Brandon High <bhigh <at> freaks.com> writes:
> 
> I'm going to be putting together a home NAS
> based on OpenSolaris using the following:
> 1     SUPERMICRO CSE-743T-645B Black Chassis  
> 1     ASUS M2N-LR AM2 NVIDIA nForce Professional 3600 ATX Server Motherboard  
> 1     SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8 64-bit PCI-X133MHz SATA Controller Card         
> 1     AMD Athlon X2 4850e 2.5GHz Socket AM2 45W Dual-Core Processor Model
> ADH4850DOBOX
> 1     Crucial 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) ECC
> Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit Server Memory Model CT2KIT25672AA667
> 8     Western Digital Caviar GP WD10EACS 1TB 5400 to 7200 RPM SATA
> 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
> 
> Subtotal:     $2,386.88

You could get a $200 cheaper, more power-efficient, and more performant config 
by buying a high SATA port-count desktop-class mobo instead of a server one + 
AOC-SAT2-MV8. 

For example the Abit AB9 Pro (about $80-90) comes with 10 SATA ports (9 
internal + 1 internal): 6 from the ICH8R chipset (driver: ahci), 2 from a 
JMB363 chip (driver: ahci in snv_82 and above, see bug 6645543), and 2 from a 
SiI3132 chip (driver: si3124).

All these drivers should be rock-solid. Performance-wise you should be able to 
max out your 8 disks' max read/write throughput at the same time (but see 
http://opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=54481 there is usually a 
bottleneck of 150 MB/s per PCI-E lane, this apply to the JMB363 and SiI3132).

Downside: loss of upgradability by having onboard SATA controllers. No onboard 
video. And it's an Intel mobo. Intel's prices for low-power processors (below 
~50W) are higher than AMD's, especially for dual-core ones. But something only 
slightly more power-hungry than your 45W AMD is the Pentium E2220 (2.4GHz 
dual-core 65W). Most likely your NAS will spend 90+% of its time idle so there 
wouldn't be a constant 20W power diff between the 2 configs.

What I hate about mobos with no onboard video is that these days it is 
impossible to find cheap fanless video cards. So usually I just go headless.

-marc

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