NAS Build advice

[lightblind]

Budget (including currency): $1000 (USD)

Country: USA

Used for: Media, Software, Document, and possible VM Storage

Details:

I have a few left over parts that I have had from previous pc builds I've completed for others in the recent past. I don't do it often but I really enjoy just building computers for the heck of it. Anway I have the following just laying around doing nothing and I think it's time I build a NAS for storing things online and offline. 

 

Currently I have:

Gigabyte Aorus Z390 Pro WiFi

About 30 TB cobined mix of M.2 and SATA SSDs, and HDDs

Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 850w RGB

Intel i3 9100

32gb Corsair Vengence mem

TOO MANY Noctua 120mm fans

Thermaltake View 51 and View 71 cases

NVidia GeForce 7800 GT OC

NVidia GeForce GTX 710

NVidia GeForce GTX 1060

NVidia GeForce GTX 1660Ti

NVidia GeForce GTX 1660S

 

Obviously some of this is overkill and some could use some serious just gotten rid of. What Hardware would be best though get get a NAS up and working. I'd rather buy new and replace something overkill or that may not be suitable.

 

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

i3 9100 for cpu.

 

Z390 board will work fine, a cheper board will work too.

 

Use which case has the most drive pays.

 

more ram is better, but 8gb will probably be fine.

 

No need for a gpu, igpu is fine.

 

Id get a ssd for boot(depends on os) and use the hdds for storage. What sizes are the drives? Unraid?

[brob]

If you are just playing around put it all together. Any of the gpu will be fine as would the igpu. Use the highest capacity drives to the limit of the available connections.

 

Some NAS software can be run off a USB stick. 

 

If you want something more reliable get new hdd designed for use in RAID arrays.

 

[lightblind]

So the i3 9100 is not the "F" model so no iGPU unfortunately, and I sold my last AMD 2400G. That said which of the GPUs would be best here since I know I don't really need much graphics power. Most SSDs and HDDs are 2TB each with 3 8TB drives. None are raid configured at the moment and I was thinking either unraid or true/free NAS for OS and I plan to run the OS off a 500GB M.2 (smallest I have out of 4). I know the Z390 is really overkill here so what would be a good/greaat lower end option B360/365, H10/H70, I will need to have at least 20 TB of storage total. I have 10 HD/SD bays at my disposal on the View 71 and still enough room for 12 fans.

[lightblind]

Aslo I want to say thank you for the replies, I really appricate it. I work in IT but I'm more of a PC/laptop person and my primary job is mostly related to VMs. I don't do much at all relating to the server hardware, storage or otherwise.

[brob]

The Z390 is two generations out of date. Unless you have another immediate use for it, why spend money to change to a less capable motherboard?

 

Why not run the o/s off a USB stick and include the m.2 drives in your storage farm? You will want to check the motherboard to see if using any of the m.2 disable SATA ports, a common situation.

 

IIRC, the motherboard has six SATA ports. To include more SATA drives a controller card would needed. If you only need 20TB, the three 8TB units should be enough.

[goofyOne]

Alot of permutations and combinations.   Mostly depends whether you want to spend money or just go with what you have already.  

 

The GTX 710 card would be my choice for gpu,  don't need anything fancy.  

Your Z390 motherboard has some expansion slots, so you could opt for a add-on RAID controller.  For example: LSI 9267-8i 6Gb/s 512MB 8Port Internal SATA/SAS Controller Card  There are plenty of other similar cards.

Hard drive setup would depend on whether you actually want to run a RAID array,  and what level you want  RAID 5, RAID 10 etc.   The add-on cards will give you the most flexibility in setting up RAID, as in the most choices available.

RAID 5 is the most complicated and requires at least 3 disks.  If you had your 3 8TB disks in RAID 5 configuration you will only get 16TB storage.

RAID 10 would require 4 drives, and again the total storage would be lower,  only half.  So 4 8TB drives in RAID 10 would only have 16TB storage.

As you said just run the OS on the smallest m.2 drive,  maybe change it down to a 256GB m.2 drive if you ever get one.

 

I suggest use what you have, set it up in RAID 5 configuration (that way you don't have to buy more drives) and see how it goes.   If you decide you want more storage or it isn't fast enough you could add more drives and switch to RAID 10.

 

{GoofyOne's 2c worth, which may or may not be actually worth 2c}

[brob]

With TB+ drives a RAID 5 array rebuild can be measured in days. During that time another failure results in loss of all array data.

[lightblind]

Thank you again for all the advise here. I'm for sure going unraid at this point to add in all drives I can. I'm trying this in a little different direction though to have 2 seperate data stores so that media and software are seperate from the VMs. All for this is pretty much personal use and the VMs are for tinkering with not for daily utility. If I lose the software on the other hand it could be catastrophic. I have everything (software) backed up offline and sealed in water/fire proof protection but also need it network accessible for daily use. since the SSDs are mostly 2TB each and are faster Ths will be the media/software store and the HDDs will be the VMs since they aren't used often and will be lower impact on rewrites. Each time a VM is used it is pulled and used directly on a machine updated as needed and then added back to the data store with updates or as a new version.

 

I'll keep the i3 9100 and Z390 with probably all 32gb of memory (I don't have any other purpose for it right now). 

So I should go GTX 710 over 7800 GT? I hear you on the 710 should be fine but since I'll probably just use a remote machine I won't exactly have a display connected to the NAS anyway.