hexos Please give me feedback on this NAS build for HexOS

[drmobius]

Hey all,

 

I have been needing to get a NAS solution up and running at my house. I am a graphic designer, music producer, photographer, and I'm starting my own youtube channel showing others tips and tricks I've picked up in my 20+ years of making pretty things. I have a PC that I built primarily to run local AI tools (Ryzen 7950x3D, 96gb ram, RTX 4090, 2tb NVME) but happens to also be great for gaming, but aside from that, the rest of my computers are Mac's. I have a mac mini pro M2, and a macbook pro m4 max.

Now that I've explained what I'll be using it for, I have two main questions. First, all the videos I've seen LTT do were primarily focused around a windows share, so can anyone direct me to a resource for setting up HexOS for MAC?

And second, the video I found most helpful for putting together hardware was a video LTT did 2 years ago, where they built a NAS into a Jonsbo mini form factor case.

Floatplane: https://www.floatplane.com/post/jcNnXYtPJP

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boKmZKTKXHc

The whole point of the video was to see if they could build something for equal to or less than $600, minus the drives (which was the price for the equivalent pre-built solutions), but the specific Jonsbo case they used seemed like it would be a bit of a pain to use, but it still gave me a good starting point. I put together this part list:
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/xmGXRV

 

In the LTT video, they used a 32gb Intel drive for the cache drive, and a 256gb SSD for the boot, but by using the SSD, they needed to get an NVME to SATA converter. When I was part shopping, I found those Patriot 256gb NVME's for $20. Could I run one of those NVME's as a cache drive and the other as the boot drive? I assume 256gb for a cache drive is overkill, but its cheap... would it HURT it? Would it work? Are these trash NVME's that I shouldn't trust for a cache drive? Is there a different suggestion for NVME?

 

Aside from that, everything else seemed pretty straight forward. I've built plenty of systems before, so the system build itself isn't going to be a problem, I'm just curious about the NVME drives.

 

Oh, and I wanted the video card there for plex encoding/decoding and for virtual machines, so I just grabbed the cheapest nvidia card I could find.

So TLDR: 1. Help setting up HexOS to be used by MACs, including time machine, etc., 2. Peep hardware list, would the two NVME's work (1 for cache, 1 for boot)?

[Electronics Wizardy]

21 minutes ago, drmobius said:

I've seen LTT do were primarily focused around a windows share, so can anyone direct me to a resource for setting up HexOS for MAC?

Macs use the same SMB shares as Windows

22 minutes ago, drmobius said:

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/xmGXRV

 

I'd get a single Intel CPU instead. Much better at encoding, cheaper, and lower power.

 

23 minutes ago, drmobius said:

n the LTT video, they used a 32gb Intel drive for the cache drive, and a 256gb SSD for the boot, but by using the SSD, they needed to get an NVME to SATA converter. When I was part shopping, I found those Patriot 256gb NVME's for $20. Could I run one of those NVME's as a cache drive and the other as the boot drive? I assume 256gb for a cache drive is overkill, but its cheap... would it HURT it? Would it work? Are these trash NVME's that I shouldn't trust for a cache drive? Is there a different suggestion for NVME?

 

I'd skip the cache drive here, you probably don't need it. And for a cache drive you probably want a higher end drive as those cheap drives aren't great.

 

25 minutes ago, drmobius said:

TLDR: 1. Help setting up HexOS to be used by MACs, including time machine, etc.,

IDK if its been added to Hex OS yet, but TrueNAS had a nice interface for a making a time machine compatible share in TrueNAS. 

[drmobius]

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

I'd get a single Intel CPU instead. Much better at encoding, cheaper, and lower power.

Thanks for the quick reply! Do you have a recommendation for an intel CPU? I've pretty much avoided them due to the issues they've been having. I only knew some of them were giving issues and didn't bother to look up which specific models were problematic.

[Electronics Wizardy]

23 minutes ago, drmobius said:

Thanks for the quick reply! Do you have a recommendation for an intel CPU? I've pretty much avoided them due to the issues they've been having. I only knew some of them were giving issues and didn't bother to look up which specific models were problematic.

13400? 12400? Those non k models should be cheap and not affected by the issues.

[drmobius]

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

13400? 12400? Those non k models should be cheap and not affected by the issues.

Thank you again!

Okay I removed the second NVME drive that I was going to use for a cache drive, and swapped the processor to an intel 13400f.

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/FJXdqH

 

All good now? Any other concerns or should I be good to go now?

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

16 minutes ago, drmobius said:

Thank you again!

Okay I removed the second NVME drive that I was going to use for a cache drive, and swapped the processor to an intel 13400f.

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/FJXdqH

 

All good now? Any other concerns or should I be good to go now?

 

Don't get the f model, you want the iGPU here. Then get rid of the rtx 3050, the igpu on those chips is better for encoding than a 3050.

 

I'd typically get fewer bigger drives, but thats me.

 

Otherwise looks fine.

[drmobius]

3 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Don't get the f model, you want the iGPU here. Then get rid of the rtx 3050, the igpu on those chips is better for encoding than a 3050.

 

I'd typically get fewer bigger drives, but thats me.

 

Otherwise looks fine.

I never would have imagined the igpu would be better than a dedicated gpu! Thanks for that, saved me another $140. 

 

Final part list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/qrwph7