Efficient NAS

[Thomas102002]

Hey Guys, 

 

I want to build a little NAS for archiving files like Office and Pictures. I already have three used Drives, which I plan to operate in Raid 5.

 

My biggest Problem is that Electricity is pretty expensive here in Germany at around 0,33€/kWh (0,40USD/kWh) and therefore a old Computer would be pretty expensive to run and the cost for something new and more efficient makes sense really quickly. 

I already searched the Internet and found the Asrock J5040-ITX, a Itx-Board with an Intel Pentium Silver J5040. I plan to put in 8Gb of SO-Dimm Memory. 

Would this be fast enough for a basic NAS? I maybe want to use Plex in the future but it is not a must-have at the moment.

For the OS I want to use OMV, because I already have some experience with it, but I am not completly married to it. Addvice would be nice

 

 

Already Thanks for every Comment

Thomas

[PineyCreek]

What's the budget for parts?  Why not consider a four bay diskless RAID-capable drive enclosure?

[Thomas102002]

@PineyCreek Thanks for the suggestion. I do not have a specific budget, but the Nas should not be as cheap as possible without big sacrifices.

A new four-bay Raid-capable enclosure cost about 260€. The System I planned would cost around 160€, because I already have an old case and power supply. Additionally I like the idea of something self build.

 

[EscapementDog]

You can go even lower if you want. 

 

I developed Western Digital Live Books last decade and we could make a one drive Nas with a single 3TB drive in it and an ARM chip from 2012 that could max out the 1 gig ethernet. Sata drives beyond 3TB just transfer well beyond 1 gigabit on SATA. 

 

That is a cute board and you could make a cute nas if you buy a case to match, but being on a budget you could go lower power and still have decent file serving. People go bigger when they have a household of 4 and everyone needs to transcode their content to their iPhone. 

[Thomas102002]

@EscapementDog Thank you! This seems to be very interesting, but also kind of limiting (upgrades in capacity or software) 

[Pixel5]

honestly for what you want to do with the NAS you could probably get away with a simple external HDD that holds a copy of your data.

 

If you want to do more with your NAS like also making these documents available outside of your network or maybe even running a plex server in the future i would recommend to spend a little bit more and get a small system with an i3 10100 in what ever case fits your needs.

The CPU is very efficient and supports quick sync so you can do hardware transcoding in plex if you ever feel like it and because you will use normal PC components you would always have room to grow if you feel like it.

 

The most basic setup with this CPU can idle around 20W maybe a little less, personally i am running this CPU with a 10G NIC and an HBA to attach more hard drives as well as 4 SSD´s and im pulling about 40W at idle and a bit over 100W when all my 5 HDD´s are spinning.

[EscapementDog]

19 hours ago, Thomas102002 said:

@EscapementDog Thank you! This seems to be very interesting, but also kind of limiting (upgrades in capacity or software) 

Yes, i was thinking since that motherboard has just a gig connector on it, you will likely get peak transfer over that wire no matter how low energy you go.  Maybe an old Core2 would struggle, but anything you can buy new today would just crush that network port. Ultimately, if you become a NAS addict, you would be scrounging for 10 gb ethernet cards on eBay, so no need to worry about what you do today! 

[CerealExperimentsLain]

I run UnRAID, not RAID5 but still a lot of parity, on an E5 2603v2 and that CPU has miles of headroom for parity calculations.  The passmark for the J5040 is actually a fair bit higher, so I think you'll be fine.  ...And you'll use a lot less power than my E5 2603v2.  I just built a J4005 system for my pfSense and wow it's idle draw out the wall is amazing, I'm sure the J5040 is better being another generation newer.

[Thomas102002]

Thanks for all these suggestions