Which motherboard would be best as i'm not seeing too many options out there. I only have 4 drives, and might upgrade to 8 max
It has been my experience that a single socket board is better than a multi socket (dual or quad) when dealing with FreeNAS. This is likely due to NUMA because of the way ZFS uses memory (RAM) in the form of ARC (adaptive replacement cache).
I am able to get my hands on multiple E5-2609 v2 and 32 8GB ECC 1600 DDR3 chips
That model processor is able to run in a dual socket board, and if you insist on using a dual socket board there are a couple I could suggest, but I think it depends more on what your plans are for the storage. If you are only having a maximum of eight drives, even using 12TB drives, you are not going to have enough storage to need more than 64GB of RAM, which is eight of those 8 GB modules.
I put this list of part together yesterday for someone else, but it might fill the bill for what you are asking, if you don't need an item, just skip over that:
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I actually have a preference for the hot-swap drive bays of a server chassis myself because I like to be able to change the drives without the need of opening the chassis. The problem with that in most home environments is that it allows dust to enter through the front of the chassis and accumulate inside the server. Most servers are not built with any dust filters because they are intended for server rooms / data centers, where the dust is extremely minimal. I have servers at work that have been running for six or eight years and the inside is just as clean as the day it was installed.
Home use is quite different though. There is usually a lot of dust to contend with. For that reason, it is often best to sacrifice the ease of drive swap for the filtration that less server specific hardware provides. My favorite for this was the Fractal Design Define R5, which I have one of, but they discontinued it. I am not as big a fan of the Define R6, but it is a quiet case with filtration and it has 6 included 3.5 drive trays with the option of ordering more for future expansion. If it were me, I would go ahead and order the additional trays now because they might be difficult to get later.
I looked around and, at the moment of this post, the best price I could find was at NewEgg:
Fractal Design Define R6 Blackout Brushed Aluminum/Steel ATX Silent Modular Mid Tower Computer Case
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811352091
This power supply should do the job for the drives you want to run and give you room to add more drives later without needing to be replaced.
POWER: Corsair-CS650M-ATX-Gold-Rated-Modular-Power-Supply-650watts - - US $44.99
https://www.ebay.com/itm/163426512807
Some of these items are slightly older, discontinued components, but still very powerful and perfectly capable for FreeNAS.
I use similar components in both my 48 bay primary NAS and in my 24 bay backup NAS that runs ESXi with FreeNAS in a VM.
System Board: Supermicro X9SRL-F Motherboard Socket LGA2011 System Board w/ I/O Shield - - US $219.99
https://www.ebay.com/itm/352538266577
Note: I bought two of these for under $150 each earlier this year. The price is inflated now because they are discontinued and supplies are running low. Supply and demand. They are great boards and still in demand. I would suggest making an offer to see if the seller will come down on the price.
Memory: SAMSUNG 16GB Samsung PC3L-12800R DDR3L 1600 Registered ECC Server Memory - - US $51.99
https://www.ebay.com/itm/183022002934
That is a good price on the memory and you might want to go ahead and get two, but the system board can take eight of these.
If you really want a lot of RAM, you can go with 32GB memory modules, but they are a good bit more money. Let me know.
For the CPU cooler, I use this model on two of my systems.
It is only slightly louder than the Noctua cooler I have on my wife's desktop PC, but only slightly.
CPU Fan: Dynatron R27 Side Fan CPU Cooler 3U for Intel Socket LGA2011 (Narrow ILM) - - US $42.99
https://www.ebay.com/itm/401284811045
You have a lot of options for CPUs to go in this system board, but I bought one of these back in Feb 2018 myself:
PassMark score of 10385... If you are wondering... This is the model I use for the NAS I run Plex on.
CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2630 v2 SR1AM 2.6GHz 15MB 7.2GT/s Hex Core Server CPU Processor - - US $54.99
https://www.ebay.com/itm/183546336257
If you want something a bit more powerful, you can easily upgrade to an eight or ten core processor and higher clock speeds, but the price goes up.
For example, with a PassMark score of 15847:
CPU: INTEL XEON E5-2680V2 10 CORE 2.80 GHz 25M 8 GT/s 115W PROCESSOR (SR1A6) - - Price: US $188.00
https://www.ebay.com/itm/262936243927
For the drive controller, I would suggest a SAS controller, just to get all the drives on a single controller. It works better that way. One SAS controller like this can run up to 256 drives by use of expander controllers. We can talk more about that when you need more drives but this will get you to eight drives to start.
Drive Controller: SAS PCI-E 3.0 HBA LSI 9207-8i P20 IT Mode for ZFS FreeNAS - - US $44.88
https://www.ebay.com/itm/192639052923
Data Drive Cables: Mini SAS to 4-SATA SFF-8087 Multi-Lane Forward Breakout Internal Cable - - US $12.99
https://www.ebay.com/itm/371681252206
I would suggest one of these SSDs for the boot drive, two if you want redundancy, which would be good.
Plug these into the SATA controller on the system board and the BIOS can be configured to boot from either of them. Meaning that if one fails, the system will automatically boot from the other drive. I tested that on my system by unplugging a drive and rebooting.
These are used drives, but as a boot drive in FreeNAS, it should last as long as the server, if not longer:
Boot drive: Intel 320 Series 80GB Internal 2.5" (SSDSA2CW080G3) SSD (33 available) - - US $15
https://www.ebay.com/itm/163414398768
If you need it, this is a great product.
Thermal Compound: Noctua NT-H1 Thermal Paste Grease Conductive Compound for CPU/GPU - US $6.95
https://www.ebay.com/itm/302624513215
With the cost of the case, this is a bit more than the $450 I stated earlier, but without using a calculator, I think it is still under $650.
Still, you might need some odd bits, but it should be simple to get there from here and this should save you a buck or two vs buying new and still do the job for years to come.
