Building/choosing NAS for the first time

[Healadin]

Hello,

I am looking for long term solution to my stack of external HDDs for home use. I still haven't decided if I should go DYI or just buy a box. Steve from GN had some issues with that synology NAS I think, but in DYI solution I am little scared of SW side. I like building PCs and that new AMD Athlon 3000G looks really nice and I would probably like to go that way.

 

The use of NAS will be mostly for me, but sometimes also rest of family members might want to access it. My idea is to use 4 drives for now probably in RAID 5 (I was looking at 6TB ironwolfs) and if I run out of space probably expand it by another 4 drives in raid 5 and go for RAID 50. I am not planning on running any VMs from it, maybe some home theater library for TV. Overall it should be more like long term storage of things that might sometime come in handy.

 

I would like to have some kind of user management for visibility and access to files.

 

Also I dont have any hard limit on money, but the costs should be justified (best price for performance is what I like). So if I can DYI it for like 200€ (without HDDs), I dont want to spend 500€ on out of the box experience. 6TB ironwolf is 165 € (660 € for 4 of them), so I would say around 900 € is what I am going for.

 

In my area this store https://www.alza.sk/EN/ is probably largest, so you see to what kind of HW I have access to. I am not really into shipments from amazon etc, because we have pretty stupid import policies here, but there are also other stores, so if there is anything special for my case and this shop doesnt sell it, I still may find it somewhere.

 

TLDR: I cannot decide if I should go DYI or buy box. I am considering DYI solution, but will definitely need help with choosing SW (and some guides) and also some HW choices.

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, Healadin said:

(I was looking at 6TB ironwolfs)

Id probably get those 8tb externals about the same cost or cheaper, and more space.

 

2 minutes ago, Healadin said:

but will definitely need help with choosing SW

Probably go unraid for a easy to use and expand nas.

 

3 minutes ago, Healadin said:

expand it by another 4 drives in raid 5 and go for RAID 50.

Id go raid 6 over 50 most of the time, speed will be network limited anways

 

Since you like building pcs, id try going diy. Or get a used server like a dell r510

[Healadin]

8 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Since you like building pcs, id try going diy. Or get a used server like a dell r510

I am planning to put it into living room, so used server is not the ideal solution.

 

But doesn't unraid something something totally different than raid 6 anyway?

 

I was looking atm at following setup:

AMD athlon 3000G,                                                     50 €

ASUS PRIME X-370 PRO (8 SATA3 slots),               109 €

Cooler master Force 500 (8 3.5" bays),                       43 €

some kind of RAM, probably one 4 GB stick 2666      20 €

 

1 GB LAN should be enough for now, also I am not sure if there is some better option - like some RAID controller cards with cheaper MB?

[Electronics Wizardy]

8 minutes ago, Healadin said:

But doesn't unraid something something totally different than raid 6 anyway?

Unraid basically has a file level raid 4, should work well here.

 

9 minutes ago, Healadin said:

1 GB LAN should be enough for now, also I am not sure if there is some better option - like some RAID controller cards with cheaper MB?

Id probably get a cheap board and use the 6 sata ports for now, then get a sas expander later, esp as your starting with 4 drives now.

 

9 minutes ago, Healadin said:

some kind of RAM, probably one 4 GB stick 2666      20 €

Id probalby go 8gb here, the ram helps with everything, and works as a disk cache, and doesn't cost much more.

 

some kind of RAM, probably one 4 GB stick 2666      20 €

[Healadin]

11 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id probably get a cheap board and use the 6 sata ports for now, then get a sas expander later, esp as your starting with 4 drives now.

Atm I am looking at two boards (with 6x SATA 3):

 

ASUS prime B450M-A (74 €), but it has only one PCIE x16 slot - so I would have to choose between expander and 10 GB LAN (if I decided to go for 10 GB)

 

ASUS TUF B450M-PLUS GAMING (83 €) has 2 PCIE x16 slots, so it should be better

 

also I cannot find how many that lanes that CPU has... so it might be totally pointless to look for things like this

[Electronics Wizardy]

33 minutes ago, Healadin said:

also I cannot find how many that lanes that CPU has... so it might be totally pointless to look for things like this

24 lanes, so 4 for chipset, 4 normally for m.2 slot, and 16 for gpu.

33 minutes ago, Healadin said:

ASUS TUF B450M-PLUS GAMING (83 €) has 2 PCIE x16 slots, so it should be better

WIth that board, your limited to one slot at 16x as the main x16 can't be split on b servies board.

 

Id probably just go x370 with those prices, but you will need a bios update.

[Healadin]

24 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id probably just go x370 with those prices, but you will need a bios update.

Aye, it's just like 10 € more, but supports lane splitting. Also ASUS PRIME X370-A has 6 sata headers so all good. Thanks a lot mate.

[Salacious B Crum]

18 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

24 lanes, so 4 for chipset, 4 normally for m.2 slot, and 16 for gpu.

WIth that board, your limited to one slot at 16x as the main x16 can't be split on b servies board.

 

Id probably just go x370 with those prices, but you will need a bios update.

I second this and the other advice to go unRAID yes it cost some money but when and I do mean when you need to expand and add plex the other dockers that you will definitely find useful you will have an upgrade path

[Healadin]

From what I found here in my area, x370 is 95 € and they ask almost 20 € for bios update (dont have older ryzen also dont know anyone who has it). For that price I can go straight x470 (ASUS TUF X470-PLUS GAMING).

 

Another question that raised in my mind is PSU, because regular PSU doesnt have 8 sata connectors and going 700+ W sounds like overkill to me. I found Corsair VS350 (35 €) with 4 sata and 3 molex connectors, but I am not huge fan of using adapters.

[Healadin]

23 minutes ago, Healadin said:

Another question that raised in my mind is PSU, because regular PSU doesnt have 8 sata connectors and going 700+ W sounds like overkill to me. I found Corsair VS350 (35 €) with 4 sata and 3 molex connectors, but I am not huge fan of using adapters.

Found Corsair VS450 White certified (39€) with 7 sata connectors and 2x molex. That should do the trick.

[Healadin]

Dont want to start another topic, but do you guys know the difference between product number of ironwolfs?

 

ST6000VN0033

ST6000VN0041

both are seagate ironwolf drives 6 TB, 7200 RPM same cache from what I found... cannot found any difference immediatly, except price (it's around 30 €)