tax included. I’m eyeing a EVGA 400w PS for $40 to finish the build. Is it a bit too much? Am I missing anything? Please bless this build. Thanks~
What are you planning to do with this? What Operating sytem are you going to run? Are you going to plan for SAS drives in the future? If so you’ll probably need to start reading up on Raid cards
The case isn’t overkill at all tbh, solid, great looking case. Just be aware it would strongly be advised you only use sata drives and not SAS with it. As the SAS drives do not fit in the case with most? PSU.
Unraid: but I haven’t bought my license yet, but plan to. I heard I would be able to string together different HDD sizes with Unraid, which I think it’s really great considering my hobbyist needs and the random drives I got, largest being two 14TBs EasyStores. Everything storage wise I bought was from this recent BF, so all the drives are going to be shucked EasyStores besides a 500gb NVME M.2 for the OS/anything needing to be quick. One thing I forgot that I think I need is an NVME Adapter for my server mother build. I didn’t even consider it and it spaced my mind.
OS: Whatever is in the guide. I’m a newb so I’m not completely deviating from it. My Plex Transcoder is Ubuntu Linux and it’s built and just waiting for the NAS to be built.
Power Suppy: I found an old… 600w something PS from a thrift store for like $10 and it claims to be working, but I haven’t tested it yet. There’s a video of LinusTechTips doing a review of it from like 2009.
I have a similar build as far as the board and CPU goes, although I used the E3 1270 V2; Case-wise, I am running everything inside a SilverStone CS381B. Using 16 GB RAM. I have 4 of 8 hot swap drives populated and using 1 as a parity drive and hooked my drives up with an LSI SAS 9300-8i (overkill but I wanted it)
Currently running Plex and macinabox Catalina VM and CPU is around 30%. Hopefully this gives you perspective on your capabilities…The 2 cores that I have allocated to it are mostly hitting 90-100% for seconds at a time. I have no RAM issues. So my recommendations are if you plan on doing more than that consecutively, upgrade the CPU
I plan on keeping my NAS separate from Plex. I just want to store everything there and just do storage-y things. I don’t want it to transcode or do anything. That’s a good comparison though.
Just an update. So I got everything running and I’m finally currently transferring all my files to my UNRAID build. One of the things that became obvious to me from people who also use Fractal Node 804 with shucked drives is that the frames don’t support the middle screw that large shuck drives are missing, so I emailed someone to 3d print me some because Fractal stopped giving them out or isn’t make them anymore, which could be related to the pandemic.
First time using UNRAID, everything seems great, so that’s good to hear. I ended up buying an NVMe as a cache drive and it required an adapter, so I needed to add that that to the cost of the build as well as an extender atx power cable because I didn’t like how my current powersupply atxcable barely reached the board.
I will update with pictures I think soon. There’s more things along the way I’ve decided to buy and add to the build. I bought some cheap 10gb network cards and I’m wondering if it’s going to work out transferring to my nvme cache even though it’s an old mother board.