FreeNas Home tight budget system

[Slahit]

Hi STH community!
I'm struggling deciding what to do about an home server with different purposes.

The real purpose of the system is to serve as a backup server in sync with my other systems (I was thinking of using Nextcloud).

A large hdd would be used as a media/download bucket for torrent and (maybe) streaming content with PLEX (max 1 4k or 2 FHD streams).

It would really be awesome to have also the opportunity to have 1 or 2 VMs for really small Minecraft server and web hosting/development environment/docker.

My budget is very limited, I don't really know if mu budget is enough, and can't go over 300€ (without disks). I live in Italy.
Cheap servers like the HP Microserver Gen 8 and Lenovo TS 140 are soldout.

I tought of using FreeNas with this configuration:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Pentium G4600 3.6GHz Dual-Core Processor (€60.90 @ Amazon Italia)
Motherboard: ASRock - E3V5 WS ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (€120.30 @ Amazon Italia)
Memory: Kingston - ValueRAM 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory (€54.99 @ Amazon Italia)
Power Supply: XFX - XT 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (€42.49 @ Amazon Italia)
Total: €278.68
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-04-21 12:03 CEST+0200

I really appreciate opinions and suggestions also about OS or alternative hardware solutions (including prebuilt boxes or low power J4105 systems).

EDIT:
I verified that a 4k stream with PLEX may require way better processor, but i can sacrifice PLEX.

 

[Rand__]

Do you need to buy new or would used be an option? What footprint? 19", ATX, ITX ...? No case i your list...

 

[Slahit]

Thank for the reply @Rand__
I already have a case and it's fine to buy used but I have to keep power consumption down because the cost of power where I live is not so cheap.
I don't have particular needs about form-factor but the case that I already have supports standard ATX formats.

 

[Rand__]

So ATX size and you need Board, RAM, CPU, Cooler and PSU ? And max €300 inc p&p ?

You won't get too far with 4 GB either btw...

Edit: Whats your power budget?

 

[BlueLineSwinger]

4 GB RAM is really scraping the bottom for FreeNAS. 8 GB (4x2) is really the minimum, more if you intend to run VMs/containers from it.

That CPU would be fine for basic file-sharing duties, but probably won't be enough once you start throwing in VMs/containers (and yes, especially Plex doing any transcoding). You'd want at least a quad core for that.

Bump up to a gold-rated CPU. Seasonic is good. Also, you won't need much wattage at all. If you can get a good unit with a lower capacity (e.g., 350 W) do so, as that'll be closer to the efficiency sweet-spot (usually roughly in the PSU's 40-70% range).

 

[Slahit]

I have both case and disks.

Meanwhile I have found that the board I posted probably supports ECC memory in non-ECC mode (is that possible?) and found a more expensive substitution with 8GB of RAM:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Pentium G4600 3.6GHz Dual-Core Processor (€60.90 @ Amazon Italia)
Motherboard: Asus - P10S-M Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (€167.01)
Memory: Kingston - ValueRAM 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory (€94.00)
Power Supply: be quiet! - Pure Power 10 300W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (€46.93 @ Amazon Italia)
Total: €368.84
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-04-21 20:10 CEST+0200

What do you think, it's more expensive for sure but I can make a sacrifice if it's really worth it.

I would buy used too but I found mostly really old, dual cpu and power hungry systems.

Thanks again for your time @Rand__

 

[Rand__]

Well an old server board would offer lots of cheap RAM but comes at power utilization costs (and cpu if you need high clock speed)
Old Xeons (E3) are expensive unfortunately (cpu and ram) but save power

Cheap and little power and high clock is going to be hard

 

[pricklypunter]

You'll likely find pre-built used solutions a bit cheaper at your budget. The Dell R210ii would be a good starting point. Quad Core E3 1240 with 8GB RAM can often be found around the 220-250€ mark. Fast enough for Plex, meaty enough for a half dozen VM's, if you add some RAM, and not too bad on power. It's also pretty quiet in use, unless you are hammering it

 

[Slahit]

You'll likely find pre-built used solutions a bit cheaper at your budget. The Dell R210ii would be a good starting point. Quad Core E3 1240 with 8GB RAM can often be found around the 220-250€ mark. Fast enough for Plex, meaty enough for a half dozen VM's, if you add some RAM, and not too bad on power. It's also pretty quiet in use, unless you are hammering it

I've found one with 8GB and the E3 1240 for 260€ It seems a pretty good deal but I'm a bit concerned about the only two 3.5 slots. Do yout think there's a way to eventually put more drives?

 

[Rand__]

Its a 1U vendor built server - there is little to no flexibility in those...:/


But if you are willing to consider that old systems (Xeon E3 v1) then there are plenty of those out there with more than 2 slots

 

[pricklypunter]

If you outgrow the disk space, you can always toss in an HBA and add a disk enclosure

Its a 1U vendor built server - there is little to no flexibility in those...:/

I agree, it does have it's limitations, but no less really than a Microserver

 

[BlueLineSwinger]

Install your RAM in pairs, otherwise you'll be holding back your system by utilizing only one of the two memory channels.

 

[Slahit]

Its a 1U vendor built server - there is little to no flexibility in those...:/


But if you are willing to consider that old systems (Xeon E3 v1) then there are plenty of those out there with more than 2 slots

Can you suggest me some models?

Does the v1 sacrifice too much in power consumption and horse power?
I can see benchmarks about performance but rarely I can find something on idle consumption (I'm expecting that system to be most of the time idle or doing low horse-power tasks like small scheduled backups or serving a low traffic web server).

(I greatly appreciate the incredible fast support of this community!)

 

[Rand__]

There is a bunch, partly without drive sleds (mostly HP ones)

Here is a 4u one,
Fujitsu Primergy TX100 S3 Rack 1x XEON E3-1220 4GB RAM 2x250GB 2x500GB SATA RPF | eBay

Quite a few in auctions which might end up cheap
Fujitsu Primergy TX140 S1 Server, 12GB RAM, XEON E3 1220, 3 TB HDD, Win 2008 R2 | eBay
ASUS RS300-E7 Server Intel Xeon E3-1220 - 3,1 GHz Quad-Core | eBay


This one has no bidders yet and a v3 cpu (2 days left)
Lenovo x3250M5 Server(5458E1G) | eBay


Performance comparison:

Intel Xeon E3-1220 @ 3.10GHz 6,067 (80W TDP)
Intel Xeon E3-1220 v3 @ 3.10GHz 7,046 (80W TDP)
Intel Xeon E3-1220 v6 @ 3.00GHz 8,010 (72W TDP)

And o/c newer CPUs idle at lower power usage than older ones - I know v6 can do 30Ws whole box with single ssd.

 

[Slahit]

There is a bunch, partly without drive sleds (mostly HP ones)

Here is a 4u one,
Fujitsu Primergy TX100 S3 Rack 1x XEON E3-1220 4GB RAM 2x250GB 2x500GB SATA RPF | eBay

Quite a few in auctions which might end up cheap
Fujitsu Primergy TX140 S1 Server, 12GB RAM, XEON E3 1220, 3 TB HDD, Win 2008 R2 | eBay
ASUS RS300-E7 Server Intel Xeon E3-1220 - 3,1 GHz Quad-Core | eBay


This one has no bidders yet and a v3 cpu (2 days left)
Lenovo x3250M5 Server(5458E1G) | eBay


Performance comparison:

Intel Xeon E3-1220 @ 3.10GHz 6,067 (80W TDP)
Intel Xeon E3-1220 v3 @ 3.10GHz 7,046 (80W TDP)
Intel Xeon E3-1220 v6 @ 3.00GHz 8,010 (72W TDP)

And o/c newer CPUs idle at lower power usage than older ones - I know v6 can do 30Ws whole box with single ssd.

I'm looking closely at the Asus one!

I'm a Computer's Science student in Italy, my wallet is very limited but I think that experimenting with server grade hardware and having a private backup and developer server can be very very usefull for both my actual needs and getting more experience with this kind of stuff (that I really love to experiment with).

The Asus one, for the right price, may be a good compromise and can be a really good starting point.

 

[Rand__]

Good luck

 

[Slahit]

Sadly I lost the auction.

What do you guys think about:
HP Proliant DL120 G7E - 1 Xeon E3-1220 - RAM 8GB - 2x 3G 7.2K SATA 250 GB | eBay

 

[TomUK]

I recently did a super cheap Freenas build with the following specs, ECC works, and surprisingly 8GB of RAM is ok despite having 16TB of HDDs in the system (8TB usable) with 4 x 4TB 7200rpm Sata drives - I definitely need to add more memory before I would be able to run any VMs though

G4560 Pentium (KabyLake) [2 core 4 thread]
8 Gb Kingston Value ECC (udimm)
ASrock E3V5 WS

Luckily I already had a PSU and the disks, but you could pick those up quite cheap and should be possible in your budget (Just!)

EVGA 450BT is a very solid cheap PSU in Europe at the moment (£35)

 

[Slahit]

I recently did a super cheap Freenas build with the following specs, ECC works, and surprisingly 8GB of RAM is ok despite having 16TB of HDDs in the system (8TB usable) with 4 x 4TB 7200rpm Sata drives - I definitely need to add more memory before I would be able to run any VMs though

G4560 Pentium (KabyLake) [2 core 4 thread]
8 Gb Kingston Value ECC (udimm)
ASrock E3V5 WS

Luckily I already had a PSU and the disks, but you could pick those up quite cheap and should be possible in your budget (Just!)

EVGA 450BT is a very solid cheap PSU in Europe at the moment (£35)

You are right! I double checked and the specs says that ECC mode is disabled only with some CPUs (for sure the ones that doesn't have support for it).
In my country G6600 and G4560 are pretty cheap sometimes (both between 50 and 60€) so your build seems pretty cheap considering this is all new hardware.
The only thing that holds me back is the limited number of cores (I really would like to have a couple VMs) and the pretty high cost of ram (100€ for 8GB on a single stick and 110€ for 2x4GB).
Anyway I'm really considering this build. Thanks a lot @TomUK for giving me peace of mind about this MB and about the 8GB for FreeNas, they were two unsolved concerns for me!

For now I think is still better for me to get business grade hardware (used) to get the opportunity to play with multiple network ports (with dedicated network management if possible) and to have a modest number of cores to play with VMs. Also I don't have a PSU and even the case that I have is for sure not the best for ventilation on a 24/7 machine so buying a bundle with a good case (or possibly rack) is definitely a bonus.

 

[TomUK]

If your looking at used stuff - I've used www.bargainhardware.co.uk, quite cheap for enterprise stuff, for example you can get:

Chenbro RM13704 1U E5-2600 (LGA 2011) Cloud Server (Configure-To-Order)
Processor #1: 2.00 GHz Quad (four)-Core Xeon (E5-2609) 10MB
Processor #2: 2.00 GHz Quad (four)-Core Xeon (E5-2609) 10MB
Memory: 32GB - (8 x 4GB) - DDR3 ECC Reg - 1333Mhz + £76.80
RAID: OnBoard SATA RAID+ £0.00
Hard Drive #1: Hard Drive Caddy Installed + £7.00
Hard Drive #2: Hard Drive Caddy Installed + £7.00
Hard Drive #3: Hard Drive Caddy Installed + £7.00
Hard Drive #4: Hard Drive Caddy Installed + £7.00

for £238