A NAS on the budget

[MaratM]

This is not a very exciting build with a lot of top of the line hardware, no crazy watercooling gear.

My media library is growing big, movies in 4k are taking a lot of space. It is all stored on different pc’s and other devices around the house. The main storage place is my kids pc it has a 6tb hard drive, my htpc got 2tb ssd and it is not very often used so it is no use for network storage and it is in my living room and the idea is to have it silent, but it can not be achived even with all the watercooling gear. The third storage device is my media player Zidoo z9x (a bit buggy but overall a great litle media player) it has 1tb ssd (for silent operation) and 4tb 2.5” portable hdd.

the need for dedicated NAS is great, just to move all the storage in one place and have it somewhere hidden away.

Firstly I wanted to buy one plug and play device like a synology or qnap, but after looking at the prices i was surprised how expensive they are even second hand.

Thus I decided to build my own.

the requirements were simple:

- atleast 2 hard drives

- smb share 

- dlna/upnp server

- torrent client with remote access

the easiest way to do it was a simple windows pc.

Now about some odd choice of hardware:

the case - must be small might be mini itx, and fit as many hard drives as possible.

the hardware - as cheap as possible but preferably new.

as less custom parts as possible, but it is almost imossible.

 

 

 

[MaratM]

The case:

I found an acer prebuild from 10 years ago, was stuck away in the storage at my work after something happened with it. I could not bother to revive it cause it was old and outdated.

the original specs

the IO

the guts of an old pc

after I plugged the power cord the old office pc showed some life in it. The fans started to spin and the gpu fan was making some noise.

I plugged an hdmi cable in the gpu - no image, into the motherboard - same. But it is good sign!!! The psu is alive!!!

[MaratM]

So i unplugged the psu and pluged it into a psu tester. A very nice piece of chinese engeneering

all voltages are correct

lable on it said it is a 200w unit! Plenty for my needs (a few $ saved)

The next challenge was to get as many hard drives as possible. The dvd rom was removed and a 2 3,5” drive cage almost fit without any problems but with some help from good old dremmel.

so 3 dummy drives were installed

 

[MaratM]

The next thing was the cpu, mb and ram

the choice of mother board was a bit tricky. I could of go for a soldered on cpu but I decided to go for the cheapest i could find

Asrock H110M-DGS around $50

some random ram 4gbX2 ($35)

A 120gb WD ssd (i had one) as a bootdrive

and a cpu

the cpu of my first choice was a pentium for lga 1151 but the price for it new is around $85 new or around $50 for second hand. After some research I found out a crazy piece of chinese engeneering: it is a coffee lake mobile cpu soldered onto an lga 1151 adapter plate!!! It is called QNCT it costs around $75 shipped. And with some bios mods it can be installed into a lga 1151 motherboard.

the specs of this cpu are almost identical to i7 8700T and tdp of 45watts!!!

so it was ordered from aliexpress.

The cooler is ID cooling IS-60. Stock 120mm fan will be changed to noctua slim 120mm. As the cpu does not have IHS it is asking to use liquid metal as TIM, so the cheapest nickel plated cooler was ordered.

Meanwhile it was all mocked up and it all fits, exept the IO (will have to dremmel it out

the 24 pin cable was a bit too short so i had to use an extension

the top hard drive is a bit too close to the fan need some 90 degrees sata cables (have plenty)

To be continued....

[MaratM]

here is some progress on the build

I've dremmeled out original "IO shield"

placed all of it inside it all fits

still waiting for the chinese CPU

[MaratM]

A little update

found a hard drive for the NAS

WD Red 8TB (second hand) cost me around 120USD (9000 rubles)

The seller left the drive at my office for testing. so I tested it overnight and all looks fine for 3 years old hard drive.

Still waiting for the CPU (ali-express shipping is a bit of the gamble, sometimes it is really fast and sometimes it takes ages to arrive)

[MaratM]

The pinicle of chinese microelectronics has arrived from aliexpress.

It was very well packed, the install was easy and straight forward

all was left to go was to flash the custom bios. However using service connector on the motherboard the programming tool just could not recognise the bios chip.

 

after trying to flash it a multiple times i gave up and went to the nearest laptop repair shop. The chip was unsoldered, flashed and soldered back. So I went back to my office and tried to fire it up. The cpu fan was spinning and that was it. No immage on the screen. For some unknown reason I tried to swap the “AMD” branded ram i bought for the NAS to Corsair RGB pro from my office watercooled beast, due to it being an open test bench it took 10 seconds and it worked!!! One stick, two sticks all detected and working!!!

Here is a picture of AMD RAM!!

The first fought was it is a double sided ram stick, and corsair is a single one. So I called the shop, and described the problem, (the funniest thing is that this AMD ram works without any problems my office rig) the ram is not defective, but some compatibility issue. The shop agreed to swap these two sticks to the single sided ones.

so I walked to the shop (my car did not start this morning, it was a perfect day for subzero overclocking -35C, so i walked) got the sticks and the same thing happened it just does not boot. Called them back and asked to order some samsung oem green ram. It will be here on monday afternoon. If it works that will be the final stage of the build.

[MaratM]

Today I’ve got the ram, 4 sticks of samsung sh!t die, 2x4gb and 2x8gb.

Tested all of them 4gb do not work with this CPU, 8 gb ones work, but only in single chanel in any of 2 slots. Very strange but it is not a gaming rig, It is a NAS and dual chanel does not make any difference. 8gb is enough. After that i installed windows and run a stress test. All the bios settings are on auto it boosts up to 2.9 ghz all core and 3.2 on a single core. With a stock intel cooler is stays at 38c idle and 52 under cpuZ stress test. According to cpuZ benchmark it is on par with 7700k.

the plan for tomorrow is to install the big cooler with liquid metal (no real need for it) and assemble the rig. Install all the software and activate windows.

[MaratM]

I’ve managed to get dual chanel memory working with samsung sh!t dye!!! Plugged one stick, it works without problems, lower down dram speed tp pathetic 2400, save, reboot, swictch it off and install the second stick, and it worked all 16gb (a real overkill for a nas) but it worked.

after that I installed the propper cooler. I originally planned to use liquid metal, but tried the thermalpaste, the temps were fine, around -5C idle and around -10C at load.

cinebench r15 scored just above 900 points, plenty of performance for a NAS)))

after that I installed the hard drives, but run into a small problem, the motherboard did not want to recognise the 50mm fans as 3pin, and I could not find the switch in bios to force it to 3 pin fans, so the fans (small and realativly quiet) run at full blast around 4000rpm, nometter how I set up the fan curve. Looks like the motherboard was using them as pwm fans and put constant 12v.

So I installed an old fan controller

after making my own sata to molex adapter and I got it all working and can control the fans with a small nob at the back of the rig

I also had a spare temp display so it was installed too)

it is showing the temp of the top 8tb hdd. Also I managed to get all the led and power button on the case working as it was designed. Except the fact the wires were too short and the connector was a propriatary acer made.

unfortunatelly I did not have enough time to activate windows and set it up as a dlna/samba server with a remote access from other computer.

[MaratM]

All is done, remote access is set up, dlna and shared disks are all working, swapped 3 different lan cables before I found one which was working at 1gb)

It is a remote access from my hackintosh.

all the stickers removed

almost final assembly (so I thought)

However it is bloody noisy!!!

It did not pass the WAF (wife approval facktor) The vibration from the hard drives is resonating with the case and the NAS is humming. Firstly I thought it was the psu fan. But after openong the lid and stopping all the fans I could hear the hard drived humming and vibrating.

I’ll try to use a different mounting solution tomorrow.

If it does not work it will go to a different place in my flat.

[MaratM]

It was modified!

the hard drive cage was swapped to one from my lian li q37, it’s got rubber washers and a bit more solid construction.
After I installed the hard drives (once again) I started thr rig, to reduce vibration I placed a sheet of foamy material between the hdd cage and the chassy. The noise reduced drammatically, after that I placed some foam under the chassy. It still produce a noticible hum, but it is much better.

set up an remote access on my iphone and it is great.

tried to watch 4k LoR rip runs flawlessly. I might install a some dedicated movie server so I can see all the covers, however my Zidoo media player does the job very nicely

P.S. the NAS will be moved somehere it does not bother anyone with the hum. Toilet)))