8 Bay NAS build

[Austempest]

Hi everyone,

 

I've been told by she who must not be named that i am to invest in a NAS to prevent another HDD failing and her loosing all her stuff again.

 

I'm weighing up a prebuilt (Asustor 608t, Synology DS1813) vs a custom made PC, so my budget for this build (excluding HDDs is $1000-$1500 AUD).

 

No peripherials, no monitor, prices in Australian Dollars.

 

I'd like the system to easily run a Plex server with transcoding two 1080p stream simultaneously, but i'd be happy with only being able to trasncode one.

 

I really can't find much info on suggested build apart from basics like ECC memory, lots of RAM for FreeNAS, and choosing server hardware for 24/7 ops.

 

I'm also very aware of power consumption, as this will be running 24/7, i don't want $100's upon $100's of additional electricity charges.

 

I've done some googling and come up with the following list of items to choose, as these are pretty much the only ones i could find for sale in Australia. If people have other suggestions of components, or places to buy them, please feel free to suggest.

 

 (picture attached, i couldn't figure out how to paste a table in here)

 

Any ideas or suggestions?

[soaringchicken]

Looks good to me

[Austempest]

No other opinions?

Is that raid card ok? (why is the other twice the price, what does it do extra?)

I have no idea what PSU to get. I just googled high efficiency at low power and that up as a good one for 200w loads. Any other ideas?

I don't think any of the cases there are any good, there either too small for expansion of HDDs later, or waste tonnes of space leaving room for a graphics card that I'll never put in this build.

That was the cheapest xeon CPU I could find on sale in Australia, any good at all? Overkill for a home NAS?

I wanted a supermicro motherboard, but couldn't find one for sale anywhere. Has anyone used any server motherboards from commercial OEM's before?

Is the cheapest ECC ram ok to buy? Is 16g the right amount?