NAS building discussion/input/help

[Orfeous]

Ive been thinking of building myself a NAS for my home network instead of buying one from a store lite Netgear Readynas or something.
Grown up with computers since 80s so its more fun to build, configure and install it myself.. and also learning. Not just plug n pray as with a Readynas for example.

I live with myself in an apartment.. got a small gigabit network. HTPC/MainPC, TV, Receiver, Macbook, Smartphone and tablet.
Everything is hooked up either with cable or 5ghz AC Wifi.

Today im using an external 2TB USB2 drive that is connected to my HTPC that also works as my main computer.
I have it as storage mainly.

My goal is to have/build a NAS that is capable as storage, backup for my photos and documents, some kind of cloud storage like dropbox, low power consuming, hot swappable drives.. was thinking of 4 slots.
I want it to be as quiet as possible because i sleep in the same room. For storage capacity i was thinking of maybe 3-4TB but want to be able to expand it in the future.
Thinking of using a Supermicro motherboard since it seems to be a good an reliable brand and built for servers. For CPU wise i dont know.. i have two spare old Intel core 2 duo E6600 but i think they consume a lot of power and heat.
I'm all open for hardware choices. Also with good to have features that i maybe not knowing of.
Was thinking to use FreeNAS as OS maybe on a USB-stick.

Maybe i want be able to save video projects on it. No transcoding i think?

I hope i could make myself understood with this post. I'm from Sweden and my personal english isnt that great so...

[Electronics Wizardy]

Id still buy a synology nas, and just as good or better than anything you can do.

 

EDIT

 

Do you have a budget?

 

[Guest]

Budget? There are a lot of different options you have depending on how much you want to invest in the project. Finding a cheap server case would be hard. If you are trying to save money, i would recommend going for a standard PC case. I would recommend going for a cheap antec case. If you insist on going with a server case, you will definitely find one nice and cheap on ebay. Something like a ASRock H81M-DGS R2.0 motherboard with some kind of dual core pentium would work great for a nas. For ram, i would recommend 4 gigabytes of ddr3. Kingston KVR16N11S8/4 ram seems like it would work.

 

For future expansions, pcie sata cards exist. I would recommend new wd black hard drives in some kind of raid configuration. Use raid 1 if you have 2 drives.

[xc3ll]

Well, if you plan to run you NAS 24/7, you should opt for a low power cpu. Depending on how much you want to spend, a simple board with an Intel Celeron N3150 would be nice. If you have little more spare money, you should look into the ASRock C2250 Board. Lots of sata ports, 2x Gbit Lan, 4 Ram slots, ECC support...

 

Edit: Oh and if you want to buy some pre-build solution, I would recommend Synology too. And don't think that you are limited in any way, just because they have a pretty UI. You can still SSH into it and if you get an X86 model, you can upgrade the RAM yourself and run a few VMs on there, which would make a pretty awesome Server

[Orfeous]

Thanks for all replys
I have no budget right now.. was thinking of buying the parts now and then..

Have seen a lot of nice NAS-cases out there. I really like FreeNAS official NAS Mini case but.. the whole thing complete is quite expensive.
I have two old Chieftec fulltower cases from my old servers since 90s but.. was thinking of not using them. Want something smaller.

Just found this build and i really like that case and the idea with the mobile docks.
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/first-freenas-build-6x-6tb-raidz2-on-asrock-c2750di.29625/

Really like the Lian-Li case.
http://www.lian-li.com/en/dt_portfolio/pc-q35/

ICY DOCK
http://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=163

2x Intel Core i3  ~3ghz or maybe 1x Intel Core i5
Supermicro board with IPMI support.
2-4 WD drives
Maybe a SSD for OS.
8-16GB RAM

But that might not fit in the case though.

[KnightSirius]

Firstly I'd not recommend doing dual i3's or i5's. If you go that route just go with one chip there isn't much benefit of doing dual chips especially if they are low tier chips as cool as it will look and feel Just stick with one quad core Hyper threaded i5 and 16 or 32GB of ram if you're going that route.

The other route you can take is for a much heavier duty dedicated server using Xeon. This gives you a lot more capabilities. 
If you get a Xeon chip with ECC support that will make your server quite a bit more robust. Less prone to failure especially if you're keeping critical data on it.

Just need a Xeon chip a board with ECC support, and some ECC memory 16 - 32GB of it. Also 32GB sounds like a lot but servers love RAM and if you've optimized your server it can greatly improve overall speed especially if your server has a lot of storage capacity across many drives.

 

Also just whipped this up quickly these should work though!

Intel Xeon E3-1230 V5 - 350$

SUPERMICRO MBD-X11SSL-O  - 240$ (mATX to keep the footprint small)
Kingston KVR1333D3E9SK2/16G (x2) = 32GB ECC 1333Mhz  - 330$

 

nearly 1000$ is quite a bit though especially when drives, case or anything else hasn't been factored in but I know if I were to do a heavy duty dedicated server I'd go this route.

This also leaves a lot of room to upgrade though. You can install a RAID card if you get the fancy of doing that or add in a 10 Gigabit Ethernet card to maximize speeds
(assuming you do that for the rest of the house as well!).

 

Just figured I'd share that very dedicated route with you as unlikely as it is. Either way you go you'll have a damn good server if you buy stuff new.
I currently have an old system running as a server with FreeNAS Q9450 + 6GB RAM + 9600 GT running 2 x 2TB drives  RAID 1 and I easily maximize my ethernet connection (125MB/s theoretical max). So you don't need much for it to work well. I attached a picture of my speeds with that old set-up just to prove the point.

 

Hope this helped a bit and wasn't too terribly long!

 

[Orfeous]

Thank you!
That sounded like a monster server.. as you said it is a lot of money and its excluding PSU, drives, case, MB.. etc.

Any alternatives? Any cheaper?
I have seen those motherboards with built in CPU also. ASRock have XEON's.

I think i dont need a monster server like that. I'm the only user on the network haha.. 
If i use that Lian-Li case i dont think any big cooler with fit.

[KnightSirius]

15 hours ago, Orfeous said:

Thank you!
That sounded like a monster server.. as you said it is a lot of money and its excluding PSU, drives, case, MB.. etc.

Any alternatives? Any cheaper?
I have seen those motherboards with built in CPU also. ASRock have XEON's.

I think i dont need a monster server like that. I'm the only user on the network haha.. 
If i use that Lian-Li case i dont think any big cooler with fit.

Haha like I said didn't think you would but I figured I'd mention the option as I wasn't sure.
Also I've seen those they are definitely an option, and save a bit of money due to it being all in one packaged and soldered to the board etc...
You really don't need a beefy CPU for your use case, I'm assuming it's a media/occasional backup server?

If so then you could just grab a current gen mITX board and put in a decent i5, with DDR4 support if you can, and 16GB of RAM minimum.

Get a reliable PSU that fits your price point. That'll all fit in the case easily, as for a cooler you can always get a low profile Noctua cooler. Might be a bit expensive but this cooler here fits in almost anything and provides good performance. All that is left is the drives you need, I recommend WD Blacks if you can, even against the Reds, unless you have drives lying around you plan to use even better as it's free

 

No need for a graphics card as long as the chip you're using has onboard graphics, and if you want to get a bit better cooling in the case I'd swap out the fans provided with noctuas or something of higher quality!