Older SFF PC Recommendations for Unraid build ?

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Tcalp

Member
Oct 15, 2020
52
19
8
Hey Guys,

I used to be really involved in hardware and be extremely aware of what was out there on the market, but these days my focus is more on programming and web apps. Anyhow, I've recently upgraded my home network to 10GBe and would like to push together an Unraid box for my local storage / client data back-ups. I've been following the TinyMiniMicro posts on STH, but sadly, pretty much all of these units are so small that they lack any expansion.

I'm looking to take an 'olderish' SFF PC with a reasonably low power footprint (CPU) and put it into an older 2U server chassis, but I would need something large enough that I can add a PCI-E raid card and a PCI-E 10GBe adapter. I beleive there was a period in SFF PC's (from HP/Dell/Lenovo) that were starting to use the MiniITX form factor, and still held a few expansion slots, but hadn't gotten to the Nano standad that we are seeing today; I guess that's what I'm looking for recommendations on -- As small as possible, with reasonable'ish CPU (stuff that is generally available in offlease business hardware on the cheap).

Suggestions ?
 

Spartacus

Well-Known Member
May 27, 2019
788
328
63
Austin, TX
How many drives are you looking to get in this SFF? any ssd too or just hdd? and on what budget?
Any reason you want to use a SFF board and CPU instead of just putting together something low power yourself?
What amount of power draw are you targeting and what amount of resources (cores/threads, ram amount?)
 

Tcalp

Member
Oct 15, 2020
52
19
8
I'd guess no more than 14 drives in the array. The storage would mainly be archival. My main goal is to keep heat/noise to a reasonable level, and the overall footprint; I'll likely take a 12-bay drive cage out of a 2U server or a Drobo (etc) and retrofit it into a smaller chassis. The main reason I'm looking at these types of boxes is that they are often using a mobile variant CPU and have a very low idle power draw.