[TriLUG] Home server recommendations

[Igor Partola]

TriLUG,

I am looking for a home server (tower form-factor) that I can get used for
roughly $100-150 shipped off eBay. I plan on putting a UNIX-like OS on it
(likely Linux or FreeBSD) and run SMB/NFS/Netatalk over a ZFS mirror. In
addition, it would run a Plex server. The reason I am looking for a box
like this is to provide a backup machine for my current NAS built out of an
old Dell desktop tower. The requirements are:

1. It should be fast enough to run things like Plex. A newer-than-2008 CPU
would be a big plus.

2. It should be able to support enough RAM to run ZFS. The current box
seems to do pretty well with 4GB's.

3. It should support large (up to 4 TB) SATA drives and have at least four
3.5 inch drive bays. I would likely put in two spinning drives and a cheap
SSD boot drive to start.

4. It should be relatively quiet and not incredibly power hungry. I realize
that a box like this is not going to be silent, but I'd like to have
something that's not going to keep people up at night.

The optional features I'd love are:

1. Gigabit Ethernet and at least one free PCI or PCI-E slot for a Wi-Fi
card.

2. Ideally, I'd like to get something that supports ECC RAM to reduce the
chances of data corruption.

What models do you know that would work? For example, I found some cheap
Dell PowerEdge towers, but their spec sheets say they only support drives
up to 500 or 750 GB's which is way too low for my requirements.

Thanks,
Igor