Best low-power CPU for NAS?

[menguele]

I've been searching for whole two days now and I can't quite make a decision yet.

This will be my first NAS, and on a budget, so bear in mind.

 

I plan on it to:

1. Low power usage.
2. Backup some media and coding projects from my pc to itself (automatically is a plus).
3. Sync with a cloud service (though this service could be run on my computer aswell.
4. (Optional) Act as an transcoding server, not only for Plex-"like" but one that acts like the LTT one. Though Plex would only be a requirement till I upgrade to Gigabit Ethernet
5. (Optional) Able to perform well with RAID 5, ZFS(Z1) or RAID 1(RAID 1 and 10 being a "bare minimun")

 

My initial plan was to go for a prebuilt, more specifically one of these. But its expensive, removes some of the fun of DIY and I feel probably has more limitations than a Raspberry Pi4, which was my go-to after seing the price. However it appears to have some USB problems, SATA expansions are incompatible with most cases or in the process of creation, and would require me to maybe have a 3d printer, or pay someone to do it, and in my country, 3d printers are sparsely found. So it would be difficult, but a doable yet limited (Dont know by how much) NAS, as I would straight to purchase a "pre-built" Pi4 (or similar) and just plug a beefier power supply and two (or more) usb drives.

Upon searching I discovered this and this, which maybe able to do raid on Pi, but don't know if they would be reliable enough.

 

And then there's NUCs, and looking in to it, I'm doubtful how well some Celeron processor would perform some "advanced" features. Would a J/N3060 be enough? or a N3350, N3450, J4005, J4125, J4105, N4100?

[LIGISTX]

9 minutes ago, menguele said:

I've been searching for whole two days now and I can't quite make a decision yet.

This will be my first NAS, and on a budget, so bear in mind.

 

I plan on it to:

1. Low power usage.
2. Backup some media and coding projects from my pc to itself (automatically is a plus).
3. Sync with a cloud service (though this service could be run on my computer aswell.
4. (Optional) Act as an transcoding server, not only for Plex-"like" but one that acts like the LTT one. Though Plex would only be a requirement till I upgrade to Gigabit Ethernet
5. (Optional) Able to perform well with RAID 5, ZFS(Z1) or RAID 1(RAID 1 and 10 being a "bare minimun")

 

My initial plan was to go for a prebuilt, more specifically one of these. But its expensive, removes some of the fun of DIY and I feel probably has more limitations than a Raspberry Pi4, which was my go-to after seing the price. However it appears to have some USB problems, SATA expansions are incompatible with most cases or in the process of creation, and would require me to maybe have a 3d printer, or pay someone to do it, and in my country, 3d printers are sparsely found. So it would be difficult, but a doable yet limited (Dont know by how much) NAS, as I would straight to purchase a "pre-built" Pi4 (or similar) and just plug a beefier power supply and two (or more) usb drives.

Upon searching I discovered this and this, which maybe able to do raid on Pi, but don't know if they would be reliable enough.

 

And then there's NUCs, and looking in to it, I'm doubtful how well some Celeron processor would perform some "advanced" features. Would a J/N3060 be enough? or a N3350, N3450, J4005, J4125, J4105, N4100?

I run my homelab (ESXi hosting FreeNAS with 50 TB in RAID Z2, a windows LTSC VM, 3 Ubuntu server VM's one running some docker containers, one running plex doing some transcode) on a i3 6100 and it does it without even trying. Transcoding BIG 1080p to 720p will use almost all of the CPU, but it does it in stride. Transcoding an already "smaller" 1080p (basically not a full bluray 1080p rip.... something already somewhat compressed) to 720p is easy, it will do 4 of those transcodes at once. Direct play (which is what I usually do) takes no CPU power at all, literally.

 

So, I can say, a i3 would be plenty. I do have 4 threads tho...... But you certainly can run it on a Celeron with only 2 thread seeing as my use case is much more involved.

[PaniVirusGR]

well , if a i3 6100 could work then an Pentium G6405 or G6400 would work as well with the option for another 10th gen if necessary. Althouth im pretty sure the i3 10100 would be more than enough for a long time. I don't know about NAS stuff but based on pure performance you most likely  wont need anything better than an i3

[Pixel5]

if you want anything with transcoding you are basically stuck with intel, i would recommend to go with an i3 10100 which is not the lowest power you can get but it gives you room to grow for sure.

[NelizMastr]

2 hours ago, Pixel5 said:

if you want anything with transcoding you are basically stuck with intel, i would recommend to go with an i3 10100 which is not the lowest power you can get but it gives you room to grow for sure.

How come? If you're virtualising, the CPU doesn't matter anymore as you can't use quicksync in a VM. Everything becomes software rendered until you pass through a video card with the proper encoding and decoding hardware. That's why I use a Quadro P600 in an ubuntu server 20.04 VM for Plex. Does 4K H265 video quite well. The VM has 2 CPU cores assigned and rarely goes over 10%.

[Pixel5]

4 hours ago, NelizMastr said:

How come? If you're virtualising, the CPU doesn't matter anymore as you can't use quicksync in a VM. Everything becomes software rendered until you pass through a video card with the proper encoding and decoding hardware. That's why I use a Quadro P600 in an ubuntu server 20.04 VM for Plex. Does 4K H265 video quite well. The VM has 2 CPU cores assigned and rarely goes over 10%.

well first of all you could easily pass through the iGPU but you dont really need to do this because you can simply directly use the iGPU in the Plex Docker container and dont fiddle around with a VM.

 

Also there is really no reason to buy a p600 which around here goes for 180€ on ebay when you can get a CPU with an igpu for less then that and basically get the same if not better performance for transcoding.

[menguele]

14 hours ago, LIGISTX said:

So, I can say, a i3 would be plenty. I do have 4 threads tho...... But you certainly can run it on a Celeron with only 2 thread seeing as my use case is much more involved.

That is refreshing to say the least, but I mean, even a Braswell one would really handle it? I mean, a N3060 or J3060 has a score of around 671 in Passmark

14 hours ago, PaniVirusGR said:

well , if a i3 6100 could work then an Pentium G6405 or G6400 would work as well with the option for another 10th gen if necessary. Althouth im pretty sure the i3 10100 would be more than enough for a long time. I don't know about NAS stuff but based on pure performance you most likely  wont need anything better than an i3

 

12 hours ago, Pixel5 said:

if you want anything with transcoding you are basically stuck with intel, i would recommend to go with an i3 10100 which is not the lowest power you can get but it gives you room to grow for sure.

Yeah, any i3 (especially post Coffee-Lake) would probably be overkill, could be used even if expanded a bit more, however it consumes probably way much more power than I would be able to pay. I'm keeping a max TDP of 15(maybe even 25 or 28, i t depends on the microarchitecture) for this project, and also I don't see me expanding it "feature-wise" in the next 3 years. I prefer saving energy power for now.

Also Pentium are the same case for i3, unless its the mobile/embedded ones.

[Electronics Wizardy]

20 minutes ago, menguele said:

That is refreshing to say the least, but I mean, even a Braswell one would really handle it? I mean, a N3060 or J3060 has a score of around 671 in Passmark

For just nas duties, its more than enough. A pentium 4 can almost fill a gigabit connection. It really doesn't need much cpu power

 

20 minutes ago, menguele said:

Yeah, any i3 (especially post Coffee-Lake) would probably be overkill, could be used even if expanded a bit more, however it consumes probably way much more power than I would be able to pay. I'm keeping a max TDP of 15(maybe even 25 or 28, i t depends on the microarchitecture) for this project, and also I don't see me expanding it "feature-wise" in the next 3 years. I prefer saving energy power for now.

Also Pentium are the same case for i3, unless its the mobile/embedded ones.

TDP really doesn't matter here, thats max power(or near that). Idle power is pretty simmilar between all chips, so a 6100 or simmilar will idle about the same power as a i7 or a celeron. I have used i5 systems that idle at less than 20w at the wall with one or two drives.

 

 

[CerealExperimentsLain]

3 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

For just nas duties, its more than enough. A pentium 4 can almost fill a gigabit connection. It really doesn't need much cpu power

Kinda wanna see a P4 nas in 2021...  "We installed the 3.8ghz Pentium 4, It requires a Noctua D15 to cool itself and it idles at 130w out the wall... Before I install any drives in it!  This was unwise."

[Somerandomtechyboi]

Id suggest going for an athlon 3000g, i think that should be enough for a nas, just oc it in the bios if you arent getting enough performance or undervolt it for power efficiency.

 

1 hour ago, CerealExperimentsLain said:

Kinda wanna see a P4 nas in 2021...  "We installed the 3.8ghz Pentium 4, It requires a Noctua D15 to cool itself and it idles at 130w out the wall... Before I install any drives in it!  This was unwise."

A northwood p4 or a cedar mill p4?

I have a p4 631 which is now degraded but when i oced it to 5.4ghz it was already really hot and that was just in the bios, then again it would still get crushed by a core 2 duo anyways xD.

 

Heck you could problably just buy a used lga 775 prebuilt for 20-40$, ugprade the ram, swap to a quad core like the q8400 or xeon e5450 and thats an easy budget nas

[CerealExperimentsLain]

2 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Id suggest going for an athlon 3000g, i think that should be enough for a nas, just oc it in the bios if you arent getting enough performance or undervolt it for power efficiency.

 

A northwood p4 or a cedar mill p4?

I have a p4 631 which is now degraded but when i oced it to 5.4ghz it was already really hot and that was just in the bios, then again it would still get crushed by a core 2 duo anyways xD.

 

Heck you could problably just buy a used lga 775 prebuilt for 20-40$, ugprade the ram, swap to a quad core like the q8400 or xeon e5450 and thats an easy budget nas

Building a cheap NAS doesn't even really require old hardware unless you have it laying around, assuming it's just a NAS.  You can take a budget intel mobo made new or in the last few years, drop in an i3 or Pentium, add additional SATA controllers and you're in business.  If you want something 'more' then you can spend a bit for meaner hardware.  I'm using X79 boards for UnRAID machines because I had one laying around and the other I got super cheap by dumb luck, and gosh, Ivy Bridge E Xeons are cheap for what they can do. Love it.

 

But, erm, for boring NAS duties, a toaster can do it.  Heck there are people doing in Raspberry Pi 4's using breakout boards and custom cases.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

I guess the best option is just using raspberry pi's then, cheap, efficient, a ton of support, and a big community.

 

Welp this might be the solution cause of the resons above

[Blue4130]

3 hours ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

I guess the best option is just using raspberry pi's then, cheap, efficient, a ton of support, and a big community.

 

Welp this might be the solution cause of the resons above

Depending on the drives, I was in the understanding that it's pretty easy to saturate the USB on pi 4 since the network and USB share the same bandwidth. I could be mistaken though. 

[Pixel5]

12 hours ago, menguele said:

That is refreshing to say the least, but I mean, even a Braswell one would really handle it? I mean, a N3060 or J3060 has a score of around 671 in Passmark

 

Yeah, any i3 (especially post Coffee-Lake) would probably be overkill, could be used even if expanded a bit more, however it consumes probably way much more power than I would be able to pay. I'm keeping a max TDP of 15(maybe even 25 or 28, i t depends on the microarchitecture) for this project, and also I don't see me expanding it "feature-wise" in the next 3 years. I prefer saving energy power for now.

Also Pentium are the same case for i3, unless its the mobile/embedded ones.

TDP is the wrong thing to look at here unless you are expecting to max out everything at all times.

an i3 will basically not care about anything you throw at it and will sit at idle most of the time while a mobile CPU could very well be constantly at 25% load just to keep basic stuff running.

 

[Somerandomtechyboi]

2 hours ago, Pixel5 said:

TDP is the wrong thing to look at here unless you are expecting to max out everything at all times.

an i3 will basically not care about anything you throw at it and will sit at idle most of the time while a mobile CPU could very well be constantly at 25% load just to keep basic stuff running.

 

Then again a pi 4 at full load will be much more efficient than a desktop processor at full load, though id see why youd want to avoid something like a rpi nas, like power draw limitations and stuff like that whereas on a pc you can just stick a pentium or an atlon into a mobo, max out all the sata ports, and if you need more then you can just buy a pcie card aka more expandability.

 

Btw, hey op how much storage are you gonna need anyways and whats your budget?

[menguele]

On 6/19/2021 at 5:14 AM, Blue4130 said:

Depending on the drives, I was in the understanding that it's pretty easy to saturate the USB on pi 4 since the network and USB share the same bandwidth. I could be mistaken though. 

That's my main concern, there's some SATA Hat kit that includes a enclosure (which is nice), but the Raspberry one is way out of budget, there's one that is designed for Rock Pi 4 too, with those, this shouldn't be a concern and would be able to do RAID. So for "DIY" ARM, RockPi would be my choice.

On 6/19/2021 at 9:38 AM, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Then again a pi 4 at full load will be much more efficient than a desktop processor at full load, though id see why youd want to avoid something like a rpi nas, like power draw limitations and stuff like that whereas on a pc you can just stick a pentium or an atlon into a mobo, max out all the sata ports, and if you need more then you can just buy a pcie card aka more expandability.

 

Btw, hey op how much storage are you gonna need anyways and whats your budget?

Yeah, and in my country there isn't a healthy used market (or maket in general) so affordable pre builts or owned come around 400 usd, are probably from 2012 or before and suck a ton of power, probably would have something lacking too, most probably GbE.

 

My budget for hardware alone+shipping is around USD 350 and I predict 1tb of storage would be enough for 2 years atleast, unless I start to produce way more and with a bigger bitrate (I record gameplays and edit btw). By the time I need more I would have some money to spare and upgraded to 4tb.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

1 minute ago, menguele said:

That's my main concern, there's some SATA Hat kit that includes a enclosure (which is nice), but the Raspberry one is way out of budget, there's one that is designed for Rock Pi 4 too, with those, this shouldn't be a concern and would be able to do RAID. So for "DIY" ARM, RockPi would be my choice.

Yeah, and in my country there isn't a healthy used market (or maket in general) so affordable pre builts or owned come around 400 usd, are probably from 2012 or before and suck a ton of power, probably would have something lacking too, most probably GbE.

 

My budget for hardware alone+shipping is around USD 350 and I predict 1tb of storage would be enough for 2 years atleast, unless I start to produce way more and with a bigger bitrate (I record gameplays and edit btw). By the time I need more I would have some money to spare and upgraded to 4tb.

Youve gotta search around for the rech deals, sometimes you gotta search really deep into obscure things like old lga 771 servers.

 

In my country a cheap used lga 775 prebuilt goes for 20-35$, if you need efficiency then just swap the cpu for a xeon l5408 or l5430 and undervolt via throttlestop, but if you dont use windows i have some datasheets that can assist in voltage modding the cpu.

 

Maybe youll get lucky and have lga 1155 or 1150 prebuilts, in those cases for 1155, you can use e5 1220 v2, for 1150 you can use e5 1220 v3, and yes there might be intel datasheets that will asist in volt modding these aswell but ive never heard anyone doing a volt mod to lga 1155/1150.

 

If none of these options are available then just build an athlon 3000g system