My project was completed a little over a year ago and now that it's been working faithfully I though I'd go ahead and show off my build. Disclaimer: I know others have built similar if not identical systems to mine (MB+CPU) and had great results, however I'm not promoting my system as one that you should build. I am a risk taker and made educated decisions which so far has done me well. This system does meet current (Nov 2014) FreeNAS hardware requirements. First I'd like to say that I had realistic goals for my FreeNAS system such as: Saturating a Gigabit LAN connection, having very fast (for a home system) access speeds to data, reliability of the entire system, and storage capacity beyond my wildest dreams (again for a home system). This system beats the crap out of many $1000+ diskless systems on the market. Equipment: CPU: AMD Model FX-4300 (4.0GHz) Black Edition (FD4300WMHKBOX) MB: ASUS M5A78L-M/USB3 (uATX form factor) RAM: 16GB DDR3 ECC 1333 RAM (Two - Kingston KVR1333D3E9SK2/8) Power Supply: Cooler Master i600 80 Plus Bronze NIC: Intel NIC EXPI9301CTBLK PCI-E USB Boot Flash: SanDisk Cruiser (8GB) or Adata PD7 (4GB) Hard Drives: Six WD Red WD20EFRX NAS Hard Drives (RAIDZ2, 7.3TB usable space) Case: Cooler Master HAF 912 UPS: APC Back-UPS Pro BR1000G Other parts: Tie Wraps, Locking SATA cables, Fans, Fan cable extensions, Keyboard, Monitor, Ethernet Cable. The construction of this project started when FreeNAS was splitting from the original FreeNAS source (now NAS4Free) so I was in at the ground level when FreeNAS 8.0.1 came out and was involved in a lot of testing, compliling, offering up fixes (for what I could), and we eventually ended up with FreeNAS 8.0.4 that was very stable. I had an AMD system back then, but no ECC RAM, different MB, and 4GB of RAM, but that was enough for that version. Next we get into 9.0 and I create my new AMD system and it was a slow process as I purchased hard drives as I could afford/justify them and upgraded my MB and eventually added ECC RAM. The last component I added was an Intel NIC becasue as FreeNAS changed (9.2.x), so did the reliability of the software with respect to RealTek NICs reliability. I did disable the onboard NIC in the BIOS before booting up FreeNAS. You could keep it operational if you wanted it. I have a lot of photos of my build but first, what can't it do that I wish it could do: 1) It doesn't have IPMI which if I had to do this over again, I would invest into it. Why? Becasue my NAS is typically in my basement and there is no keyboard or monitor connected to it. IPMI would give me option to manage my computer remotely, especially for tinkering. 2) It only has six SATA ports. With the next version of FreeNAS 9.3, there is rumor that the boot flash may not be fast enough if it's USB based so having one more SATA port for a small SSD would be handy, but that is only becasue I'm using all six SATA ports right now for my vdev (pool). If I were using 5 ports then that would not be an issue, assuming I will upgrade to 9.3 (who am I kidding, of course I'll upgrade) 3) The case weights a ton! This means there is a Pro here, it's very sturdy and will not bend easy. But it's a pain to lug around. A case made from titanium would be nice but very costly. It's nice to dream. Now lets discuss the hardware a bit more: The CPU is an AMD FX-4300 which meets the specs of FreeBSD 8 through 10.0 and likely even 11. This is because it supports EMT64 instructions. The CPU also supports ECC RAM, AES encryption, and RVI. Lastly, it's cost effective. The Motherboard is an ASUS M5A78L-M/USB3 which supports the AM3+ CPUs and ECC RAM and has built in video. It sports six SATA connections and has all the bells and whistles that a general motherboard would have. It lacks one feature which is found in true server motherboards, IPMI. A note about the South Bridge is it gets very hot. This is not uncomon on any MB. You definately want good air flow to cool this little sizzler down. The RAM was not on the compatible list for the size but there were similar RAM modules (same manufacturer) so I took a gamble which paid off. The Power Supply is a bit overkill in the 600 watt capacity but it does fall in line well since it's an 80 Plus Bronze model. And the price was right. A 400W model would have been a better choice for the overall system built. The Intel NIC was required, as I mentioned above, due to poor support for RealTek which caused stability problems during large data transfers. The Hard drives are of course the 2TB WD Reds and each one has had the head parking timers disabled. My drives run 24/7 and have been doing very well. The case is a Cooler Master High Air Flow design and is very well constructed out of thick steel and some plastic pieces. Lots of places to put fans and the case was designed around added water cooling if you wanted to. This case design allows me to keep all the hard drives cool (Running 27C to 30C). And of course you want to keep your MB, CPU, and RAM cool. The USB Flash drives, well you can get any one you want but you should stick with a reasonable quality one, and have more than just one on hand, it helps for any troubleshooting you need to do. The UPS is from APC and has a USB data cable. I plug that data cable into one of the USB 2 ports. The Build: Ventillation: Taking a look at the photos you can see that I have two 120mm fans pulling air into the front of the case and then blowing across the six ghard drives. I have a side intake air 140mm fan (running at 7VDC) to blow cool ai across the MB components. I have one 120mm exhaust fan in the top rear of the cabinet, and the power supply exhausts air as well. Excess air is blown out the top of the enclosure. Wiring the power for the fans was completed using both a fan splitter cable for the front fans, and for the side fan I used a 4 pin molex to 3 pin fan connection but I moved the ground wire on the molex connector to the +5VDC location which makes a 7VDC differential and the fan is running at half speed. The Asus MB fits in with a lot of room to spare. The PS is mounted on the bottom of the case and as previously indicated it takes a suction from within the case. You can mount the PS to take a suction from the bottom of the case where there is a removable filter screen but I wanted a second exhaust fan to promote good directional air flow. This perticular PS doesn't have modular cables, meaning I can't disconnect what I doen't want to use. I ended up storing the unused cables in the 2.5" drive bay enclosure at the bottom of the case. All the other power lines were routed and secured in place. The SATA cables were all replaced with locking SATA cables and routed appropriately. Wherever I could, I placed plastic shiething around multiple conductor cables to clean up the look and mess of the cables. I didn't like having the USB Flash drive on the outside of the case to be accidentally damaged so I used an old USB port cable and tie wrapped it inside the case. Once I got FreeNAS running, well I haven't had a need to remove the flash. I can easily remove the side panel (thumb screws) when I do need to swap out the USB flash drive. The Intel NIC card is plugged into the PCIe X16 port whcih is fine. The PCIe X1 port at the top would have worked however the in an effort to keep things cool (not restricting air flow to the larger Asus heatsink) I just moved it to the X16 port. As for MB BIOS settings, everything is stock except I enabled ECC and set it to the "Good" scrub speed. I disabled my RealTek NIC. Lastly I configured the boot sequence to boot from the USB as a Hard Drive. Now for the photos... (Sorry, not every cable it tied back)