NAS build

[Julian シ]

Been debating whether to build a NAS for years now, but it's finally time. Maybe even try out HexOS. Google training image generation data on my photos was the final straw

Is this a good setup? It may be a bit overkill for my use case, but I want to future-proof. I will mainly use it for storage of game development projects, pictures/videos and backups for projects of my clients. Not sure if this is possible, but I want to try to host a single website, maybe a VM with Wordpress via a docker container. I have only bought the drives so far and they are refurbished! I was thinking of running raidz2.

Any advice is appreciated!

Component	Model / Description	Price (€)
Case	Jonsbo N3	€150.00
CPU	Intel Core i5-14400T	€170.00
Motherboard	ASRock B760M Pro RS (DDR5)	€127.00
RAM	Crucial 2×16GB DDR5-5600 CL 46	€81.00
Boot SSD	Crucial P3 512GB NVMe	€35.00
Cache SSD	Crucial P3 Plus 1TB NVMe	€64.20
Cooling	Noctua NH-L9i Brown	€44.00
HBA Card	HPE H240 Smart HBA (726907-B21)	€47.19
Drives	6× Seagate ST12000NM003G 12TB (CMR)	€840.00
PSU	Be Quiet! Pure Power 12 M 550W(gold)	€89.00

Total price 1647 euro incl VAT.


Most DDR5 motherboards are about 20-80 euro cheaper here in The Netherlands than DDR4, so thought this combination makes more sense. There may be a better option if I look around more though, not tied to any brand. I also may need a SFF-8643 to 4x SATA cable and I guess some thermal paste, mine must have dried out by now.

Plex is nice, but not necessary. I am the type to close every tab I don't use, delete any media I downloaded and consumed. Would only use it to stream to my TV

[Elliot Heasley]

14 minutes ago, Julian シ said:

Been debating whether to build a NAS for years now, but it's finally time. Maybe even try out HexOS. Google training image generation data on my photos was the final straw

Is this a good setup? It may be a bit overkill for my use case, but I want to future-proof. I will mainly use it for storage of game development projects, pictures/videos and backups for projects of my clients. Not sure if this is possible, but I want to try to host a single website, maybe a VM with Wordpress via a docker container. I have only bought the drives so far and they are refurbished! I was thinking of running raidz2.

Any advice is appreciated!

Component	Model / Description	Price (€)
Case	Jonsbo N3	€150.00
CPU	Intel Core i5-14400T	€170.00
Motherboard	ASRock B760M Pro RS (DDR5)	€127.00
RAM	Crucial 2×16GB DDR5-5600 CL 46	€81.00
Boot SSD	Crucial P3 512GB NVMe	€35.00
Cache SSD	Crucial P3 Plus 1TB NVMe	€64.20
Cooling	Noctua NH-L9i Brown	€44.00
HBA Card	HPE H240 Smart HBA (726907-B21)	€47.19
Drives	6× Seagate ST12000NM003G 12TB (CMR)	€840.00
PSU	Be Quiet! Pure Power 12 M 550W(gold)	€89.00

Total price 1647 euro incl VAT.


Most DDR5 motherboards are about 20-80 euro cheaper here in The Netherlands than DDR4, so thought this combination makes more sense. There may be a better option if I look around more though, not tied to any brand. I also may need a SFF-8643 to 4x SATA cable and I guess some thermal paste, mine must have dried out by now.

Plex is nice, but not necessary. I am the type to close every tab I don't use, delete any media I downloaded and consumed. Would only use it to stream to my TV

One thing I saw that I don't like: the SSD choice. Both of those SSDs have no DRAM cache, which will drastically improve transfer speeds from the cache drive. I don't know if that matters to you, and I personally have two of the P3 Plus 1TB which have been great so far, but I'm sure a DRAM cache would be even better for me. As far as transfer speeds, when copying from a USB 10Gbps PCIe gen 3 drive adapter to transfer everything to my new pc, I remember it being a consistent 1-2GB (yes Gigabytes) per second after the drive slowed down to it's lowest transfer rate. A DRAM cache would let the drive keep a higher transfer speed for longer. So it's not a slow drive and not a terrible choice, but it seems like you could fit a better one in your budget.

[Average Nerd]

34 minutes ago, Julian シ said:

HPE H240 Smart HBA (726907-B21)

I have one of those, and I can't recommend it, because its HBA mode works by creating a RAID 0 on each drive and handing the OS the resulting logical drives (which isn't recommended for TrueNAS or HexOS).

 

I'd recommend a HBA card with a LSI chip (the H240 does not use a LSI chip, instead it has some custom chipset), as those work much better with the ZFS file system that TrueNAS and HexOS use

[AbydosOne]

55 minutes ago, Julian シ said:

Boot SSD Crucial P3 512GB NVMe €35.00

Cache SSD Crucial P3 Plus 1TB NVMe €64.20

For boot drive, that SSD is fine.

 

For "cache", I wouldn't bother. Unless your workload is particularly sensitive to latency and is large enough in its entirety to exceed RAM, a cache drive won't help much or at all. (This is regardless of DRAM cache, mind you.) If you're running a webserver, I would put the live image of the site on a standalone SSD and back that up to the HDD array periodically.

[johnt]

Welcome to the club. It sounds like you are on your way. I recommend going with more memory. I didn't think I would need it, but I decided to install Proxmox recently, and I think that's a much better way to do a NAS build/devices. You can have multiple VMs running different things/services, but they can eat a ton of memory. I have a 12400 for my box and it has been very adequate for my needs. I don't have a lot of redundancy for my OS, but it doesn't bother me a whole lot. There is a learning curve and somethings are not very obvious, but it's a great foot in the door to Linux, in my opinion. I suddenly found myself very reliant on Linux. Linux itself sucks with an interface, but man give me a terminal and let it drive a couple services... you will understand! I've never seen Plex work so flawlessly. I had my media server on a Windows machine before and it had serious issues with syncing (AV mostly, captions are hard to tell).

 

If the 14400T is a low power CPU, then I do not recommend it. Go with the 14400 proper. Also, make sure it has an integrated GPU just to keep yourself sane when you do eventually need it.

 

I also recommend an LSI HBA card. Holy smokes are they ever reliable. Look for a 9300 series or newer. I hear the 9200 series are not as well supported anymore because they are old.

[Julian シ]

6 hours ago, Elliot Heasley said:

One thing I saw that I don't like: the SSD choice. Both of those SSDs have no DRAM cache, which will drastically improve transfer speeds from the cache drive. I don't know if that matters to you, and I personally have two of the P3 Plus 1TB which have been great so far, but I'm sure a DRAM cache would be even better for me. As far as transfer speeds, when copying from a USB 10Gbps PCIe gen 3 drive adapter to transfer everything to my new pc, I remember it being a consistent 1-2GB (yes Gigabytes) per second after the drive slowed down to it's lowest transfer rate. A DRAM cache would let the drive keep a higher transfer speed for longer. So it's not a slow drive and not a terrible choice, but it seems like you could fit a better one in your budget.

Very good point! I may as well go for one with DRAM cache. WD Black SN850X 1TB seems good. 80 euro. I guess I can always create partition the drive into 500gb startup and 500gb as a live image of the site. Not sure how this works, but that's part of the fun!

@AbydosOne not sure yet if I need the cache to be fair. I guess I can always add it later if I feel it's needed, better to save some money for now.

Thank you both for the advice! 

[Julian シ]

1 hour ago, johnt said:

Welcome to the club. It sounds like you are on your way. I recommend going with more memory. I didn't think I would need it, but I decided to install Proxmox recently, and I think that's a much better way to do a NAS build/devices. You can have multiple VMs running different things/services, but they can eat a ton of memory. I have a 12400 for my box and it has been very adequate for my needs. I don't have a lot of redundancy for my OS, but it doesn't bother me a whole lot. There is a learning curve and somethings are not very obvious, but it's a great foot in the door to Linux, in my opinion. I suddenly found myself very reliant on Linux. Linux itself sucks with an interface, but man give me a terminal and let it drive a couple services... you will understand! I've never seen Plex work so flawlessly. I had my media server on a Windows machine before and it had serious issues with syncing (AV mostly, captions are hard to tell).

 

If the 14400T is a low power CPU, then I do not recommend it. Go with the 14400 proper. Also, make sure it has an integrated GPU just to keep yourself sane when you do eventually need it.

 

I also recommend an LSI HBA card. Holy smokes are they ever reliable. Look for a 9300 series or newer. I hear the 9200 series are not as well supported anymore because they are old.

Oof Linux, I don't think I'm brave enough to do a lot with it Just hosing a website seems like a fun challenge though which is my goal for now. I was thinking of starting with 32gb ram, I can always expand on it with the same kit.

Is it worth it though to go for a non low power cpu? Over 10 years it's like a 300-400 euro difference. Both low power and non have integrated gpu. To be honest, not even sure if this CPU is a good choice. 10 cores 16 threads seems good. Not sure what is adequate. 12400 also seems really good, 6 cores and 12 threads. Cheaper as well

I also switched to a LSI HBA card, really good recommendation! SUPERMICRO 9300-8I - LSI 9300-8i 8PORT 12Gbps HBA seems good, 70 euro refurbished is not too bad!

Thank you so much for the advice.

[AbydosOne]

1 minute ago, Julian シ said:

Is it worth it though to go for a non low power cpu? Over 10 years it's like a 300-400 euro difference.

"Low power" really means "low maximum power". Both CPUs will likely idle (which is what most home servers do most of the time) at roughly the same (fairly low, like 20-30W) power, just the T-sku won't clock/boost nearly as high under load. Besides the fact that "TDP" isn't actually power draw anymore, using the difference in max TDP to estimate money savings is flawed for the previously mentioned reason.

 

7 minutes ago, Julian シ said:

I also switched to a LSI HBA card, really good recommendation! SUPERMICRO 9300-8I - LSI 9300-8i 8PORT 12Gbps HBA seems good, 70 euro refurbished is not too bad!

I have an Inspur 9300-8i offbrand/clone/??? card that works fine and they're dirt cheap (in the States, at least).

[LIGISTX]

LSI 9300 series is a good choice. 
 

ZFS doesn’t really use “cache” drives. I’d poke around the TrueNAS forums more before you buy anything. They have a lot of great info that I recommend you research and really try and internalize. We can all regurgitate what they already have well written out, but why waste the energy. You can do your own research. But the TLDR; you don’t need an SSD for a ZFS array unless you have a very specific reason. Those reasons do certainly exist, but you need to work through your workload to determine if you have a reason. 

[Bersella AI]

To add some caveats, there's a major compatibility issue in this setup that the intended mATX motherboard cannot fit in Jonsbo N3, an ITX chassis. You would wish to replace either the motherboard with an ITX one, or the chassis with a larger one. Also note that when an ITX motherboard is picked up, there will be only one PCIe slot and probably only one M.2 slot available.

On the other hand, the intended ATX power supply cannot fit in Jonsbo N3, which accepts only SFX boxes.