Cheap Low Power NAS Solution for 1Gb Internet

[Rodpad]

Hello!

 

My home fibre gets upgraded from 300Mb to 1Gb later today. I don't believe my current Raspberry Pi 4, with Open Media Vault and external HDD, will be able to write files fast enough for the data that's coming in over the fibre line. 

 

Ideally I'd prefer an SBC rather than a laptop and PC, both for initial and ongoing costs, due to how infrequently I use the NAS.

 

The NAS' primary purpose is to download torrents which a Kodi box access in another room (no transcoding).

 

Some sort of SBC that can either handle an SATA SSD at 1Gbps, or an NVMe capable one, would be perfect.

 

Any recommendations wouild be great.

 

Thanks!

[manikyath]

the pi4 may actually manage, it's gigabit ethernet and usb 3.0 are wired via pcie, so they should hold up.. theoretically.

that said.. a raspberry pi isnt *that* low power when you start adding loads of storage devices, once you start doing the math.

 

i'd suggest you try ou thow it goes with the pi4, and if it doesnt keep up you move to something like asrock's embedded cpu boards.

[Rodpad]

Thanks for you response.

 

The question is whether the Pi4 CPU can handle that many torrent connections to saturate 1Gbps, as well as being able to pump that much data out to an SSD over USB 3.0. 

 

I'm also dubious as to whether a SATA SSD over USB could handle 1Gbps when writing a large amount of torrent chunks in different locations within the file. I suppose NVMe over USB3.0 might work here?

[PineyCreek]

22 minutes ago, Rodpad said:

I'm also dubious as to whether a SATA SSD over USB could handle 1Gbps when writing a large amount of torrent chunks in different locations within the file. I suppose NVMe over USB3.0 might work here?

As the proud owner of an NVME SSD to USB 3.1 enclosure, I'd let you know that the speed difference between actual NVMe plugged into a MB or expansion card and a USB enclosure is staggering. You have the limitations of the drive, but also an enclosure will never (in my experience) deliver close to the throughput the standard calls for.

 

Further figure that unless they changed the architecture from the Pi3, the network adapter is effectively on the USB bus.  You're sharing bus bandwidth.  This might be a bottleneck. Edit: saw @manikyath 's post about Pi4 having them wired via PCIE bus.  If so, my prior sentence is unlikely accurate with Pi4.

[Rodpad]

Ultimately the cost of an NVMe USB enclosure or adapter is going to fast approach the cost of an SBC that has NVMe M.2 support anyway, so I guess it makes sense to go with the latter, right?

[manikyath]

28 minutes ago, PineyCreek said:

As the proud owner of an NVME SSD to USB 3.1 enclosure, I'd let you know that the speed difference between actual NVMe plugged into a MB or expansion card and a USB enclosure is staggering.

yes, but we're talking matching gigabit ethernet. even if the pi4's ethernet and usb 3.0 were sharing a 3.0 bus it'd still be enough to saturate the connection.