First NAS Build

[Sunoo]

Budget (including currency): $1000 range would be nice, but have some flexibility 

Country: United States

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: NAS, Plex (or whatever similar program people use these days)

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): 

I’ve built many PCs over the years, but suddenly when it comes to putting a NAS together I feel completely in over my head. I put together this as somewhat of a starting point, but honestly, nothing is set in stone at this point: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/fTKNmr

 

I would like something at least reasonably small and attractive looking (no glass windows, no RGB) as it’s probably going to end up sitting in a somewhat visible corner near where the fiber comes in to the house.

[Budget DIY]

I'll be clear upfront: I don't know much about nas-es, or what the software requirements are. But I think 32 gb is a massive overkill.

 

I also question your choice for a GPU. Why have one at all, unless you plan on connecting it to your TV or something. iGPU should work just fine?

 

And finally: I get that you would like a small form factor system. But it has only place for 4 sata drives. And you might want to expand at one point, although 24 tb worth of storage, is a nice amount.

 

Wouldn't it much more economical to buy a stand alone NAS? Maybe used, and just put in your own 12 tb disks?

[Sunoo]

My recollection was that the price difference between 16 and 32 gb was something like $15, so it seemed to make sense to just go for the larger capacity.

 

I was including a GPU for hardware accelerated transcoding of video, I have no plans to connect a display (other than perhaps during initial setup).

 

I waffled on the small form factor a bunch, but honestly, if I stuck 4x 12tb drives in this thing, that’s A LOT of capacity. I’m not sure I’d need more than that at any point soon enough where I wouldn’t also want to fiddle with some other pieces of the system?

 

I also considered the idea of a retail NAS thing, but they seem to not really be any cheaper, be made out of older parts, and have no ability to toss in a GPU.

[azblurbit]

For mine I'm using an old server I got from work. You can find some used/refurbished servers for cheap on eBay or sites like Server Monkey. However, with the price of energy, you may be better off building new as it'll have much better efficiency.

 

For the CPU, a 13600k will handle NAS, Plex, and containers/VMs quite well. If you need more cores, feel free to go higher, but 14 cores 20 threads should give you quite a bit of performance. I wouldn't go with what you chose because its integrated GPU won't be quite as powerful and it's giving you way less cores. I would go 13400 (non F) at the very minimum. Or you could go with a 12600k which gives you similar CPU performance as the 13400F with a better GPU at a similar price with the downside being it's less efficient. This will give you lots of expandability.

 

Go with a midrange motherboard. You don't need to bust the bank for it. 600 and 700 series intel motherboards both support 13th gen so aim for $150-250 on this. Make sure it supports DDR4. The one you chose will probably be fine but it'll really limit your expandability in the future.

 

You really don't need DDR5 for a NAS. Go with at least 32 GB of RAM. If you're doing a bunch of VMs or containers though, it wouldn't hurt to increase to 64GB but it sounds like you don't need that.

 

Depending on how many drives you want to put in, you may want to get a SAS card. You can buy pre-flashed LSI cards on ebay for $20-$30, you'll just need to grab SAS to SATA cables.

 

For a case, the Fractal Design Define R5 will do you much better. More expandability in the future.

 

You really don't need a GPU for a NAS. Integrated graphics will handle Plex just as well as the GPU you selected because they all have the same encoding chips. 

 

Those HDDs look good. I use WD Red Plus HDDs in mine but as long as you're not buying SMR drives and are buying a reliable brand, you're gonna be fine.

 

If you plan on using unRAID, then you'll need to plan for a license. I like unraid. It's pretty easy and it allows you to expand your storage more easily in the future. You'll also need a USB stick for the boot drive. A Samsung drive will be good for this. If you're using TrueNAS though, your current SSD will be good for boot. 

 

Here's a link to a PCPartPicker list with the parts I mentioned: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/sCjbgb. It's more expensive but it'll give you a lot more flexibility and longevity since once you have the NAS going, you may want to start playing with virtualization. NASes can last for a long time. Mine is 8 years old and still going strong and there's a lot of people in that same boat. So, it can be good to add a bit extra than what you need right now if you can afford it.

[Sunoo]

I did briefly explore sourcing an old secondhand workstation or similar, but decided against going that route primarily for a mix of power usage and aesthetic reasons.

 

 

I might be completely off the mark, but I would have assumed the 13600K would be overkill for this sort of use case, and adds several hundred dollars to the cost. I'll also have to look into what an Intel integrated GPU can handle for transcoding, but I had been under the impression that they were far weaker there. I was initially looking at an Nvidia card for NVENC, but the Arc seemed to make more financial sense (and by most accounts they seem better for video encoding than gaming anyways).

 

I hadn't quite pinned down the OS yet (other than that Windows doesn't really make sense here), but I'm not opposed to paying for a license for one if it ends up being the best approach.

 

 

One additional detail is that I've just found I have an old rig sitting around that I can probably scrounge at least some parts off of:

• Case: Fractal Design Focus G (likely not well suited for this, as it only holds 2x 3.5" drives)
• Motherboard: Asus Z170-A (was once damaged by a leaky water cooling loop, seemed fine for a while, but I believe the stability issues the computer has developed are the fault of this)
• CPU: i5-6500 (probably not worth finding a new matching board for)
• RAM: 2x Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-2400 8GB
• GPU: MSI Radeon RX580 Armor 4G OC (seems to support hardware accelerated encoding, not super familiar with that on AMD cards)
• PSU: Corsair CX650M
• SSD: Samsung 850 EVO 250GB
• HDD: Western Digital Blue 320GB (too small to be much use)

 

 

[Aragorn-]

i went 12400, z690-p (i needed the PCIe slots) and 32gb of DDR5

 

Unless you really want ITX, i'd just take your existing machine and rebuild it with a 12400/suitable mobo/ram. Boot from the 850 Evo and add your 12TB drives for storage.

The RX580 will be fine to start with for video encoding, but it doesnt support the latest codecs. Might as well start with that card and see how it goes though.

 

You can then upgrade the other parts later as a need arises, for instance you can swap the case for something bigger when you actually need to add more drives.

[Needfuldoer]

13 hours ago, Sunoo said:

Budget (including currency): $1000 range would be nice, but have some flexibility 

Including storage?

 

Even 12th gen is massive overkill for a NAS. Something with a 2011-3 socket and v3 or v4 Xeon (Haswell/Broadwell) is more than plenty. You could start with something like an HP Z440 and stuff it to the gills with RAM. It might not be the most power-efficient thing in the known universe, but it will be cheap and its additional power consumption is going to take years to break even with new hardware.