DIY Home NAS

[Kevino]

Hi,

 

I'm thinking of building a home nas. I want it to have low power usage and be really quiet and be quite powerful. 

Specs:

- Xeon E3-1260l

- Asrock H61M-VG3

- 8GB DDR3 1600MHz ECC memory

- Bitfenix Prodigy

- 4x 3TB Toshiba P300

What do you think the PSU should be? What's the power usage of this system?

[Windows7ge]

You've picked a Xeon. Why not a ASRock Rack board that has all the juicy server features like IPMI?

 

What OS do you plan on going with?

 

I've not heard great things about Toshiba drives. They seem hit-or-miss when it comes to their life expectancy.

 

A 500W from Corsair would probably suit this fine. It's much more power than you need but you typically don't want to go too low or else the PSU will be assembled with cheap components. You'll want something that doesn't mind running 24/7.

 

Check the PSU tier list for something around that range:

 

[PianoPlayer88Key]

I don't think the H series chipsets from Intel support ECC RAM.  Afaik you need a C series chipset (I think C20x for that generation) for ECC support.  (I'm not 100% sure on the older generations though, there may have been a non-C chipset that supported ECC.)

[GDRRiley]

8 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

I've not heard great things about Toshiba drives. They seem hit-or-miss when it comes to their life expectancy.

Wendel from level1techs has recommended the p300 drives.

I've got an x300 and its going strong.

 

Long term though IDK

[WereCatf]

1 minute ago, GDRRiley said:

Wendel from level1techs has recommended the p300 drives.

I've got an x300 and its going strong.

I've got two or three P300's myself and one X300. So far I have no complaints, either, though I've only had them for like a year or two.

[GDRRiley]

22 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

I've got two or three P300's myself and one X300. So far I have no complaints, either, though I've only had them for like a year or two.

my x300 has ran for 3 years. Its been carried and moved a lot. works well

[Windows7ge]

1 hour ago, GDRRiley said:

Wendel from level1techs has recommended the p300 drives.

I've got an x300 and its going strong.

 

Long term though IDK

Seems James Evens knows a bit about them. I can't really sway one way or the other. I believe there was a time when Toshiba had a seriously bad bout of drives and it's hurt their reputation. I never hear people recommending Toshiba drives. Once, maybe.

[Kevino]

8 hours ago, James Evens said:

to old, high power usage (hashwell or newer is economical)

cheapest 3TB available but also the worst one. runs hot, loud, heavy vibrations

 

To keep price down use used hardware. For example hashwell processor and a low power mainboard like the Intel dh87rl. For the PSU 200W should be enough. Buy this part new and don't cheap out on it.

Without the drives and the PSU, with Non-ECC (I've noticed ECC is not compatible) memory this setup would cost me $150. Do you know any CPU with 4 cores about the same clocks as the 1260l with lower TDP?

[Dutch_Master]

No idea where you are located, but give these UK guys a try: https://www.mini-itx.com/

No affiliation, never bought from them, other disclaimers apply as well.

 

HTH!

[Kevino]

8 hours ago, James Evens said:

TDP is the one thing. With a home NAS most of the day it won't do much so even normal i5 should be somewhere between 10-15W most of the day. So I don't think a i5-4590T (also slower then the xeon) would make enough sense.

With new hardware you can beat the 10W mark but at this point cost rises more then power bill savings over the entire lifetime. If I recall it correctly 6W with a normal desktop cpu.

Got it. What about an i3-8100? I heard it idles really low. But back to my original system, what do you think the idle power usage will be?

[Kevino]

44 minutes ago, James Evens said:

Fairly high. 30-40W ish.

 

With the i3-8100 sub 10W shouldn't be to difficult. Don't quote me on this but my understanding is that there weren't any significant improvements within the last few Intel generations in this regard while AMD caught up.

Thanks. Why do you think the i5-4590t wouldn't make sense? What do you think it's idle power usage is?