Supermicro X9SCM or Pre-built Dell T Series?

Builds [LGA1155] NAS Killer 4.0
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Hey All!

First off - thanks for creating this awesome community! I’m slowly spiraling out of control researching this stuff and this place really has quite a wealth of resources/knowledge floating around!

I am seriously considering a NAS build for home use - I have a massive shared storage server at work (video production co), that is backed up onto a QNAP…and I love the speed/flexibility that QNAP provides, but not at the price point (and parts!) they have!

So, my home NAS has 2 real purposes:

  1. store my wife’s photography files (only about 6TB right now) - Not working off of it, but she would use a sync program to upload/download her working files and really just store her old sessions. I’d ideally back this up to Backblaze/CrashPlan/etc
  2. replace an outdated Plex Linux box…we rarely need more than 2 transcodes going at a time…and honestly no more than 2TB of movies.

I think I’m leaning towards unraid for ease of use and flexibility of adding drives - and that led me to here with some great hardware recs!

I’m totally comfortable building PCs and making sure parts work - but also have stumbled across some Dell T7600 deals…that if I’m patient enough, I could snag for $300-$400…just didn’t know if they are overkill for my use case?

The cheaper ones tend to have somewhere in this range of specs:
2x E5-2630 (6 core @ 2.30GHz)
32gb DDR3/PC310600 (ECC I think?)
And 4 hot-swap drives and space for a few others I think easily

  • Memory
    • Size: 32gb
    • Type: DDR3
    • Speed: PC3-10600

I’m thinking my only fear is the Dell systems might be locked down on what type of raid/SAS/PCI cards are possible…but I think the mobo already has enough ports to use. I really don’t see having more than 6 drives, but you never know!

Should I’d do virtualization for the plex? It may not be necessary considering the low load from everything, but let me know if you think that’d be possible with an E3/1155 setup. I’m sure it would be fine with the Dell.

Let me know what you all think - and thanks for any insight you can offer!

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Welcome, I don’t want you to overthink and over-research your decision. Given what you’ve provided, you’re a perfect candidate for a NAS Killer 4.0/4.1 build. Any NAS here is going to meet the storage needs for your wife’s photography.

Since you mentioned not needing to supply many transcodes, you don’t need a Quick Sync box supporting 21 transcodes. A single all-in-one box would support your needs. Please take a look over there and feel free to ask any questions.

You’ don’t need to a socket 2011 v1/v2 build. It’s a lot of power, even at the entry level.

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Thanks for the feedback! Oh - I’m definitely an over research-er for sure! I’ve found quite a good deal locally on an older chassis with X9SCL(I think it’s a ±f w/ipmi) / [E3-1230 (v1) that I’m currently contemplating. Already has 16Tb HDD on it, but planning on going unraid with it now after my research!

For ~$50 (for everything!) sound like a worthwhile purchase? I think I’ll have to look into some quieter fans, maybe the quiet power supplies…but it sits in a basement away from anything anyway! Thanks again for the input - I appreciate it!