Playing games off NAS?

[TheGeeker]

Is it possible? My SSD is filling up.

 

My NAS is full gigabit and my entire house is. Can a play games off my NAS on my PC? I tried TF2 and has alot of issues and was using about 300Mbs on  my network. Can I make this work? I have both SanDisk SSD's in my NAS and PC

[AlphaGamer46]

Is it possible? My SSD is filling up.

 

My NAS is full gigabit and my entire house is. Can a play games off my NAS on my PC? I tried TF2 and has alot of issues and was using about 300Mbs on  my network. Can I make this work? I have both SanDisk SSD's in my NAS and PC

Yes, it's possible. Luke does it so he doesn't have to reinstall games on every machine.

[LittleCarrot]

If You can upgrade your NAS to you use thunderbolt (latest generation). It would work extremely well.

[vanished]

Totally possible.  Speed will be the only question though but you can try it and see how it goes

[TheGeeker]

If You can upgrade your NAS to you use thunderbolt (latest generation). It would work extremely well.

My NAS is on the other side of my house. 

[LittleCarrot]

My NAS is on the other side of my house. 

 

I was thing about it. There are too many bottlenecks. Your drives are not 10Gbs. So I would like to say no.

 

edit: Thunderbolt is 40gbs.

 

[TheGeeker]

I was thing about it. There are too many bottlenecks. Your drives are not 10Gbs. So I would like to say no.

 

edit: Thunderbolt is 40gbs.

 

But Im using cat 6 and 5e Im confused 

[kichilron]

But Im using cat 6 and 5e Im confused 

 

The network speed doesn't have to do anything with the speed of your drives in the NAS.

[AlphaGamer46]

If You can upgrade your NAS to you use thunderbolt (latest generation). It would work extremely well.

Use a Thunderbolt Optical Cable. Yes, they cost A LOT but you can get really good ones from Corning. Even look at a 3.Optical cable. Linus reviewed them.

[Minsekt]

well im having a small NAS (Synology DS215j) and im running 2x 3TB Raid 0, just copied my steam folder to the NAS and its working fine for most of the (singleplayer) games. multiplayer games like csgo are unplayable. just made a shortcut to my desktop for steam and its working like its installed on my machine. obviously not as fast as from a SSD (im used to a 1gb 950 pro nvme ) but yep, its working fine for the stuff i play just once in a while. if this is what you want to use it for yes, if youre planning to play the games youre playing daily on it.. nope (depending on your nas obviously like the other guys already mentioned)

[SaladFingers]

Just make sure you get a gigabit connection to it and it should work perfectly fine.

[braneopbru]

Is it possible? My SSD is filling up.

 

My NAS is full gigabit and my entire house is. Can a play games off my NAS on my PC? I tried TF2 and has alot of issues and was using about 300Mbs on  my network. Can I make this work? I have both SanDisk SSD's in my NAS and PC

 

Yes, it is possible. Most people are still storing the majority of their games on hard drives, which have read speeds roughly in the neighborhood of around 150 Mb/s. Gigabit ethernet is about 110 Mb/s. You will see a bit of an increase in load times as opposed to a hard drive. You will see a LARGE increase in load times coming from an SSD, but it is doable. You might run in to trouble with games that constantly stream data from the hard drive, but I thing your biggest issue is going to come from the NAS itself. If it is a fairly powerfull unit, it'll be able to keep your connection saturated, however, if it's an underpowered device, it'll slow way down an cause you issues. 

 

It's easy to try out anyway. Just map a share a drive, install a game to it and give it a go.

 

 

 

 

If You can upgrade your NAS to you use thunderbolt (latest generation). It would work extremely well.

 

 

I was thing about it. There are too many bottlenecks. Your drives are not 10Gbs. So I would like to say no.

 

edit: Thunderbolt is 40gbs.

 

 

This post is about running a game from a NAS. Networked Attached Storage. NETWORK. How the hell does thunderbolt even come up in this discussion. You obviously haven't the slightest clue of what you're talking about. I can't even begin to wrap my head around the sheer stupidity of the recommendation to use thunderbolt to as a networking method.

 

 I've seen you do this numerous times. Stop shitposting useless crap of which you know nothing about that only serves to confuse members who are seeking legitimate advice. 

[LittleCarrot]

Yes, it is possible. Most people are still storing the majority of their games on hard drives, which have read speeds roughly in the neighborhood of around 150 Mb/s. Gigabit ethernet is about 110 Mb/s. You will see a bit of an increase in load times as opposed to a hard drive. You will see a LARGE increase in load times coming from an SSD, but it is doable. You might run in to trouble with games that constantly stream data from the hard drive, but I thing your biggest issue is going to come from the NAS itself. If it is a fairly powerfull unit, it'll be able to keep your connection saturated, however, if it's an underpowered device, it'll slow way down an cause you issues. 

 

It's easy to try out anyway. Just map a share a drive, install a game to it and give it a go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This post is about running a game from a NAS. Networked Attached Storage. NETWORK. How the hell does thunderbolt even come up in this discussion. You obviously haven't the slightest clue of what you're talking about. I can't even begin to wrap my head around the sheer stupidity of the recommendation to use thunderbolt to as a networking method.

 

 I've seen you do this numerous times. Stop shitposting useless crap of which you know nothing about that only serves to confuse members who are seeking legitimate advice. 

 

Before you start talking out of your ass, check your facts. Thunderbolt has many uses it can be used as an Ethernet cable and a networking cable. If he wanted high speeds thunderbolt 3 can give 40gbs. So if he were running a game with drives that are pretty fast it will be useful. He would have better luck playing games using a thunderbolt cable than a Ethernet cable. 

 

Another thing, what shitposting have i done? The majority people here agree. If you have something back it up.

[skywake]

@LittleCarrot

A few things.....

 

1. "Upgrading to thunderbolt" isn't exactly a trivial task. Odds are that it would require an entirely new setup for OP, probably on both ends.

2. OP has a house wired with Ethernet and has the NAS in a different room to the PC. Thunderbolt wouldn't really help in this scenario.

3. Unless OP has a pretty beast NAS it's unlikely to be able to use much more than 1Gbps let alone 10Gbps or 40Gbps.

4. An average HDD sits at ~800Mbps, an average SSD does ~4Gbps, an NVMe drive can do ~10Gbps. Last I checked games run fine on a HDD

5. The question was whether or not games could be run off a consumer NAS, the answer is a simple YES. It's just slower than running locally

 

@TheGeeker

I'd say its worth doing for games where load times and performance are not issues. It'll do fine for indie games and older titles, single player experiences and the like. But I wouldn't do it for competitive games, large games or games that you want to play regularly. Not without a decent upgrade to your NAS. Also when I say upgrade I mean more drives to start, RAID 5 or 10. After that consider LAG, so that if someone else is hitting the NAS you don't get slowdown. Though before all of that.... I'd just get an external HDD  

[leadeater]

@TheGeeker This is something I already do and depending on how you do it it works well or extremely well. If you are just mapping to a network share on the NAS and add this to your steam library 90%-95% of games will just work no problems at all. I have however had some games not like being installed and run like this, easy way to deal with that is put those games on the local SSD.

 

What I do is a little different and requires a bit more networking know how to do it. I use iSCSI to my NAS as this makes the storage appear as a real locally attached disk to the computer and every game works. I use directly connected Intel X540-T1 in my desktop and server for 10Gb networking and my storage in the server is 6 SSDs and many HDDs in a storage pool with auto tiering so I get the full speed of 10Gb all the time.

 

The first method I mentioned is much simpler to do and I would recommend doing that. It sounds like TF2 might be one of the few that can't run properly off a network share but it should work the way I do it, since I don't have TF2 I can't really confirm either setup as not working/working for that game.

 

As an extra note the streaming throughput or MB/s doesn't typically make the biggest difference to game load time it's actually response time, which SSDs are miles quicker than HDDs so even with 1Gb you might not increase game loads by too much. Depends on the game and how it access it's files.

 

Edit: My steam library is 2TB just for reference 

[braneopbru]

....Thunderbolt has many uses it can be used as an Ethernet cable and a networking cable.....

 

Thunderbolt cannot be used as an ethernet cable. What you CAN do is IP over thunderbolt. Far from being the same thing.

 

That would require that OP have a Thunderbolt capable computer or add in thunderbolt cards to every computer or at the very least his computer and his NAS. As far as I'm aware, you can't even buy Thunderbolt 3 add in cards right now. But if you look at thunderbolt 2, add in cards are over $100 each and to get a 30 foot long thunderbolt 2 optical cable, it would set you back around $300. Plus, unless OP wants cables lying around on the floor, he'd have to break open walls to run the wiring inside.

 

It is only no a realistic solution, it's a stupid idea since even the fastest SATA SSDs are limited to 6Gb/s. If you were going to suggest anything at all involving changing hardware, the proper answer would have been that OP upgrade some of his networking gear to 10Gb/s stuff.

[TheGeeker]

@LittleCarrot

A few things.....

 

1. "Upgrading to thunderbolt" isn't exactly a trivial task. Odds are that it would require an entirely new setup for OP, probably on both ends.

2. OP has a house wired with Ethernet and has the NAS in a different room to the PC. Thunderbolt wouldn't really help in this scenario.

3. Unless OP has a pretty beast NAS it's unlikely to be able to use much more than 1Gbps let alone 10Gbps or 40Gbps.

4. An average HDD sits at ~800Mbps, an average SSD does ~4Gbps, an NVMe drive can do ~10Gbps. Last I checked games run fine on a HDD

5. The question was whether or not games could be run off a consumer NAS, the answer is a simple YES. It's just slower than running locally

 

@TheGeeker

I'd say its worth doing for games where load times and performance are not issues. It'll do fine for indie games and older titles, single player experiences and the like. But I wouldn't do it for competitive games, large games or games that you want to play regularly. Not without a decent upgrade to your NAS. Also when I say upgrade I mean more drives to start, RAID 5 or 10. After that consider LAG, so that if someone else is hitting the NAS you don't get slowdown. Though before all of that.... I'd just get an external HDD

I have 4 2Tb HDDs in a RAID 5. My NAS is no joke. It runs FREENas and is running with 8gb of ram, G3258 and a 500w EVGA PSU. I think its more tan good for this task. Its not a Rasberry Pi NAS. 

[TheGeeker]

Thunderbolt cannot be used as an ethernet cable. What you CAN do is IP over thunderbolt. Far from being the same thing.

 

That would require that OP have a Thunderbolt capable computer or add in thunderbolt cards to every computer or at the very least his computer and his NAS. As far as I'm aware, you can't even buy Thunderbolt 3 add in cards right now. But if you look at thunderbolt 2, add in cards are over $100 each and to get a 30 foot long thunderbolt 2 optical cable, it would set you back around $300. Plus, unless OP wants cables lying around on the floor, he'd have to break open walls to run the wiring inside.

 

It is only no a realistic solution, it's a stupid idea since even the fastest SATA SSDs are limited to 6Gb/s. If you were going to suggest anything at all involving changing hardware, the proper answer would have been that OP upgrade some of his networking gear to 10Gb/s stuff.

I have all CAT6 accept for the l wall Jack which is easy to replace. 

[LittleCarrot]

I have all CAT6 accept for the l wall Jack which is easy to replace. 

 

I suggested a thunderbolt cable to be future proof. As time passes by drive speeds will be come faster. The Thunderbolt cable can be adapted into many things. There are many use cases were thunderbolt will become useful. I was thinking of a model like this:

 

[NAS] --- [Thunder Bolt Cable] --- [Hub (it will be useful if you want to control your nas without leaving your seat] ----> then your computer. Your computer wont ever need a thunderbolt if you dont want it. And now you can control your nas, without needing to leave your seat.

 

edit: My idea isn't cheap. It is useful. I can make a more elaborate design.

[TheGeeker]

I suggested a thunderbolt cable to be future proof. As time passes by drive speeds will be come faster. The Thunderbolt cable can be adapted into many things. There are many use cases were thunderbolt will become useful. I was thinking of a model like this:

 

[NAS] --- [Thunder Bolt Cable] --- [Hub (it will be useful if you want to control your nas without leaving your seat] ----> then your computer. Your computer wont ever need a thunderbolt if you dont want it. And now you can control your nas, without needing to leave your seat.

 

edit: My idea isn't cheap. It is useful. I can make a more elaborate design.

What kind of hub would you say? I am not sure what a HUB is? What would I need to control? 

[LittleCarrot]

What kind of hub would you say? I am not sure what a HUB is? What would I need to control? 

 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NAWCU7G?keywords=thunderbolt%202%20cards&qid=1452747442&ref_=sr_1_11&sr=8-11.

 

So think of this hub like an extension of your motherboard io. So if you want to control your NAS (if it is a PC) you are able to do that.

[TheGeeker]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NAWCU7G?keywords=thunderbolt%202%20cards&qid=1452747442&ref_=sr_1_11&sr=8-11.

 

So think of this hub like an extension of your motherboard io. So if you want to control your NAS (if it is a PC) you are able to do that.

I mean its a FREENAS box so its all on my local network via its Local IP. Not much that would help me here. 

[skywake]

I have 4 2Tb HDDs in a RAID 5. My NAS is no joke. It runs FREENas and is running with 8gb of ram, G3258 and a 500w EVGA PSU. I think its more tan good for this task. Its not a Rasberry Pi NAS. 

Oh cool, it's just you never know. My NAS for example is a low-powered two drive RAID1 setup so it's only really good for "archival" type storage. I could store games on it but there's not much of a point, an external HDD would do a better job. I pretty much only use it for storing and streaming videos, hardly a demanding task. With the setup you have? I don't think you should have many issues.

 

As I said, if you want to improve performance? Link Aggregation would be something to consider if it's more than just you using it. Beyond that you're not going to be able to get much use out of anything more elaborate. With a 4 disk RAID you should be able to saturate your 1Gbps link but not much more. 10Gbps would be a waste of time and money.

[TheGeeker]

Oh cool, it's just you never know. My NAS for example is a low-powered two drive RAID1 setup so it's only really good for "archival" type storage. I could store games on it but there's not much of a point, an external HDD would do a better job. With the setup you have? I don't think you should have many issues.

 

As I said, if you want to improve performance? Link Aggregation would be something to consider. Beyond that you're not going to be able to get much use out of anything more elaborate. With a 4 disk RAID you should be able to saturate your 1Gbps link but not much more. 10Gbps would be a waste of time and money.

I am the only client to it so it wont really help. Sometimes my parents will copy like a document off but its really only me and the NAS

[LittleCarrot]

Oh cool, it's just you never know. My NAS for example is a low-powered two drive RAID1 setup so it's only really good for "archival" type storage. I could store games on it but there's not much of a point, an external HDD would do a better job. I pretty much only use it for storing and streaming videos, hardly a demanding task. With the setup you have? I don't think you should have many issues.

 

As I said, if you want to improve performance? Link Aggregation would be something to consider if it's more than just you using it. Beyond that you're not going to be able to get much use out of anything more elaborate. With a 4 disk RAID you should be able to saturate your 1Gbps link but not much more. 10Gbps would be a waste of time and money.

 

i was thinking of how drives speed will always increase.