Tonight I purchased the following items:

ENERMAX ECO80+ EES620AWT 620W for $120
Samsung SATA CD/DVD Burner $20 (+ $8 shipping)
ASUS M4A79T Deluxe m/b for $180
AMD Phenom II X4 945 CPU $150
2x SYBA SY-PEX40008 PCI Express SATA II 4 port at $60 each for $120
Kingston ValueRAM 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM ECC $97
Intel EXPI9301CTBLK 10/ […]

Based on several recent posts, I found a new case, which I like quite a bit. My thanks to Dan Naumov for the concept.

LIAN LI PC-A71F Black Aluminum ATX Full Tower Computer Case $240 (from mwave)
Antec EarthWatts EA650 650W PSU $80
Samsung SATA CD/DVD Burner $20 (+ $8 shipping)
Intel S3200SHV LGA 775 Intel 3200 m/b […]

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″ […]