Cheap 4 port raid cards?

[BluPaperclip]

I'm building a super budget NAS (~£225 w/o drives) and I'm looking for a cheap 4 port raid card. What are your recommendations?

[Kobrastachka]

would sas/sata 2 work? Or do you need sata 3. 

[79wjd]

What OS are you planning on running and what kind of RAID did you want? There really aren't any cheap RAID cards. Sometihng like FreeNAS would probably be a better choice since you can use software raid (which on FreeNAS is excellent). 

[BluPaperclip]

1 minute ago, Kobrastachka said:

would sas/sata 2 work? Or do you need sata 3. 

Sata 3

1 minute ago, djdwosk97 said:

What OS are you planning on running and what kind of RAID did you want? There really aren't any cheap RAID cards. 

FreeNAS for the OS. For the type of RAID, RAID 1

[79wjd]

1 minute ago, BluPaperclip said:

Sata 3

FreeNAS for the OS. For the type of RAID, RAID 1

Then you don't need a RAID card. In fact it's advised NOT to use a RAID card with FreeNAS as ZFS likes to have direct access to the drives. 

[Kobrastachka]

4 minutes ago, BluPaperclip said:

Sata 3

FreeNAS for the OS. For the type of RAID, RAID 1

 

You are better off getting a PCI-E SATA 3 controller and running a software raid then, it will be cheaper. 

[BluPaperclip]

5 minutes ago, Kobrastachka said:

You are better off getting a PCI-E SATA 3 controller and running a software raid then, it will be cheaper. 

Why a controller card and not just plug the drives into the mobo directly?

[79wjd]

39 minutes ago, BluPaperclip said:

Why a controller card and not just plug the drives into the mobo directly?

There's no reason other than to add more ports. You can plug the drives directly into the mobo. 

[BluPaperclip]

1 hour ago, djdwosk97 said:

There's no reason other than to add more ports. You can plug the drives directly into the mobo. 

I probably won't be using more than 8 drives (The case only supports that anyway), so the mobo I'm looking at should be fine

[79wjd]

2 minutes ago, BluPaperclip said:

I probably won't be using more than 8 drives (The case only supports that anyway), so the mobo I'm looking at should be fine

What motherboard/CPU are you considering btw? 

[BluPaperclip]

Just now, djdwosk97 said:

What motherboard/CPU are you considering btw? 

AMD A4-6300 and  ASRock FM2A88X PRO3+

[79wjd]

3 minutes ago, BluPaperclip said:

AMD A4-6300 and  ASRock FM2A88X PRO3+

And what is it that you're doing with the NAS (just file server, or streaming plex, etc...)? 

 

You may want to go Intel just because Intel controllers/NICs tend to play better with FreeNAS (supposedly, although I never had an issue with the Killer NIC or the Marvel controller that I was using before), and because it will be easier to get help on the FreeNAS forums since AMD builds are far less common (and thus can be harder to troubleshoot). 

[BluPaperclip]

1 minute ago, djdwosk97 said:

And what is it that you're doing with the NAS (just file server, or streaming plex, etc...)? 

 

You may want to go Intel just because Intel controllers/NICs tend to play better with FreeNAS (supposedly, although I never had an issue with the Killer NIC or the Marvel controller that I was using before), and because it will be easier to get help on the FreeNAS forums since AMD builds are far less common (and thus can be harder to troubleshoot). 

 

Just a personal file server. I'll probably go AMD though because of the price

[79wjd]

5 minutes ago, BluPaperclip said:

Just a personal file server. I'll probably go AMD though because of the price

Intel isn't really much more expensive. You can get a Pentium-based build for £170~ and just get a Sata controller to add another 4 Sata ports for $30~. Plus the lower idle power consumption (10-15w~) will account for the difference in electricity savings ($15~/year).

 

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/zHXYP6

[minutellim]

Yeah. I'm going to reiterate what @djdwosk97 said and suggest going with Intel. You could get a G4400 for $30 more, and it's a much better processor.

[porterj5]

Software raid has worked great for me for the last 3 years.  Used on ubuntu and Freenas

[79wjd]

1 hour ago, minutellim said:

Yeah. I'm going to reiterate what @djdwosk97 said and suggest going with Intel. You could get a G4400 for $30 more, and it's a much better processor.

It's worth noting that if you go with Skylake then you can't boot off a USB and would need an SSD/HDD entirely for the OS, whereas Haswell supports USB booting. 

[minutellim]

11 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

It's worth noting that if you go with Skylake then you can't boot off a USB and would need an SSD/HDD entirely for the OS, whereas Haswell supports USB booting. 

I did not know this. I have a Skylake booting unRaid from a USB, and I had no problem installing Windows 10 with a USB on a Skylake system. Is this specifically to FreeBSD?

[79wjd]

1 minute ago, minutellim said:

I did not know this. I have a Skylake booting unRaid from a USB, and I had no problem installing Windows 10 with a USB on a Skylake system. Is this specifically to FreeBSD?

It's an issue specifically with FreeNAS. FreeNAS 9.x.x (and possibly whatever version of freeBSD it's based off of) doesn't support XHCI (and only legacy EHCI) while Intel removed EHCI support from Skylake. FreeNAS 10.x.x will have XHCI support (and thus will support USB booting).

[Electronics Wizardy]

19 hours ago, BluPaperclip said:

AMD A4-6300 and  ASRock FM2A88X PRO3+

there are cheap intel solutions as well.

 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157497 this is cheaper with about the same speed of cpu and pulls much less power.

 

you can also get a skylake celeron and a h110 mobo.

[Lehti]

8 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

there are cheap intel solutions as well.

 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157497 this is cheaper with about the same speed of cpu and pulls much less power.

 

you can also get a skylake celeron and a h110 mobo.

Agreed. File servers don't need that much power for home usage anyway.