Zando_

I believe the NF-A12x25s remain the best airflow/pressure/noise balanced fans... they're just rather pricy. What temps were your NVMe drives actually hitting? A 20C increase isn't bad unless it puts them out of safe operating range. 

Yeah in an ideal world it would all be passive haha. Just trying to find a balance between airflow and noise. I can see some amazon orders being put in for the weekend

you say that until you have to browse the web now and every single site has some giant banner that takes up half the screen and you have to click like 7 times to select "necessary cookies only", not even getting an option to deny all usually. And if that isnt enough, some sites outright dont let you interact at all until you click the stupid popup.
it's every site, its incredibly frustrating.

Case is one of the cheapest options with 8 3.5" drive bays - in slots too, and right in front of the intake fans, so the drives will stay cool and be more easily swappable. If OP doesn't need that many drives then yes there are cheaper options. As @DrMacintosh said, sorta depends on how much exactly OP is intending to store.
Good point. Can get that same kit in 2x8GB instead of 2x16GB: https://pcpartpicker.com/product/P4FKHx/silicon-power-sp016gxlzu320bdaj5-16-gb-2-x-8-gb-ddr4-3200-cl16-memory-sp016gxlzu320bdaj5. It is only $20 cheaper, so if OP will want 32GB in future, it is cheaper to just get a 32GB kit, as it's less than 100% more cost for 100% more RAM. Also depends on the OS OP intends to use. For a beefier NAS box I'd prefer TrueNAS Scale, and by default that will only use 50% of the RAM for caching, so ~16GB. I believe you can manually override this, but if you then boot up some containers/VMs or something and forget to change the limit, you can run out of RAM and the system will hard crash.

Not only go you need a system, but you're going to need storage. How big is your library currently? How big you foresee it getting? This really determines what kind of system you are looking for. 

Something like this: 
PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/BVCDVW
CPU: Intel Core i3-12100 3.3 GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($121.98 @ Amazon) 
Motherboard: ASRock B660M Pro RS Micro ATX LGA1700 Motherboard  ($94.99 @ Newegg) 
Memory: Silicon Power GAMING 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory  ($53.97 @ Amazon) 
Case: Antec P101 Silent ATX Mid Tower Case  ($109.99 @ Newegg) 
Power Supply: Corsair CX750M (2021) 750 W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply  ($74.98 @ Amazon) 
Total: $455.91
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-03-29 14:42 EDT-0400
 
That board has 4 SATA ports, the case fits 8 3.5" drives and the PSU includes 8 SATA connectors. So grab a used HBA and you can use all 8 drive bays. The board has a PCIe x16 and x4 (physical x16 but x4 bandwidth) slots, so you should be able to fit both an HBA and a 10Gb NIC if you have a 10G LAN. Picked the i3 12100 as the 12th gen chips have good idle power draw, the iGPU can be used for en/decoding (and means you don't need a GPU filling a slot and adding more power draw), and most NAS tasks are single-threaded so there's no need for more cores/threads (if there's something else you want to do that needs them, the i5 12400 is a very good pick). 

Thanks for the help, Unraid didn't care for the weird dock and just read all the devices correctly.
Setting up the array now, have to rethink myself into Unraid since I have never used it but I will manage.
Also I forgot to mention I have two 5400 RPM disks and two 7200 RPM ones, but Unraid is very forgiving in case that helps someone out there.

It's the 2nd M.2-ish connector behind the M.2 slot I believe: 

 
The spec sheet notes it's a "High-Speed Custom Solutions Connector (PCIe x4)". That connector looks like what you'd need for x4 PCIe. EDIT: actually re-looking, I think that is the SATA M.2 slot, the one below it looks like an M.2 slot for a wifi card? Unless that's integrated on the board. The custom PCIe connector may be on the other side of the board.  
 
You would need a separate PSU to run the drives, yeah.
 
I'd grab a USB 2.0 (not 3.0, needs to be a 2.0) thumb drive and give Unraid a shot. If you don't need the speed of ZFS - and I assume you don't, as you wouldn't get it over a USB hub to begin with - then Unraid should do what you need as far as NAS duties. It's set up for consumer drives, can handle mismated arrays, AFAIK it should be fine with USB hubs, and can do stuff like sleep the drives, which will help with power draw. ZFS keeps them spinning always, and will have issues if you stop it from doing that (drives drop from arrays). Honestly the drives spinning (assuming you are using HDDs) was probably most of the power draw you were seeing. Each drive is ~6-10W, so you're looking at up to 40W for 4 3.5" drives spinning constantly. 

ZFS is built for datacenters, it wants/needs full access to and control over the drives. It won't work with RAID controllers unless they're flashed to function as a basic HBA, no shock that it'd dislike a USB hub. Does the NUC have an M.2 NVMe slot? You can get an M.2 HBA with IIRC 4 or 6 SATA ports. 

Yep. CPUs are the same basic tech across the board. Enterprise motherboards can use higher quality capacitors and be built a tad better overall as they're intended for 24/7 operation with minimal downtime. If you're worried about that very small percentage chance of failure then you can just get a server board for a mainstream chip, ASRock and Supermicro make some. 
^^^ 1st gen Threadripper has poor single core performance (very important to many game servers as they are often single-threaded), and the power draw will be quite high vs a mainstream chip. It does add up when ran 24/7. Also, if you're running Windows as the host OS, 1st/2nd and 3rd gen TR still have TPM stutter with Windows (the whole system hitches for a couple milliseconds). AMD fixed this for AM4 but never bothered to for the X399 and TRX40 platforms. I believe if you run Windows 10 with TPM off it should dodge that, but W10 will be EOL sooner rather than later, so given there's 0 advantage to TR I don't see the point of trying to make it work for this to begin with. 
 
The best machine for this sorta thing is usually a 12th gen Intel based setup, as you can get DDR4 boards for them (cheaper RAM, though DDR5 is very cheap now so this matters less), they have very low idle power draw, and great single core performance. Anything Ryzen that's Zen 2 or newer is excellent as well. What exact chip you want depends on what board you wanna go with, and how many cores/threads you think you need. You can get up to 16c/32t on AM4/AM5.

I think we are trying to talk about FoH and why spreading the word and getting people to do it may run into challenges.  It's not as simple as just spreading the word.
 
I get it, being young and finding a cause to back is a big deal.  It feels like it's such a no-brainer, right?  Wouldn't everyone donate PC time to help cure diseases!!!!  Duh!!!
 
But it's more nuanced than that, and people who are older and more experienced are trying to explain that to you.  But then again, with your age and passion comes other factors that make it difficult to get thru  🙂
 
Hope you realize people aren't trying to undercut your idea, but they ARE fleshing out the other sides of the coin in making it happen.

I don’t wanna waste time discussing folding in general. If you don’t have any other suggestions on how to spread the word of folding, then we’re done here.

Not really. As I said, it can work as a neat space heater. Not gonna beat a proper HVAC system for anything but a single room though. My power bill doubled when I ran a few GPUs 24/7 for a folding event. In winter, so assisting the HVAC not fighting it.
Not everyone can do so, nor do they want to.
🤓 <- that's the only appropriate reaction I have for this statement lmao.
You assume everyone's parents can just magically afford a higher bill. Mom and Dad don't poof money out of a hat infinitely for their kids projects. I've had the privilege of financially stable parents who can both shrug off an increased power bill and have helped me financially in a bunch of other ways, most people do not get that. It is very important to understand that that is a less and less common privilege these days, so you don't come across as an entitled twat.
 
I don't get the fixation on F@H. As I said earlier it seems to be going fine, and they regularly have more hardware than they can actually use enrolled. I'm not sure what point there would be in the masses running F@H on very slow and inefficient devices (really anything but a decent to great GPU is practically useless for F@H, I only run CPU folding when I want the heat output). If you want to effect the world in a positive way, look into how batteries are produced from raw materials to final product (both environmental and human cost), then come back and advocate for burning through the limited useful life of mobile and laptop batteries to accomplish barely anything as F@H doesn't scale well on those devices. If they could even be served work units.
 
On the speed of F@H, back during the covid push in 2020, the network was 2x faster than the fastest supercomputer on the planet: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/folding-at-home-worlds-top-supercomputers-coronavirus-covid-19. This article also does a good job of mentioning that you can contribute with your hardware if you want, but not being too pushy over it.
 
On mobile, unless they've changed it, DreamLab seems especially bad on modern phones: https://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?t=32951. Relevant bit here:
Lots of even cheaper phones now are often OLED, seems a bad idea to try and kill screens faster for dubious benefit.
 
TLDR: Folding @ Home seems a weird thing to want to get regular (non-techie) folks into. It's doing very well (again AFAIK, I haven't seen some massive "we're losing hardware help" message from the F@H team, and we have some hardcore Folders here on the forum so it would have been mentioned if so) in its niche, and doesn't really fit anywhere else due to a multitude of overlapping concerns that may or may not be an issue depending on the individual non-techie person.

Not really. As I said, it can work as a neat space heater. Not gonna beat a proper HVAC system for anything but a single room though. My power bill doubled when I ran a few GPUs 24/7 for a folding event. In winter, so assisting the HVAC not fighting it.
Not everyone can do so, nor do they want to.
🤓 <- that's the only appropriate reaction I have for this statement lmao.
You assume everyone's parents can just magically afford a higher bill. Mom and Dad don't poof money out of a hat infinitely for their kids projects. I've had the privilege of financially stable parents who can both shrug off an increased power bill and have helped me financially in a bunch of other ways, most people do not get that. It is very important to understand that that is a less and less common privilege these days, so you don't come across as an entitled twat.
 
I don't get the fixation on F@H. As I said earlier it seems to be going fine, and they regularly have more hardware than they can actually use enrolled. I'm not sure what point there would be in the masses running F@H on very slow and inefficient devices (really anything but a decent to great GPU is practically useless for F@H, I only run CPU folding when I want the heat output). If you want to effect the world in a positive way, look into how batteries are produced from raw materials to final product (both environmental and human cost), then come back and advocate for burning through the limited useful life of mobile and laptop batteries to accomplish barely anything as F@H doesn't scale well on those devices. If they could even be served work units.
 
On the speed of F@H, back during the covid push in 2020, the network was 2x faster than the fastest supercomputer on the planet: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/folding-at-home-worlds-top-supercomputers-coronavirus-covid-19. This article also does a good job of mentioning that you can contribute with your hardware if you want, but not being too pushy over it.
 
On mobile, unless they've changed it, DreamLab seems especially bad on modern phones: https://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?t=32951. Relevant bit here:
Lots of even cheaper phones now are often OLED, seems a bad idea to try and kill screens faster for dubious benefit.
 
TLDR: Folding @ Home seems a weird thing to want to get regular (non-techie) folks into. It's doing very well (again AFAIK, I haven't seen some massive "we're losing hardware help" message from the F@H team, and we have some hardcore Folders here on the forum so it would have been mentioned if so) in its niche, and doesn't really fit anywhere else due to a multitude of overlapping concerns that may or may not be an issue depending on the individual non-techie person.

🤔
Ah, got my answer. Gotcha.

Not really. As I said, it can work as a neat space heater. Not gonna beat a proper HVAC system for anything but a single room though. My power bill doubled when I ran a few GPUs 24/7 for a folding event. In winter, so assisting the HVAC not fighting it.
Not everyone can do so, nor do they want to.
🤓 <- that's the only appropriate reaction I have for this statement lmao.
You assume everyone's parents can just magically afford a higher bill. Mom and Dad don't poof money out of a hat infinitely for their kids projects. I've had the privilege of financially stable parents who can both shrug off an increased power bill and have helped me financially in a bunch of other ways, most people do not get that. It is very important to understand that that is a less and less common privilege these days, so you don't come across as an entitled twat.
 
I don't get the fixation on F@H. As I said earlier it seems to be going fine, and they regularly have more hardware than they can actually use enrolled. I'm not sure what point there would be in the masses running F@H on very slow and inefficient devices (really anything but a decent to great GPU is practically useless for F@H, I only run CPU folding when I want the heat output). If you want to effect the world in a positive way, look into how batteries are produced from raw materials to final product (both environmental and human cost), then come back and advocate for burning through the limited useful life of mobile and laptop batteries to accomplish barely anything as F@H doesn't scale well on those devices. If they could even be served work units.
 
On the speed of F@H, back during the covid push in 2020, the network was 2x faster than the fastest supercomputer on the planet: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/folding-at-home-worlds-top-supercomputers-coronavirus-covid-19. This article also does a good job of mentioning that you can contribute with your hardware if you want, but not being too pushy over it.
 
On mobile, unless they've changed it, DreamLab seems especially bad on modern phones: https://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?t=32951. Relevant bit here:
Lots of even cheaper phones now are often OLED, seems a bad idea to try and kill screens faster for dubious benefit.
 
TLDR: Folding @ Home seems a weird thing to want to get regular (non-techie) folks into. It's doing very well (again AFAIK, I haven't seen some massive "we're losing hardware help" message from the F@H team, and we have some hardcore Folders here on the forum so it would have been mentioned if so) in its niche, and doesn't really fit anywhere else due to a multitude of overlapping concerns that may or may not be an issue depending on the individual non-techie person.

Start over again. Take the lid off your CPU and do it over. 

Xeon is not worth it for just gaming. The low single thread performance just does not stack up well with any modern CPU.

Yep. The only ones that were killer value for gaming was seven years ago when Ryzen did not exist, and you could get a cheap 6-8 core chip with an X chipset motherboard and easily overclock to 4.2-4.5Ghz with a competitive IPC at the time. Zen/Zen+ endangered these Xeons, Zen 2 wiped them out. 
 
EDIT: Worth noting that this is in the US market, overseas I know mainstream Ryzen/Intel chips can be much more expensive, even used, thus why these Chinese boards exist to take advantage of mass Xeon selloffs from upgrading datacenters. 

They don't care. It's a niche for people that have the cash to burn on electricity. The average person does not or will not.

Yep. The only ones that were killer value for gaming was seven years ago when Ryzen did not exist, and you could get a cheap 6-8 core chip with an X chipset motherboard and easily overclock to 4.2-4.5Ghz with a competitive IPC at the time. Zen/Zen+ endangered these Xeons, Zen 2 wiped them out. 
 
EDIT: Worth noting that this is in the US market, overseas I know mainstream Ryzen/Intel chips can be much more expensive, even used, thus why these Chinese boards exist to take advantage of mass Xeon selloffs from upgrading datacenters. 

Yep. The only ones that were killer value for gaming was seven years ago when Ryzen did not exist, and you could get a cheap 6-8 core chip with an X chipset motherboard and easily overclock to 4.2-4.5Ghz with a competitive IPC at the time. Zen/Zen+ endangered these Xeons, Zen 2 wiped them out. 
 
EDIT: Worth noting that this is in the US market, overseas I know mainstream Ryzen/Intel chips can be much more expensive, even used, thus why these Chinese boards exist to take advantage of mass Xeon selloffs from upgrading datacenters. 

If you're just gaming, no. You might have a ton of cores, but games like Alan Wake 2 don't care about core count, they care about single thread performance, and in that regard you can get something like an R5 3600 that will wipe the floor with the 2697v3 in games for about the same amount overall without having to go for sketchy Chinese motherboards. Heck, even an R5 1600 will be better for games than a 2697v3. 
 
If you're doing a production rig or need a ton of PCIe, then sure, a Xeon can make sense, but not as a gaming chip. 

Extensive PCIe device support. Memory bandwidth intensive applications. Software that scales with core count. 
 
Not gamers, not even close to the target market. 

oh ok, i didnt think about staying on am4, yea i have a b550 m pro i bielieve from gigabyte