if I built my own NAS

[NeoGen]

I've been thinking for a while that one of these days I'm gonna build my own home NAS to store my music, movies, and whatever else I got laying around in multiple hard drives. But as of course this home NAS has to be able to double as a cruncher too, so I want it to be able to take some GPUs.

And so, I started imagining what motherboard would I choose for myself... and after some thinking I defined that...
- Has to be AM3 based (of course! )
- Has to be based on the AMD 890FX chipset
- Must take at least 7 internal SATA disks (ideally 8), and 6 of those have to be SATA III
- Must have at least 1 eSATA port (Type III would be great, but II is also acceptable)
- Must support USB 3.0
- Must support hardware RAID 5
- Must have at least 3 PCI Express x16 ports

After quite a bit of searching here's what I came up with...

My personal best one:
GigaByte GA-890FXA-UD5
PROS: High specs motherboard that meets and exceeds all requirements. It includes 4 PCI Express x16 slots, 2 Gigabit LAN ports, and 2 eSATA ports. All SATA and eSATA ports are connected to RAID chipsets, so all drives installed can be set in RAID modes.
CONS: Nothing to point out...

Runner ups:
MSI 890FXA-GD70
PROS: Impressive specs... all that I wanted and even with 5x PCI Express slots. Also comes with 2 Gigabit LAN ports.
CONS: The lack of hardware RAID control over the SATA II and eSATA drives.

Asus Crosshair IV Formula
PROS: Impressive specs, all that is requested for NAS plus 3 PCI Express x16 ports for good GPU crunching!
CONS: The lack of hardware RAID control over the SATA II and eSATA drives.

Asrock 890FX Deluxe 3
PROS: Amazing board that meets and exceeds my requirements! Comes with 8 SATA III ports (but only 6 can be used in hardware RAID). The 3 PCI Express x16 slots would provide excellent capability for crunching along as well.
CONS: Unfortunately, two of the SATA III ports, and the 1 eSATA port cannot be combined in hardware RAID modes.

GigaByte GA-890FXA-UD7
PROS: High specs motherboard like the one before, and it includes 6 PCI Express x16 slots!
CONS: Because of so much stuff crammed in only one board, there is a warning that some things may be disabled when some others are enabled.



Now if I had no budget constraints at all, I could get one of those MSI 890FXA-GD70... and then I would get one big tower case for it, load it with a Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition, two SATA II SSD 128Gb hard drives that would be set in RAID 1 (Mirror) mode for the system drive (C: ), 6 SATA III 2Tb hard drives that would be set in a RAID 5 (Striped) mode, and 3 ATI Radeon HD 5970's (would likely not be able to fit 4 in the motherboard)

Price of this dream (according to newegg price tables)... approximately 6,500 US dollars!

It is good to be able to dream...

[Jason1478963]

That is a nice dream. I have the dream board and CPU, but only one 4850 in it and one hard drive. It is a shame I'm running windows on it. I believe if you went liquid cooled you could fit the 4 or 5 cards in the board and you may also need the liquid cooled 1600watt power supply for this system. This would most likely add a grand or two. As long as we are dreaming lets throw in a 1500 dollar storage tank with a heat exchanger or two to dump all this heat into for domestic hot water use. I believe a setup like this would be enough heat you would only need a small on demand electric to bump up the temp here and there.