Wes Morgan suggested this:

Athena Power CA-SWH01BH8 Pedestal case $270
Antec CP-850 850W PSU $109
Samsung SATA CD/DVD Burner $20 (+ $8 shipping)
Intel S3200SHV LGA 775 Intel 3200 m/b $200
Intel Core2 Quad Q9400 CPU $190
SATA cables $60
Supermicro LSI MegaRAID 8 Port SAS RAID Controller $118
Kingston ValueRAM 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM ECC $97

Total price […]

I am redoing the previous Supermicro quote to reflect some recent decisions. Specifically, changing to LSI from RocketRaid.

Samsung SATA CD/DVD Burner $20 (+ $8 shipping)
SuperMicro 5046A $750 (+$43 shipping)
LSI SAS 3081E-R $235
SATA cables $60
Crucial 3×2G ECC DDR3-1333 $191 (+ $6 shipping)
Xeon W3520 $310

Total price with shipping $1560
I also found that LSI card on google.
And […]

Let’s price out the Athena now:

Athena Power CA-SWH01BH8 Pedestal case $270
Antec CP-850 850W $20
Samsung SATA CD/DVD Burner $20
Intel S3420GPLC LGA 1156 Intel 3420 ATX Intel Xeon $205
Intel Xeon X3430 Lynnfield 2.4GHz LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Server Processor Model BX80605X3430 $210
Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 ECC Registered Server Memory Model KVR1333D3D4R9SK2/8G […]

Given my previous post regarding the number of ports, I’ve started to consider this LSI SAS 3081E-R from LSI. It has native FreeBSD support via the mpt(4) driver. I can get one for about $240 shipped.
I’d need a couple of cables too.
Based on this, I’m going to price out the system with that […]

For some reason, I want my future file server to have space for 8 hot-swap HDD. Those HDD will house the RAIDZ cluster of my ZFS array (although that particular terminology sounds odd). Why do I want hot-swap? Because I can. It costs about $100 for a drive cage for 4 […]

People have asked me why I’m creating what amounts to a NAS. Why don’t I use Drobo or SmartStor for example?
The above don’t have ZFS, which is the best solution for redundant storage.
I can’t install Bacula on those systems. Sure, Bacula could run on another system and access that storage, but being directly […]

Let’s look at this combination:

Samsung SATA CD/DVD Burner $20 (+ $8 shipping)
HP ProLiant ML150 G6 E5506 $850(+$43 shipping)
RocketRAID 2300 PCIe 4x SATA $120 (+$8 shipping)
Crucial 3×2G ECC DDR3-1333 $191 (+ $6 shipping)

Total price in cart: $1178.97 + $42.90 shipping = $1,221.87
So the premium for the Supermicro is about $220.
Is the hotswap worth the $220?
Oh, and […]

For the file server, perhaps one of these three combinations:

Seagate Barracuda XT ST32000641AS 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 4@$300 - $1200 8TB or $150/TB
SAMSUNG F1 RAID Class HE103UJ 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ 4@$150 - $600 4TB or $150/TB
Western Digital RE3 WD1002FBYS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ […]

Following on from my previous post on my file server, here is what
I’m now looking at. It’s based upon various discussions on mailing lists and IRC channels.

Samsung SATA CD/DVD Burner $20 (+ $8 shipping)
SuperMicro 5046A $750 (+$43 shipping)
RocketRAID 2300 PCIe 4x SATA $120 (+$8 shipping)
Crucial 3×2G ECC DDR3-1333 $191 (+ $6 shipping)
Xeon W3520 $310

Total […]

This is the current thinking for my soon-to-be-built storage server.
I should consult freebsd-hardware first.

Athena Power CA-SWH01BH8 Pedestal case
The above case comes with two of these backplanes
close up photos of that backplane
mother board? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130136 was suggseted.
m/b will either need 8 SATA connections or room for several cheap SATA controllers
power supply, probably dependent upon the M/B […]