Turning old PC into NAS - Advice?

[fredih]

Hello y'all,

I'm sure this has been asked before, but I wanted to get an opinion on the build I was thinking about here, and hopefully some tips, because I've never done this before.

I'm thinking about converting my old Gaming Computer into a NAS, since I have no other use for it, and I wouldn't get my money by selling it (See specs below), so I've kept it until now.

Since I've got a Computer just sitting around, that could also accept more Storage in the future, I want to give this a try at least, before buying a Synology NAS which would cost me more money,

and which wouldn't give me as much flexibility.

 

Specs:

Case: Corsair 900D

Mobo: Gigabyte GA-Z170X-SOC FORCE

CPU: i7 6700k

RAM: 32GB HyperX Fury 2133MHz

GPU: Nvidia GTX Titan

PSU: BeQuiet DarkPower 1000W Semi-Modular

 

I'm sure I don't need a Titan to run a NAS, but the 1000W PSU and PCIe Slots should come in handy for... a raid card? Sata cards? I'm not sure. This is where I could use some Help. I've already done some research,

and found Freenas to be an interesting possibility for an OS. I'm also looking at Ironwolf or WD Reds for my drives, and I'm planning to use 4-6 of them, and keep 2 as spares or as storage upgrade further down the line.

The Mainboard has 6 SATA portas already on it - not sure if I can use those, or if I should ditch them in favor of using a HBA card.

 

Any advice you could give me would be appreciated, since I don't want to run out and buy things before getting some more experieenced opinions on this. 

[mahyar]

your system is a good nas in the current state. raid card isnt necessary you can do software raid and sata port in motherboard are enough for a basic nas

[fredih]

8 minutes ago, mahyar said:

your system is a good nas in the current state. raid card isnt necessary you can do software raid and sata port in motherboard are enough for a basic nas

Thanks for the quick response! So simply using the headers on the Mainboard for Drives would be enough you think? What about expansion? It's got six headers, and I'm not sure if FreeNas can use the other ports (NVME for example) if I wanted to add storage...

[mahyar]

1 minute ago, fredih said:

So simply using the headers on the Mainboard for Drives would be enough you think

for a basic nas yes

 

1 minute ago, fredih said:

 What about expansion? It's got six headers, and I'm not sure if FreeNas can use the other ports (NVME for example) if I wanted to add storage...

well my nas is running on linux so i dont know about that

[SupaKomputa]

That's too much power for a NAS.

a 2 core cpu should be enough.

1000w psu? nah, you don't need it, you probably can use it in your new system.

Raid can use the build in the motherboard or just use windows / linux raid.

 

For me a NAS system should be power efficient, as you need to run it 24/7 while you don't need it to gulp a lot of power when idle.

6700k will use around 100w when idle. Compare that to a typical nas enclosure that use 10-20w.

For a home nas you should target 30-40w idle.

Get a pentium gold or silver, it run very low power.

 

[fredih]

1 minute ago, SupaKomputa said:

That's too much power for a NAS.

a 2 core cpu should be enough.

1000w psu? nah, you don't need it, you probably can use it in your new system.

Raid can use the build in the motherboard or just use windows / linux raid.

 

For me a NAS system should be power efficient, as you need to run it 24/7 while you don't need it to gulp a lot of power when idle.

6700k will use around 100w when idle. Compare that to a typical nas enclosure that use 10-20w.

For a home nas you should target 30-40w idle.

Get a pentium gold or silver, it run very low power.

 

Alright... Can't use the PSU in my current System because it's as big as my current case haha. You're definitely right with the power draw though, it'll probably cost me more in the long run to run that System than getting a more power-efficient cpu now. Hm  So what would you suggest? Getting a Pentium, and what else? I don't need the GPU either, I'd imagine? Any other tips?

[SupaKomputa]

Yes, the pentium is a popular choice among NAS builders, especially it support ECC on a supported motherboard (you need a Xeon class motherboard for this).

For GPU, depends on if you need hardware transcoding, which i suggest getting a low powered 1050 should be enough.

Otherwise, for normal file transfer you don't need it.

You need only a 2 core cpu + 8gb ram, should be enough for home server with 5-10 people.

Adding the ram would be a waste, since it wont use it anyway.

I rented a server with 64gb ram and 1000 active daily users, the memory utilization is only 10-12gb.

[fredih]

 

2 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

I rented a server with 64gb ram and 1000 active daily users, the memory utilization is only 10-12gb.

Dayum... Okay that's... very, very low. So a Pentium G4500T or G4400T would fit with my Mobo, from what Intel's Site tells me...

[SupaKomputa]

Yes the 4xxx should be skylake, same as your i7.

[Salacious B Crum]

On 10/5/2020 at 10:35 AM, fredih said:

Hello y'all,

I'm sure this has been asked before, but I wanted to get an opinion on the build I was thinking about here, and hopefully some tips, because I've never done this before.

I'm thinking about converting my old Gaming Computer into a NAS, since I have no other use for it, and I wouldn't get my money by selling it (See specs below), so I've kept it until now.

Since I've got a Computer just sitting around, that could also accept more Storage in the future, I want to give this a try at least, before buying a Synology NAS which would cost me more money,

and which wouldn't give me as much flexibility.

 

Specs:

Case: Corsair 900D

Mobo: Gigabyte GA-Z170X-SOC FORCE

CPU: i7 6700k

RAM: 32GB HyperX Fury 2133MHz

GPU: Nvidia GTX Titan

PSU: BeQuiet DarkPower 1000W Semi-Modular

 

I'm sure I don't need a Titan to run a NAS, but the 1000W PSU and PCIe Slots should come in handy for... a raid card? Sata cards? I'm not sure. This is where I could use some Help. I've already done some research,

and found Freenas to be an interesting possibility for an OS. I'm also looking at Ironwolf or WD Reds for my drives, and I'm planning to use 4-6 of them, and keep 2 as spares or as storage upgrade further down the line.

The Mainboard has 6 SATA portas already on it - not sure if I can use those, or if I should ditch them in favor of using a HBA card.

 

Any advice you could give me would be appreciated, since I don't want to run out and buy things before getting some more experieenced opinions on this. 

Go for it I built my 32TB unRAID server from my i7 6700 and it serves up a dozen docker containers, plex, as a file server and a few vm's thing is rock solid you can use the sata ports on the board and expand with an HBA flashed to IT mode when needed I get 6-10 streams from plex depending on transcode requirements

[fredih]

Okay, so ist Turns Out 4 of the 6 cpu-controlled SATA Ports in the Board are ready, Looks Like a HBA ist the only way to Go... Any suggestions?

[Salacious B Crum]

4 hours ago, fredih said:

Okay, so ist Turns Out 4 of the 6 cpu-controlled SATA Ports in the Board are ready, Looks Like a HBA ist the only way to Go... Any suggestions?

If you want turn key or plug and play this is what I put in mine

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-H310-6Gbps-SAS-HBA-w-LSI-9211-8i-P20-IT-Mode-for-ZFS-FreeNAS-unRAID-/162834659601?hash=item25e9b3b911