Home NAS Build

[Pavan]

Just wanted to get some thoughts on this build and if it makes sense. This is my first custom NAS/server build. Previously I've been using a Synology DS920+ and it has served me well but I thought getting into this home lab thing would be fun.

 

Budget (including currency): 5000 CAD. This build comes in at approximately 4500 CAD.

Country: Canada

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Plex/Jellyfin, Home Assistant, mass storage, photo backups, PiHole, NVR (maybe)

 

Operating System: TrueNAS Scale

This seemed like the most sensible choice. Linus mentioned his unhappiness with Unraid a little while ago and Jake and Linus' enthusiasm for TrueNAS Scale seems to be the way to go, along with other content creators I've seen recommend TrueNAS Scale. One thing I'm not sure is if i should be running Proxmox and have TrueNAS Scale and other OS's like Home Assistant in VMs or havve TrueNAS Scale as the base and use it's VM system for other OS's.

 

Case: Rosewill RSV-L4412U (449.99 CAD)

It was either the Rosewill case or the Sliger CX4712 but I chose the Rosewill since it's slightly cheaper to buy and ship to me. Might go back to it if the Rosewill case with hot swap bays doesn't come back in stock. Also I'm not sure if it matters but the Rosewill has drive sleds instead of the drives being slotted into the front like int the Sliger.

 

Sliding rails kit: iStarUSA Sliding Rail Kit (26" / 660.4mm) (57.67 CAD)

I just read somewhere that this sliding rail kit fits the Rosewill case. Otherwise if I got the Sliger case I would get the kit from them directly.

 

Motherboard: SuperMicro X11SPH-NCTPF (1,069.85 CAD)

As you'll see this build is heavily based on the 45HomeLab HL15 build, just with a different chassis which means I picked the same motherboard as it. I opt'd for the SFP+ version since I'll have an available SFP+ port on my network switch and thought I might as well use it. Plus it's simpler to use a SFP+ to RJ45 adapter than going wanting to use a SFP connection when you only have RJ45 connectors on your motherboard.

 

CPU: Intel Xeon Bronze 5115 (60.00 CAD)

I chose this over the Bronze 3204 the 45HomeLab HL15 build uses since it has more cores and runs at a higher clock. I'm not sure what it means that the 5115 is at the end of service but I think it should be fine right?

 

CPU cooler: Some 4U cooler (66.80 CAD)

I found this and it looks very similar to the SuperMicro 4U CPU cooler but cheaper to buy and ship to me. Though I don't get a warrenty like with the SuperMicro one.

 

RAM: 2x Micron 8 GB ECC (26.60 CAD)

Just the same RAM used in the 45HomeLab HL15 build and I think 16 GB of RAM is enough for my use case for now?

 

PSU: Corsair RM750e (2023) (140.00 CAD)

This is also just the same PSU used in the 45HomeLab HL15 build and seems to have enough SATA and molex power connectors for the Rosewill case.

 

Boot SSDs: 2x Crucial MX500 250 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (110.00 CAD)

I read somewhere having two boot SSDs running in RAID 1 would be a good way to go in case one drive fails so it doesn't disrupt my house's automations and general conveniences.

 

GPU: Intel Arc A380 (180.00 CAD)

Since the CPU doesn't have a GPU I need something to do transcoding for Plex or Jellyfin or help with AI detection for my NVR system. It seemed like Plex and Jellyfin suggest using Intel QuickSync so I thought Arc would be good since TrueNAS Scale seems to be updating to the a Linux kernel that supports Arc soon.

 

SATA connectors: SFF-8643 to SATA and SFF-8087 to SATA (84.49 CAD)

These seem to be the connectors to use for the SFF ports on the motherboard to connect to the backplane of the Rosewill case. Otherwise I'd use the compatible ones for the Sliger case if I get that.

 

Backplane fan: Noctua NF-P12 (53.85 CAD)

I read somewhere that the fans for backplane the Rosewill hot swap bays comes with don't perform that well and are really loud (not that it matters to me since this is going in closet) so I thought to replace them with some cheap Noctua fans.

 

Mass storage drives: 8x Western Digital Gold WD8004FRYZ 8 TB Hard Drive (2,220.64 CAD)

These seem to be the best reliability per dollar hard drive for mass storage I could find.

 

NVR hard drive (maybe): 2x Western Digital Purple WD23PURZ 2 TB Hard Drive (176.00 CAD)

These seem to have best NVR hard drive I could find for the cheapest price.

 

AI detection module (maybe): Coral TPU (41.11 CAD)

if I'm going to have a NVR on my NAS I'm probably going to use Frigate and they suggest getting a Coral TPU to help with the AI processing,

 

Thanks for reading all this! Let me know what you guys think!

Edited April 7 by Pavan
Added prices

[Electronics Wizardy]

I don't see the point of the server CPU here. Your not using much IO, ram or cores, so I'd get a desktop CPU like am5 or lga 1700. Then you get much better single threaded performance, lower power, a iGPU for transcoding. How much would you be getting that board for? I quick look on ebay shows that board isn't cheap, so a consumer platform will probably be cheaper too. 

 

For drives I'd get fewer bigger drives. Like 4x20TB drives here. Then its easier to add more drives later on, and it uses less power. I'd probably run the NVR on the same array, I don't see the point of those 2TB purple drives.

 

I'd look at the supermicro Cases. Generally much better built than the Rosewell cases you listed, with better hot swap bays. 

 

[BiotechBen]

You can get some nice EPYC combo deals on eBay, bring the budget way down and can drastically increase the amount of storage or PCIe devices.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

price list for each individual part?

and where are you buying this stuff anyways?

4500cad for a 10 core skylake xeon from 7 years ago 16gb of ram and an a380 is pretty pathetic if you ask me

 

epyc 7282 106cad, 16c 32t on the much newer, faster, and probably more power efficient zen2 architecture, also cheaper than the 5115 on ebay when you consider shipping costs

 

mz32-ar0 473cad, all around better than that supermicro expansion wise with alot more pcie expansion, slimsas, ocp mezzanine, etc. ill just link the gigabyte page for the mz32-ar0 and you can see for yourself, no onboard sfp but theres ocp mezzanine cards for single or dual sfp, same goes for regular pcie cards

 

 

for a nas though i have no idea why youd want server hardware when you can just get desktop hardware, unless you need a shitload of cores ram and pcie slots but clearly you dont so i think youd be better off with a desktop ryzen 7900 based system instead with 32 or 64gb of ddr5 and a cheap overbuilt <150$ board like the b650m hdv/pro rs, and if you want sfp just buy a pcie card for it

[Blue4130]

1 hour ago, Pavan said:

Just wanted to get some thoughts on this build and if it makes sense. This is my first custom NAS/server build. Previously I've been using a Synology DS920+ and it has served me well but I thought getting into this home lab thing would be fun.

 

Budget (including currency): 5000 CAD. This build comes in at approximately 4500 CAD.

Country: Canada

Spoiler

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Plex/Jellyfin, Home Assistant, mass storage, photo backups, PiHole, NVR (maybe)

 

Operating System: TrueNAS Scale

This seemed like the most sensible choice. Linus mentioned his unhappiness with Unraid a little while ago and Jake and Linus' enthusiasm for TrueNAS Scale seems to be the way to go, along with other content creators I've seen recommend TrueNAS Scale. One thing I'm not sure is if i should be running Proxmox and have TrueNAS Scale and other OS's like Home Assistant in VMs or havve TrueNAS Scale as the base and use it's VM system for other OS's.

 

Case: Rosewill RSV-L4412U

It was either the Rosewill case or the Sliger CX4712 but I chose the Rosewill since it's slightly cheaper to buy and ship to me. Might go back to it if the Rosewill case with hot swap bays doesn't come back in stock. Also I'm not sure if it matters but the Rosewill has drive sleds instead of the drives being slotted into the front like int the Sliger.

 

Sliding rails kit: iStarUSA Sliding Rail Kit (26" / 660.4mm)

I just read somewhere that this sliding rail kit fits the Rosewill case. Otherwise if I got the Sliger case I would get the kit from them directly.

 

Motherboard: SuperMicro X11SPH-NCTPF

As you'll see this build is heavily based on the 45HomeLab HL15 build, just with a different chassis which means I picked the same motherboard as it. I opt'd for the SFP+ version since I'll have an available SFP+ port on my network switch and thought I might as well use it. Plus it's simpler to use a SFP+ to RJ45 adapter than going wanting to use a SFP connection when you only have RJ45 connectors on your motherboard.

 

CPU: Intel Xeon Bronze 5115

I chose this over the Bronze 3204 the 45HomeLab HL15 build uses since it has more cores and runs at a higher clock. I'm not sure what it means that the 5115 is at the end of service but I think it should be fine right?

 

CPU cooler: Some 4U cooler

I found this and it looks very similar to the SuperMicro 4U CPU cooler but cheaper to buy and ship to me. Though I don't get a warrenty like with the SuperMicro one.

 

RAM: 2x Micron 8 GB ECC

Just the same RAM used in the 45HomeLab HL15 build and I think 16 GB of RAM is enough for my use case for now?

 

PSU: Corsair RM750e (2023)

This is also just the same PSU used in the 45HomeLab HL15 build and seems to have enough SATA and molex power connectors for the Rosewill case.

 

Boot SSDs: 2x Crucial MX500 250 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive

I read somewhere having two boot SSDs running in RAID 1 would be a good way to go in case one drive fails so it doesn't disrupt my house's automations and general conveniences.

 

GPU: Intel Arc A380

Since the CPU doesn't have a GPU I need something to do transcoding for Plex or Jellyfin or help with AI detection for my NVR system. It seemed like Plex and Jellyfin suggest using Intel QuickSync so I thought Arc would be good since TrueNAS Scale seems to be updating to the a Linux kernel that supports Arc soon.

 

SATA connectors: SFF-8643 to SATA and SFF-8087 to SATA

These seem to be the connectors to use for the SFF ports on the motherboard to connect to the backplane of the Rosewill case. Otherwise I'd use the compatible ones for the Sliger case if I get that.

 

Backplane fan: Noctua NF-P12

I read somewhere that the fans for backplane the Rosewill hot swap bays comes with don't perform that well and are really loud (not that it matters to me since this is going in closet) so I thought to replace them with some cheap Noctua fans.

 

Mass storage drives: 8x Western Digital Gold WD8004FRYZ 8 TB Hard Drive

These seem to be the best reliability per dollar hard drive for mass storage I could find.

 

NVR hard drive (maybe): 2x Western Digital Purple WD23PURZ 2 TB Hard Drive

These seem to have best NVR hard drive I could find for the cheapest price.

 

AI detection module (maybe): Coral TPU

if I'm going to have a NVR on my NAS I'm probably going to use Frigate and they suggest getting a Coral TPU to help with the AI processing,

 

Thanks for reading all this! Let me know what you guys think!

This build makes no sense. Do you already have a rack? Are all of your other PC's rack mounted? Why do you have seperate NVR drives? (just put them on the data pool) Why the Xeon? The price seems REALLY high for what you are getting performance wise.

[Pavan]

Added prices.

 

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

IFor drives I'd get fewer bigger drives. Like 4x20TB drives here. Then its easier to add more drives later on, and it uses less power. I'd probably run the NVR on the same array, I don't see the point of those 2TB purple drives.

 

I'd look at the supermicro Cases. Generally much better built than the Rosewell cases you listed, with better hot swap bays. 

 

I assumed 20TB drives were more expensive for the same total capacity but I guess not and a good point. The difference in price is like $20. For SuperMicro cases, I could never find one that's more than 4 drive bays for a cheap. The 16 drive bay cases seem to be like thousands of dollars whenever I look on Ebay plus hundreds of dollars for shipping. Am I searching incorrectly? What do I search for?

 

1 hour ago, BiotechBen said:

You can get some nice EPYC combo deals on eBay, bring the budget way down and can drastically increase the amount of storage or PCIe devices.

1 hour ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

price list for each individual part?

and where are you buying this stuff anyways?

4500cad for a 10 core skylake xeon from 7 years ago 16gb of ram and an a380 is pretty pathetic if you ask me

 

epyc 7282 106cad, 16c 32t on the much newer, faster, and probably more power efficient zen2 architecture, also cheaper than the 5115 on ebay when you consider shipping costs

 

mz32-ar0 473cad, all around better than that supermicro expansion wise with alot more pcie expansion, slimsas, ocp mezzanine, etc. ill just link the gigabyte page for the mz32-ar0 and you can see for yourself, no onboard sfp but theres ocp mezzanine cards for single or dual sfp, same goes for regular pcie cards

 

 

for a nas though i have no idea why youd want server hardware when you can just get desktop hardware, unless you need a shitload of cores ram and pcie slots but clearly you dont so i think youd be better off with a desktop ryzen 7900 based system instead with 32 or 64gb of ddr5 and a cheap overbuilt <150$ board like the b650m hdv/pro rs, and if you want sfp just buy a pcie card for it

For some reason I never thought of EPYC. I was mostly going for server parts for more expandability in the future if I wanted. But I guess a a Ryzen 7900 based system would get me most of the way there any ways. Though does this mean I have have to get HBA for the drives if I have a case that supports 10+ SATA drives?

 

1 hour ago, Blue4130 said:

This build makes no sense. Do you already have a rack? Are all of your other PC's rack mounted? Why do you have seperate NVR drives? (just put them on the data pool) Why the Xeon? The price seems REALLY high for what you are getting performance wise.

This build is something I'm going to get for my new house so I will have a rack. I'm going to rack mount my desktop PC and potentially my home theater PC in the same rack along with all the house's network equipment. I was thinking of seperate NVR drives since I assumed it'd be better for longetivity but the responses here make it seem like it's fine if my potential NVR system saving to my data pool that are Gold drives is fine.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 hour ago, Pavan said:

assumed 20TB drives were more expensive for the same total capacity but I guess not and a good point. The difference in price is like $20. For SuperMicro cases, I could never find one that's more than 4 drive bays for a cheap. The 16 drive bay cases seem to be like thousands of dollars whenever I look on Ebay plus hundreds of dollars for shipping. Am I searching incorrectly? What do I search for?

How about something like this? 36 bays for about 500https://www.ebay.com/itm/144716914920?itmmeta=01HTV83EY9WMRG5117QF4ATRZ5&hash=item21b1cce0e8:g:p0AAAOSwjl9hyj~1&itmprp=enc%3AAQAJAAAA4LJS1TW8yHftyTSIuDcLSG00rXLsjrUhgSUIdN9lAXmsHKEE0RH%2BwW5hYrQzW21y%2BqeCJW%2Fi7yq2I8njwJd40mqR9%2F%2Bn2mBVtsAFZ85YXSRYINwDwAtvsrpw%2FRjxmfa6FGXcxViXGYODIcrsLNIJT%2F5lhFFyWM5x5iFxjYtN0vXLV%2BS2RaaTeV3GyFGtXt8ejLThl9KYZnG3o5hi97p3kePUqFcYkvSH3mnu8eHXnL%2FhSeVuDQRIGCC5%2BNN2QgaRzWz0%2FbMzQazFXtOXMUE%2FPELudt3XyJlSpGUXD5YEOYTH|tkp%3ABFBMou-N6NZj

 

You only get 2u of room for the board, but that should be fine here.

 

1 hour ago, Pavan said:

For some reason I never thought of EPYC. I was mostly going for server parts for more expandability in the future if I wanted. But I guess a a Ryzen 7900 based system would get me most of the way there any ways. Though does this mean I have have to get HBA for the drives if I have a case that supports 10+ SATA drives?

You need an hba for 10+ drives here. But if your getting big hdds you can probably use those 10 ports for a while

 

1 hour ago, Pavan said:

This build is something I'm going to get for my new house so I will have a rack. I'm going to rack mount my desktop PC and potentially my home theater PC in the same rack along with all the house's network equipment. I was thinking of seperate NVR drives since I assumed it'd be better for longetivity but the responses here make it seem like it's fine if my potential NVR system saving to my data pool that are Gold drives is fine.

The NVR rated drives are just slightly different firmware. The lifespan should be about the same.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

36 minutes ago, Pavan said:

For some reason I never thought of EPYC. I was mostly going for server parts for more expandability in the future if I wanted. But I guess a a Ryzen 7900 based system would get me most of the way there any ways. Though does this mean I have have to get HBA for the drives if I have a case that supports 10+ SATA drives?

yep because new boards dont really prioritize sata, doesnt help that pcie lanes are quite limited aswell, and if you want sfp then also need a card and that needs pcie lanes and yeah maybe server is a pretty attractive option here

 

the server board i linked has 2 slimline ports for sata so 8 sata ports, no idea if the other 4 can be used for sata or not cause if they can then youll be able to get 24 sata ports, even if they cant theres plenty of pcie slots and pcie links for gpus hbas and whatnot then theres the 4 slimline sas that are 4x pcie and can probably also be adapted for pcie cards cause its amd epyc with a shitload of pcie lanes that most mobos cant even fully utilize

 

3 hours ago, Pavan said:

PSU: Corsair RM750e (2023) (140.00 CAD)

This is also just the same PSU used in the 45HomeLab HL15 build and seems to have enough SATA and molex power connectors for the Rosewill case.

pq1000m at the same price but 1000w, 10 year warranty, and no loud fan noise complaints, 850w version is 20$ cheaper if you dont need 1000w

 

3 hours ago, Pavan said:

Boot SSDs: 2x Crucial MX500 250 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (110.00 CAD)

I read somewhere having two boot SSDs running in RAID 1 would be a good way to go in case one drive fails so it doesn't disrupt my house's automations and general conveniences.

massive overspend on the ssds

just grab two m450 500gb drives, you double your capacity and save 30$, besides its a server board with a ton of pcie lanes so might aswell use em

 

3 hours ago, Pavan said:

Backplane fan: Noctua NF-P12 (53.85 CAD)

I read somewhere that the fans for backplane the Rosewill hot swap bays comes with don't perform that well and are really loud (not that it matters to me since this is going in closet) so I thought to replace them with some cheap Noctua fans.

outdated and better cheaper fans exist like the p12 max at 50$ for a 5 pack

cheaper better and you get 2 extra fans for 50$

 

3 hours ago, Pavan said:

AI detection module (maybe): Coral TPU (41.11 CAD)

if I'm going to have a NVR on my NAS I'm probably going to use Frigate and they suggest getting a Coral TPU to help with the AI processing

and this will need a pcie x1 to mini pcie

 

usually theyre in the form of wifi adapters that you are supposed to insert a mini pcie laptop wifi card into but those should work for this aswell since its just pcie x1 -> mini pcie

[Pavan]

So I'm a bit confused by a couple things.

1. Should I go EPYC or mainstream desktop CPU like Ryzen 5000/7000 or Intel 10+? I feel like the cheaper motherboards for mainstream desktop CPU's won't have enough PCIe slots to have a GPU, TPU, HBA for 12+ drives and a NIC for 2.5G/10G.
2. A friend suggested thinking about old Threadripper but are motherboards available and are they cheaper than Zen 2 EPYC?
3. Are the SuperMicro chassis's that much better than Rosewill's or Sliger's? They seem to be 100-200 CAD more expensive in total and they don't seem to use ATX PSUs so if a PSU dies I'd have to pay like 400+ CAD to get a new one if I buy from SuperMicro directly.
4. I think either way I want to get a chassis that has at least 12 bays which means I'd have to get a HBA and if I'm using a mainstream CPU motherboard wouldn't that take 2+ of PCIe slots? Unless I get a HBA card that has 4 SAS connectors but aren't those expensive? Kinda ties into the first question I guess.

Also thank you @Somerandomtechyboi for the other products recommendations.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

3 hours ago, Pavan said:

Should I go EPYC or mainstream desktop CPU like Ryzen 5000/7000 or Intel 10+? I feel like the cheaper motherboards for mainstream desktop CPU's won't have enough PCIe slots to have a GPU, TPU, HBA for 12+ drives and a NIC for 2.5G/10G.

considering you have that many devices which need pcie slots and lanes yea better off with epyc

 

3 hours ago, Pavan said:

A friend suggested thinking about old Threadripper but are motherboards available and are they cheaper than Zen 2 EPYC?

likely more expensive especially the zen2/3 based threadrippers, only 4 channels of ram which shouldnt matter that much here, boards have alot more desktop i/o but you get no server i/o so just regular pcie slots and m.2 slots no ocp mezzanine for cheap sfp cards that wont block pcie slots (no need for risers if you have tons of pcie stuff) no slimline 4i/8i thatll fit a shitton of nvme/sata and no server stuff like remote management, also the cpus are just alot more expensive with the only benifit being overclocking but thats pretty useless since you are buying tr/epyc for sheer threads not high clocks per core making power efficiency go to shit

 

3 hours ago, Pavan said:

• Are the SuperMicro chassis's that much better than Rosewill's or Sliger's? They seem to be 100-200 CAD more expensive in total and they don't seem to use ATX PSUs so if a PSU dies I'd have to pay like 400+ CAD to get a new one if I buy from SuperMicro directly.
• I think either way I want to get a chassis that has at least 12 bays which means I'd have to get a HBA and if I'm using a mainstream CPU motherboard wouldn't that take 2+ of PCIe slots? Unless I get a HBA card that has 4 SAS connectors but aren't those expensive? Kinda ties into the first question I guess.

no clue on these as i only glance at server boards/cpus maybe even the i/o, though i assume the supermicro chassis uses regular server psus which are those long metal brick looking thingys

 

also consumer boards dont have that many slots and ones that do even if all of em are x16 are basically useless since theyre probably x1 link connected to chipset which would cripple bandwidth