DIY MultiMedia NAS Beast

There are hundreds of DIY computers out there.  What sets mine apart is cost and how easy I built it.

Materials-This is what I used but you can substitute most of these thing of others

CASE
Speaker Box	Local thrift Shop	$6
Screws	Local Hardware Store	$3
Peg Board	Local Hardware Store	$7
TOTAL		$16
POWER
550 Watt PSU	NewEgg Sale OCZ	$25
Sata power right angle x40	Ebay	$28
Various Power Cables	Had, cut offs from dead PSU	---
TOTAL		$53
MotherBoard
ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe AM2 NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI MCP	Ebay	$55
CPU -Black Edition Athlon X2 7850	Ebay	$35
2 GB ram (4x512 DDR2)	Had but cost around	$20
MB standoffs (x25)	Ebay	$6
Sata Cables 18” (x8)	Ebay	$4
Sata Cables 36” (x12)	had	$24
Sata II PCI-e 2 port (x2)	ebay	$12
Sata PCI 12 port (3ware 9500s)	Ebay	$29
Fans 120 mm (x8)	Ebay+Had	$26
Fans 80 mm (x1)	Had	$2
Video Card Gforce 240 512 MB	NewEgg Sale	$34
TOTAL		$247
Total cost without Hard drives		$316
Total Sata Ports =24 so cost per sata port is 316/24 =		$13.16
Hard drives -Purchesed Between 2/12/10-5/23/11
750 GB (OS DRIVE)	Ebay	$21
1.5 TB seagate LP (x2)	Ebay	$45 (both)
1.5 TB 7200 rmp Seagate	Ebay	$42
1.5 TB 7200 rmp Seagate	Ebay	$42
1.5 TB 7200 rmp Seagate	Ebay	$48
1.5 TB 7200 rmp Seagate	Ebay	$30
1.5 TB 5400 rmp WD green	Ebay	$41
1.5 TB 5400 rmp WD green	Ebay	$42
Total		$311
Size: (1360x8=10880+700=311/11580		$0.026856

Note the 2 Major things, the cost per sata port and the cost per GB,  I also got a lot (all) of my drives off of EBAY, but I fully tested each drive before placing it in the media center

Assemble the Case

 

Speaker box $6 with dead speakers, 

 

Remove the speakers

 

This too.

 

now remove the front panel, there is also the pegboard already cut up 

 

DO NOT DO THIS like I did, you can screw from the inside so that there are no holes

 

Self One is in. 

 

Cut Fan Holes, Is a mess I know, 

Version 2, changed the shelving and the fan wiring. 

Custom NAS DIY Case

Drives, Shelves, and Motherboard in. cables are a bit a mess, will clean it up later.

Self 1 Holds 9 Drives (.35' spacing)(currently 7x1TB, Raid 6)

Self 2 Holds 8 Drives  (.5' spacing)(currently 750GBx1, 4x2TB Raid 5)

Self 3 Motherboard (PCI 3ware 12 port, 2x2port PCI-E, 8 Onboard Sata, Video Card)

Self 4 Holds 6 drives (.35' spacing)(None installed) PSU

Total drives that this case can hold is 23, and since one of the 

24 sata ports is Esata I have 23 stata ports to work with,

Drives are easily kept cool with the 120mm 12 volt fans spinning at 5 volts due to large spacing on them compared to commercial drive housing which holds the drives at .15-.25' spacings, 

together there is plenty of air flow.

I still plan on adding 6x1.5 TB, and 2x1TB, and 1x2TB drives to the arrays as soon as the RMAs come in. 

Cover, with filter installed.

Filter installed, its not normally visible but the flash brought it out.

And thats that.

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Some info on the software side.  This build was done before I went to ZFS so the specs were a bit light.
Ubuntu 10.04 LST,
Software installed
-Webmin 1.5 (remote admin and terminal)
-Transmission (torrent)
-Jdownloader (file downloader)
-Filezilla (FTP file Downloader)
-ProFTP (FTP server)
-mdadm (Software Raid)
-LVM 2 (logic drive management
-Gnome Disk Ulitiy 3.0.2
-ZFS on Linux (ZFS) (test run install for later upgrade to my current ZFS build)
-HandBreak (Video Encoder)
-XChat (IRC)
-VirtualBox (Virtual Machine)
-Samba (File Share)

Hardware Specs at the time I took the unit down
Motherboard: ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe AM2 NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI MCP
CPU: AMD-Athlon X2 4450e (was downgraded for lower energy use)
RAM: 4GB ECC (2x2GB)
Hard drives: about 15 TB
Raid Cards: Sata II PCI-e 2 port (x2) + Sata PCI 12 port (3ware 9500s)
Fans: 8x120mm + 80mm
GPU: Gforce 240 512 MB (for HDMI)