NAS + Server Help

dmallia · January 23, 2019

Currently I have an odroid hc2 single board computer with 1 western digital red 4tb hard drive running openmediavault, which is used as a NAS, Plex and a local web server to control my aquarium controllers. All is fine and never had problems with the odroid, but my 4tb hard drive is almost full. So now I want to build a mini itx pc since my odroid only has 1 sata port and can't add more drives plus that I don't have any redundancy. I am also interested in adding a pfsense router to my network, so I am thinking to run server virtualization (most probably proxmox) and run pfsense, freenas(nas and plex) and a dedicated web server to be separate from my NAS. This m-itx build will be in my bedroom so noise has to be minimal and also low power as my current ups is a small one and currently having a lot of powercuts. I was thinking of having a quad/octa core, 16gb ram(upgradable in the future) and was interested for an onboard cpu since they consume low power and generate low heat. What setup do you recommend? Do you recommend going with an onboard cpu?

Radium_Angel · January 23, 2019

17 minutes ago, dmallia said:

Do you recommend going with an onboard cpu?

If building a dedicated box, as you are, then upgradability takes a back seat to reliability and heat/power/noise.

I think you'd be fine with a soldered in CPU, providing you can find one that fits your needs.

BobVonBob · January 23, 2019

An onboard CPU looks like a great fit for this use case, especially since most are passively cooled and thus totally silent. My addition would be, consider looking for a board with a PCIe slot to support a sata add in card, that way you won't have to go looking again if you want more storage in the future.

Danioki · January 23, 2019

i don't recommend buying an m-itx with onboard CPU unless you plan to renew it periodically, i had this solution and it went obsolete in 1 or 2 years and i ended with a synology NAs ahahah.

for use with plex i think is best to find a small motherboard that give you the ability to change the CPU and GPU.

FloRolf · January 23, 2019

24 minutes ago, dmallia said:

and a local web server to control my aquarium controllers

as someone who also had a few aquariums and plans to get another one in the future, can you elaborate on what you are doing here exactly? Thanks!

dmallia · January 24, 2019

So after reading your posts I started searching online for any integrated cpu motherboard available in a local shop, but only found 1 very old dual core pentium. I searched online and found the SUPERMICRO MBD-X10SDV-4C-TLN2F-O Intel Xeon D-1521 and ASRock C2750D4I Mini ITX Server Motherboard FCBGA1283 but after reviews on the asrock that they don't last too long and that the supermicro xeon run too hot, I changed my mind and am not going for an onboard cpu board. After some more research about modern cpus, I became interested in new the new quadcores, which both suppost ecc memory, virtualization and AES encryption(which is needed for the new pfsense), the intel i3 8100 and the amd ryzen 3 2200g. Both are similar cpus and there is 700 points advantage for the i3 on passmark cpu bench, but temperature wise the i3 according to forum posts is running a little hot while playing games(reaching 85-90 degrees celsius). While the amd after a few minutes on system stability test reached 73 degrees on stock cooler.

I decided to go for the amd, mainly because of low temperatures and it even uses some less power (approx 5w less when idle & 15w less at full load) which is not a lot but considering my ups it's good. Now that I decided with the processor I am starting to look for a m-itx mainboard. Any ideas on what mainly chipset to look for? (the only amd build i did was 10 years ago, and have no ideas about amd chipsets)

On 1/23/2019 at 6:23 PM, FloRolf said:

as someone who also had a few aquariums and plans to get another one in the future, can you elaborate on what you are doing here exactly? Thanks!

Basically I have a small website with a form(for each aquarium) where I input times when to switch on and off lights and co2, temperature and the brightness of the light and stored in a mysql database. Than I have a nodemcu esp8266, which gets data from the mysql database, with a ds18b20 temperature sensor, a 4 solid state relay module (which controls heater, co2 solenoid, and the surface skimmer), and a mosfet so that I can output pwm signal to control the brightness for the led light(plus that I use the sunrise/sunset effect). Every 15 minutes the current temperature is inputted in the database, which then I output on a graph(on the same website) and display the temperature of the last 7 days. It's been running perfect for the last 6 months. I was going for v3 and try mqtt protocol but lately I was busy with work and never had enough time to start.