Hi guys,

I was looking for some advice on upgrading my current rig. My current setup is an AMD-based system with the oldest component between 7-8 years old (ASUS A7A266 motherboard) I decided to compile some costings just to see exactly how much it would cost to drag my current setup a bit more up-to-date!

During my research I came across an Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2 motherboard and realised that I would be able to use most of the components I already own minus a new CPU (a big bonus for me!). I did consider selling the items on eBay, but quickly realised that I wouldn't get back anywhere near what I paid for it at the time.

Although I have built several AMD and Intel-based systems for other people, since originally putting this system together, I have only upgraded my own over the years.

I would greatly appreciate anyone's comments and suggestions on the following spec I was considering (my first Intel-based system for myself)...

• Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2 motherboard (approx. €53)
• Intel Core2 Duo E6700 (2.67GHz) (approx. €115)
• 2 x 1GB Kingston ValueRam PC2100 DDR (Already own)
• WD Raptor 150GB (Already own)
• Creative GeForce 4 Ti (Already own)
• Creative SoundBlaster Audigy II (Already own)
• Adaptec USB2 Card (Already own)
• Some kind of SATA RAID solution if the on-board RAID is not up-to-stratch (Open to suggestions)

I would also appreciate any suggestions on a recommended heat sink and fan to keep the CPU nice and cool as well as any suggestions for a Copper Gigabit networking card (I was considering a Realtek-based solution?).

Thanks in advance!

As for heatsink go with the one I got if you have a large case. I got the Thermalright 120 Ultra or whatever it is called. That sucker is just awesome at cooling but be wary the size is quite huge. Just check out Thermalright's site. Several overclockign forums swear by that thing and I believe them!

As for RAID cards there are lots of options out there...are you looking for SAS RAID or just regular SATA RAID? How much memory would you want on the RAID card? Adaptec and LSI would be the first places I would look though I would lean more towards LSI. They are mighty expensive though be warned! I considered getting a RAID card but then I just ran out of space in my case! So I am just sticking wiht the dual raptors for now. But the onboard RAID while decent does leave a lot to be desired especially if I want to add a few more drives becasue apparently 2 raptors in RAID 0 which I have max out the onboard disk IO bandwidth!!

Intel does that a bit better then nvidia as far as I know.

Don't forget 3ware (AMCC). Awesome products. We've been using them in a couple of our workstations at work for a couple of years now. I also have a couple in my home domain controller/file server. Zxian can also attest to their ease of use, reliability and speed as well.

I have to third 3ware - they're slightly more expensive, but they are also higher quality hardware and the drivers are TOP NOTCH (which I can't say for Adaptec, although LSI drivers are usually quite good).

I would forget the setup you have now and start from scratch to avoid compatibility problems in hardware and software.

This ASRock motherboard was designed for people that had a good AGP card already, but we are talking about 2.5 or even more years here that this motherboard was released.

Good CPU, but The new E8xx0 line will have the same performance for the price as the E6xxx series, while the E6xxx will have fewer features.

You could do that but you will be slowing down your CPU. The best performance you will get when RAM runs 1:1 or faster with the FSB of the CPU, so, a 1333MT/s CPU will prefer 667MHz (DDR) or better.

Old but still useful, however, it’s AGP and a board with a "not to bad" RAID controller will have PCI-E. Even a 7200GS/64bit 256MB PCI-E will outperform teh GF4 card and that for under the 30€. Most of them are passively cooled so you will have less noise too.

The onboard VIA solution works, but with that all is said. To avoid compatibility problems with your older hardware and future hardware it’s advised to stay a way from VIA. Via already announced to pull it self out of the Personal Computer Chipset market and that should ring a bell to most of us.

So, in general what I’m saying is:

When you want performance like it should be and no compatibility problems then setup your computer like this:
- Good motherboard with P35 chipset and ICH9R
- E8xx0 Series CPU
- 1.8v DDR2 667 or 800MHz RAM (2 sticks to work in 128bit RAM mode)
- Simple PCI-E Video card
- New Power supply if the one you have now is older then 2 to 3 years

But you have a PCI-E or at least 64bit/66MHz PCI for sure. The VIA chipset on the 4COREDUAL-SATA2 doesn’t do more then "normal" PCI and a "more or less" PCI-E 4x sloth that will be only compatible with a few VGA cards and not with the AGP card in use and a PCI-E add-on card.

That's true. However, if you spend THAT much on a top notch RAID controller and don't back it up with a motherboard to match, then you only have yourself to blame.

Also, 64-bit/66MHz PCI cards can be put into 32-bit PCI slots as well...you just won't get the full performance out of the card/drives. BUT, 3ware's "PCI" SATA RAID controllers are PCI-X cards, which means 64-bit/133MHz. They aren't your garden variety 64-bit/66MHz PCI card. They also support 64-bit LBA and array sizes larger than 2TB (which requires XP x64, Vista or Server 2003 SP1 or higher to take advantage of using GUID Partition Tables).


If he's just planning on running RAID0 or RAID1 the onboard controllers are usually good enough for desktop use. Now if you're talking RAID10 or RAID5 then I'd start looking at an addin controller.

Thanks to everyone that replied!

All your comments were extremely useful, particularly the brand of RAID card I should consider. I did have a funny feeling that I might be out of luck with my current components.

I haven't fully decided whether I will go with an AMD or Intel-based setup (although I'm certain there's pros and cons to both). No doubt when I'm in a position to purchase all the components, I'm sure the other members here will be able to stear me in the right direction.

Thanks again!

Yeah I forgot to write that indeed.

Yeah forgot to mention 3ware. Excellent products. Expensive too as was already mentioned. And punto is right...Intel board has better RAID I believe.

Yeah, if you're going to use onboard RAID you definitely want to go with an Intel chipset based motherboard right now. AMD/ATI's aren't necessarily up to todays standards and NVIDIA is having problems with their's causing data corruption again (AnandTech has even had problems with the controller bricking several drives).

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3279

Time for me to add that last vote for 3ware. I've got 8 drives connected to my 9650SE-8LPML in two arrays - 2x1GB in RAID1 and 6x500GB in RAID5. Plenty of space, and I couldn't ask for a more reliable setup.

My only gripe so far has been regarding email notification, but I just need to setup a proper SMTP server to handle that.

I just use my ISP's SMTP server. It's worked for me without fault (at least during the tests...the controller has never had to send me anything other than a test email ).

Hi Zxian, did you mean 2x1TB in RAID1? 1GB is a little small nowadays!?

Just out of curiosity which HDDs do you use in your arrays?

EDIT: Nevermind, I found the drives your using in the 'Post Pictures and Specifications' thread. How are those WD10EACS drives working out for you? I've been looking at 1TB drives recently and had narrowed them down to the one you've got and the RAID version i.e. WD1000FYPS.

@nmX.Memnoch Thanks for the link, the article made quite interesting reading.

Haha... whoops. 1GB wouldn't last me very long today.

The WD GP drives have been very good so far. They provide decent performance while staying whisper quiet. Just a word of warning - if your case resonates due to hard drive vibration, don't mix the WD GP drives with 7200RPM drives in the same system. If you listen VERY carefully to my system, you can make out a 30Hz beat frequency (7200RPM = 120Hz, 5400RPM = 90Hz) caused by the frequency mismatch of the two drives. Then again, I've done all that I can to minimize the noise of my computers. If your fans are louder than your hard drives, I doubt that you'd notice this effect at all.

Actually, I was considering either of the two WD GP drives for a DIY or off the shelf NAS. This was the reason for this thread -- I was considering using the components already owned with the other components I listed in order to build a DIY NAS.

However, I know I wouldn't be able to match the form factor or the power savings (and perhaps even the performance) compared to a retail version.

There are nice NAS housings that do there work well, so no need to buy a retail version at all. DIY is the way to go here .

Is there any particular makes/models you had in mind? Also am I right in assuming that there mainly designed for micro-ATX motherboards?

It's quite pricey but there's a product called Drobo that does it's own "RAID" calculations. It's not really a RAID, per se, but they have their own algorithm they use to provide data redundancy. And the drive sizes don't have to match...all you need are standard SATA drives to plug into the thing. I have two of them at work, one with 4x250GB drives and one with 4x1TB WD GP drives. They work very well and do their own thing with regards to getting around the 2TB parition limit. And I have to say that even though it's only a USB 2.0 link, they're still quite speedy.

Now, if you looked at the link before you got this far in the post you're saying "but that's not a NAS!". You're right...by itself it isn't. But they've just introduced the DroboShare that turns it into a NAS. And you can attach up to two Drobo's to a single DroboShare.

Again, it's a pricey solution but to have something that automatically configures data redundancy for you is well worth the slight cost overhead. The other nice thing is that you can upgrade the drives while it's online. Just replace each drive one at a time allowing enough time between each drive for it to rebuild the data parity (this will depend on how much data you have). Watch the video to see it in action.

There is another solution too, this time from Intel; Entry Storage System SS4000-E.

Still these systems will be around 350€ (without the drives), so you could consider a cheaper system based on a normal uATX case from Coolermaster and Celeron 420*/1GB RAM/G31 or G/Q33 chipset with ICR9R. A Samba Server would run great on it, so you can keep the price down.

*The 420 uses EIST and can be undervolted easily by using the appropriate motherboard.

I completely forgot about the Intel SS4000. They're supposed to be really nice as well. The only word of warning is that the SS4000 supports "up to 2TB). The Drobo supports larger capacities.

Thanks for the link, I had heard of the Drobo, but in fairness I assumed it was a standard BYOD NAS.

I take it, it's similar to the 'data redundancy' that WHS provides? i.e. it's not technically RAID, but uses a form of parity in order to protect the data?

I'm glad you mentioned that. Until I read a little bit more about the Drobo, I never realised there was a 2 TB limit over USB (apparently because it's based on the SCSI command set?). I suppose when they designed the USB spec, they obviously didn't think we would reach that kind of limit any time soon. I suppose most home users won't require 1 TB yet anyway, let alone 2 TB.

I am correct in assuming that if you installed 4x 1 TB HDDs into the Drobo then it would appear as two separate drive letters (e.g. Y:\ and Z:\) with a 'capacity' of 2 TBs each?

I did watch the video, the guy didn't seem to leave that much time before removing each of the drives!? I know hot-swap compatibility is part of the SATA spec, but don't you have to let the drive spin down first?

I did do a quick search for prices for the Drobo, and the cheapest price I could find was €355 (excluding drives and the DroboShare -- an extra €180) so it does work out some what pricey (for me anyway) I do however appreciate the suggestion.

I never realised Intel done NASes. Reminds me of the Acer Altos EasyStore (came pre-installed with 4x 500 GB, if I remember correctly) I saw not that long ago at a local Mediamarkt, although they did want around €1000 for it!

I downloaded the release notes for the latest firmware version (v1.4) which apparently adds among other things the following new features...

I take it these kinds of NASes are more geared towards the storage/support of home folders (i.e. an enterprise/company environment), which in all fairness is something I don't really need. I would personally find a NAS more useful to me if it makes available the total amount of storage installed (minus the parity, overhead and the OS etc) leaving the user to split up the available space depending on their requirements (i.e. folders or perhaps partitions).

This is when I stumbled upon some Synology units for sale on eBay. The Synology DS207+ interested me the most, particularly since it was around the €230 mark (excluding the drives) although the seller did offer a deal on specific HDDs if purchased at the same time (I think one was the non-RAID WD GP). What do you guys think? I don't think the lack of 'hot swap' would necessarily be a deal killer.

Yeah, it's along those same lines. As an example, I have a Drobo attached to the workstation I'm on now with 4 x 250GB drives in it. The utility tells you how the drives are being used:

Drives: 250.05GB + 250.05GB + 250.05GB + 250.05GB = 1.00TB (931.54 GB actual*)
Available for data 694.29 GB
Reserved for expansion 0B
Used for protection 235.01GB
Overhead 2.23 GB

I don't have any "Reserved for expansion" because all of my drives are the same size so in a sense it's using a "RAID5" type algorithm right now. If one of them were, say, a 500GB drive then I would have ~250GB reserved for expansion.



Yeah, I wasn't aware of the 2TB over USB limit either until I got the Drobo's we have.



Yes, you are correct. I still haven't figured out exactly how they "share" the space though. We do have another one that has 4 x 1TB drives but we aren't anywhere close to filling it up.



That video is heavily time lapsed. Watch how quickly it moves through 300 while he's doing the demonstration.



I warned you it was expensive.




That's good to know. More and more hardware manufacturers are finally starting to put support for more than 2TB in their devices now.



If you're going to put any money in a good NAS device you might as well get one that supports hot swap. If this is for home then it may not be such a big deal, but in a corporate environment downtime to replace a failed drive is unnecessary downtime IMO.

Is the Drobo slow over a USB2 connection?

I thought the video of 300 was perhaps an Apple Quicktime trailer? I did think there was something a bit odd with the video though, did you also notice that quite a lot of time is spend away from the screen? The other thing I found a little bit suspicious was the two 'folders' that have been purposefully resized with no address bar!

Also the pie chart on the screen, is that part of the Drobo's 'monitoring' software (or just for show?)

There does seem to be a bit of a niche market surrounding this device, somewhat similar to what I call the 'Apple' effect

I totally understand for a corporate environment downtime is a big no, no, but for me because I would use the NAS mostly for private home use I would probably put this lower down my list of priorities (especially if it makes a huge impact on the cost!)

I thought that they used small drives or so, let me see that video again as it´s months now that I didn’t see it (could be half a year or more).

You would think but it's actually rather quick. I was initially worried about the USB2 connection but after having using it for about a month or so that's no longer a concern.



No, it's the full movie. Again, it's just heavily time lapsed. It's even time lapsed on the file copies. And yes, punto is right...he did use small drives so that it filled up quicker.



That's actually the way the Dashboard looks so it's not just for show. Since the Drobo makes the drive appear to be 2TB to the system, the Dashboard is the only accurate way to check your actual usage.



Well, I'm sure quite a bit of engineering went into the product to make everything automatic. It's quite literally one of the best examples of "plug and play".

That's what I meant when I referred to it as the Apple effect, a device which is a little bit out of the ordinary (sometimes, but not always with an inflated price).

Anyway I'm gonna keep an eye out for other options available (perhaps DAS) or stick with a DIY NAS/retail NAS solution, either way it looks like I've got some saving up to do!