Advice on building a new NAS for the house

[Ethnod]

I'm going to build a new NAS for my sitting room, the last Plex update on my QNAP Server (TS-453A) caused issues, seems the CPU seems to be the issue, my skew is no longer supported.

In fairness it has served me well and I’ve rolled back the server for now so should be ok until I build a new one but looking for some advice on that. 

 

Any thoughts on case and hardware?

Any advice on server OS?

 

I’m looking to get about 3/5 years out of it ideally so will be balancing longevity and performance but then again I wont be needing max performance in fairness

I’m relatively new to Plex and really I just threw Plex on my QNAP so while I am no stranger to building PC’s, troubleshooting etc I’m fairly new to this so any advice is welcome. 

 

What restrictions I have:
Server box will need to be small, mini itx definitely I think, the location it's going is Dimensions max 24(H) x 50(W) x 30(D) cm 
Will need to take 5 HHD’s minimum (min 1x SSD, min 4x HDD, ideally 6+ HHD +1x SSD) 

 

In fairness it won't need to be a beast, will need to run plex, a torrent server, deal with no more than 2k for now, never more than 4k in its lifetime (and not even pushed). I'd be looking to put in a TV tuner and DVR down the line but they are actually not essential. 

 

Again, any advice on hardware to consider, OS's I should be looking into and so on, would be greatly appreciated. The LTT team have done some great videos on this stuff but the things they are doing are way beyond what I'm looking for so any guides, articles or anything else like that would be great too. 

 

Thank you in advance

[Electronics Wizardy]

How many TB do you need?

 

 

What parts do you already have?

 

Id probably get a node 304, A few shcuked 14/16tb hdds, a b460 board, a i5 10400, 16 or 32gb of ram

 

Do you want easy expansion? Id proably run freenas or unraid here.

[Bad5ector]

@Electronics Wizardy I was just about to suggest same case, but couldn't remember the exact model. Also I'm partial to unRAID but I have used Freenas as well and it seemed to be robust. I just enjoy the interface better in unRAID. Though if you're trying to save some money, FreeNAS all the way.

[Ethnod]

On 10/8/2020 at 9:46 PM, Electronics Wizardy said:

How many TB do you need?

 

 

What parts do you already have?

 

Id probably get a node 304, A few shcuked 14/16tb hdds, a b460 board, a i5 10400, 16 or 32gb of ram

 

Do you want easy expansion? Id proably run freenas or unraid here.

The Node seems absolutely perfect, I've not stumbled onto that case before. I could definitely go a little wider but I've just look at the Node series and the Node 804 is just too high for the location  But the 304 is a brilliant case, probably go with that.

 

I have HDD's, 4x 4tb Red WD's, outside of that I could probably get an SSD from somewhere but I'll just buy one, double sided sticky tape it somewhere 

Dont care about easy expansion, I have 3x 3tb WD externals that I can use as server backups and so on, stable off server storage for longer term files to make space so 6x 4tb hdd's should be loads for the next few years

I think the recommendation of the other hardware should be good too... 16 gig should be enough for 2k, plus some services and a server me thinks no? I'm also eventually going to have a home security system and some other stuff but I can offload that to the then obsolete QNAP server

 

On 10/8/2020 at 10:16 PM, Bad5ector said:

@Electronics Wizardy I was just about to suggest same case, but couldn't remember the exact model. Also I'm partial to unRAID but I have used Freenas as well and it seemed to be robust. I just enjoy the interface better in unRAID. Though if you're trying to save some money, FreeNAS all the way.

Thank you

 

I don't care too much about the $60 for unRAID, its more I just want to use the easier and more stable software and I know zip about both (unRAID & Freenas), outside of my QNAP NAS I've not had a NAS before and outside of using plex, a little config and torrenting I've not done much with the NAS.

 

Also, any recommendations for alternative AMD CPU's? Or any reason I should stay with Intel?

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 hours ago, Ethnod said:

Also, any recommendations for alternative AMD CPU's? Or any reason I should stay with Intel?

10400 is a pretty good pick here, pretty low power, onboard gpu, handles transcoding well. I don't see a reason to go amd here. 

 

 

[Ethnod]

Any suggestions for a good reliable (min 4 port) SATA 6 Gbps PCI Express SATA Controller? Just realized that the mobo only has 4, and with the m.2 ssd in it drops to 3 and I'd like to have 6 in down the line, need 4 at the start

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 hours ago, Ethnod said:

Any suggestions for a good reliable (min 4 port) SATA 6 Gbps PCI Express SATA Controller? Just realized that the mobo only has 4, and with the m.2 ssd in it drops to 3 and I'd like to have 6 in down the line, need 4 at the start

Id just get a sas hba, like a dell h200 or h310. Cheap and has 8 ports.

 

Otherwise Id really try to just get a board with more sata ports.

[Ethnod]

Based off what you guys were recommending and other things I read I started a new different thread on Level 1 Techs as I decided to build something different

 

For anyone who is new to building a NAS or running servers (as they differ from PC's a bit) and have questions like mine the guys at Level1 Tech are great, see my thread there

 

https://forum.level1techs.com/t/newbie-to-nas-looking-for-advice-on-budget-nas-build/162548