Did a complete overhaul to my home server because SAS is the best thing ever and eSATA is a stupid thing that no one should ever use.
Also actually wanted to use proper server hardware for this build.
These are the parts I bought this year for the rebuild...
Prices (including tax):
Intel Xeon E3-1260L: $31.06 from eBay
Supermicro X9CSM-F: $47.65 from eBay
LSI 9211-8i with cables: $65.38 from eBay
Fractal Define R5: $135.37 from Newegg (on eBay)
EVGA 500B: $8 from a local yard sale
Total cost of "new" parts: $287.46
I'm transferring my old hard drives to this server, and I already have 4x2GB PC3-10600E modules. I'm also using the same boot drive from my old server. I stole the CPU cooler from a Dell prebuilt that I have.
First thing I did was make sure everything worked together.
Everything worked perfectly, so once the case arrived, I started building.
I know it's weird to have an mATX board in a large ATX case, but the R5 met all of the criteria I set for a case. Plus, I've been wanting to work with this case for a while now.
I kinda wish the R5 had a basement for the PSU. Ran the cable for the rear fan.
Installed the drive cages, connected all of the fans, front panel, and power connectors. For airflow, I have two 140mm fans in the front and one in the rear.
Threw in my eight 3TB WD Red drives, which are still going strong after eight years of service (though I've only had them for about a year).
Did all of the cable management. I have to say, I'm kinda proud of how this turned out.
Of course, having it look nice from the front comes at the cost of the look at the back.
And, it works perfectly. I'm running OpenMediaVault, and the drives are in ZFS RAID-Z1.
In the future, I'd like to upgrade all of the fans (likely either to Noctua Redux or Arctic P-series ones), add a faster NIC (maybe even experiment with 10Gb and SFP+), upgrade the RAM to 32GB, and maybe add a USB 3.0 card.