Building a NAS

[Fisherp93]

So I'm currently parting out a nas and just wanted to get second opinions before I pull the trigger looking to spend around £300, have chosen to use new parts as to just build it and leave it.

 

Parts:

Node 304

8gb fury ram (not sure what speed)

Ryzen 1200

Gigabyte AB350N-GAMING Wi-Fi Motherboard (not sure if this is exact model as not on computer atm)

System power 8 #bequiet pay  (already own)

Cheap 710 you for output

 

Any advice on hardware would be greatly appreciated

This nas will mostly be used for streaming plex and small backups for college/uni

Any operating system preferences would also be appreciated (thinking freenas) don't mind having a learning curve 

[LienusLateTips]

Wait for iGPU Ryzen 3, already annouced, will save power and if you ever want to render it will do better, and it would probably be cheaper than than the combo.

[Anghammarad]

Get a board with more Sata ports... 

 

When you really want to build a NAS, 4 is the absolute minimum because of raid 5, without it I wouldn't build a NAS. I would try to get at least 6 sata ports if not 8.

 

So you still have spare ports for the system drive (if there is no M.2 provided) and for an optical drive like bluray if you want to use it as home media server in the living room as well.

 

 

[Fisherp93]

7 minutes ago, JDE said:

Wait for iGPU Ryzen 3, already annouced, will save power and if you ever want to render it will do better, and it would probably be cheaper than than the combo.

I did consider that but the price of a cheap you that will very really run I'll have to see if it's worth the wait as I wanna start building mid to late February

 

So it'll more be a choice of what's out when I purchase 

[Fisherp93]

7 minutes ago, Anghammarad said:

Get a board with more Sata ports... 

 

When you really want to build a NAS, 4 is the absolute minimum because of raid 5, without it I wouldn't build a NAS. I would try to get at least 6 sata ports if not 8.

 

So you still have spare ports for the system drive (if there is no M.2 provided) and for an optical drive like bluray if you want to use it as home media server in the living room as well.

 

 

I'll have to look around it'll come down to price and Wi-Fi I can always swap out the motherboard later on but Wi-Fi is more of a priority right now atleast.

 

But won't hurt to have a look around

[Himmpy]

So you said the main use is for streaming like Plex.

 

How many users will be watching your Plex video. will you have any tuners hooked up to it? For plex i would stray away from freenas and look at unraid 

[Fisherp93]

16 hours ago, Himmpy said:

So you said the main use is for streaming like Plex.

 

How many users will be watching your Plex video. will you have any tuners hooked up to it? For plex i would stray away from freenas and look at unraid 

Can't see it streaming to more than 3-4 at a time and no won't have a tuner.

 

Is there more functionality with unraid? Even then would have to be worth the price considering  freenas is highly recommended and free

[Himmpy]

10 hours ago, Fisherp93 said:

Can't see it streaming to more than 3-4 at a time and no won't have a tuner.

 

Is there more functionality with unraid? Even then would have to be worth the price considering  freenas is highly recommended and free

You may want a higher CPU if you want to handle 3 - 4 streams. Ryzen 1200 has a PassMark score of 6800. It takes about 2000 Passmark score per 1080p stream. You will need to have some overhead for the OS and other function you may need. Like torrent downloader. Connection to PC/Mac to transfer files.

 

I think Unraid makes a better Media NAS server. Due to the way it handle data. It's very easy to expand your data pool. Set up share for PC/Mac.

 

I run both FreeNAS and Unraid and they both have pro and con. The con for Freeas for a media server is that for ever 1 terabyte of space you need 1 gigabyte of ram.

 

You can download Unraid as a trial i would suggest playing with both.  

[geo3]

On 1/11/2018 at 5:51 PM, Anghammarad said:

Get a board with more Sata ports... 

 

When you really want to build a NAS, 4 is the absolute minimum because of raid 5, without it I wouldn't build a NAS. I would try to get at least 6 sata ports if not 8.

 

So you still have spare ports for the system drive (if there is no M.2 provided) and for an optical drive like bluray if you want to use it as home media server in the living room as well.

 

 

You don't need RAID 5, or even RAID at all, for a home nas. 

[Anghammarad]

3 minutes ago, geo3 said:

You don't need RAID 5, or even RAID at all, for a home nas. 

don't forget... you don't need a backup as well... 

[geo3]

1 minute ago, Anghammarad said:

don't forget... you don't need a backup as well... 

That you absolutely do. Well if you care about data integrity, that is.

[Fisherp93]

Hey guys just ordering parts for my system in the next week or 2 and I've decided on the ryzen 5 1600 just to be careful but I was wondering if anyone could recommend an older platform on ddr3 as ram prices still aren't great 

[LienusLateTips]

6 hours ago, Fisherp93 said:

Hey guys just ordering parts for my system in the next week or 2 and I've decided on the ryzen 5 1600 just to be careful but I was wondering if anyone could recommend an older platform on ddr3 as ram prices still aren't great 

Why not Ryzen 5 2400G?

[LAwLz]

I would recommend against FreeNAS with the parts you have ordered for two reasons.

 

1) ECC memory is a must if you want to run ZFS and care about your data. If your non-ECC RAM gets for example a bit stuck then ZFS will slowly corrupt all data you have in the array. It is extremely important that your RAM is 100% correct at all times when using ZFS.

 

2) AMD and FreeBSD has not mixed well historically, and you will find an overwhelming amount of very knowledge FreeNAS users and developers strongly recommend using AMD hardware for FreeNAS.

 

 

I recommend openmediavault instead.

It does not use ZFS (you can choose between several file systems such as ext4 and btrfs) which removes the reliance on ECC.

It's also GNU/Linux based which means that AMD compatibility is not an issue.

 

It's a bit more difficult to set up, but there are several guides out there if you need help. It's also developed by one of the former lead-developers of FreeNAS, and follows many of the same ideas.

[Fisherp93]

18 hours ago, JDE said:

Why not Ryzen 5 2400G?

Honestly 2 less physical cores and it won't be used for gaming anyways so if prefair more cpu power and I can always add a gpu if needed 

[Fisherp93]

5 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I would recommend against FreeNAS with the parts you have ordered for two reasons.

 

1) ECC memory is a must if you want to run ZFS and care about your data. If your non-ECC RAM gets for example a bit stuck then ZFS will slowly corrupt all data you have in the array. It is extremely important that your RAM is 100% correct at all times when using ZFS.

 

2) AMD and FreeBSD has not mixed well historically, and you will find an overwhelming amount of very knowledge FreeNAS users and developers strongly recommend using AMD hardware for FreeNAS.

 

 

I recommend openmediavault instead.

It does not use ZFS (you can choose between several file systems such as ext4 and btrfs) which removes the reliance on ECC.

It's also GNU/Linux based which means that AMD compatibility is not an issue.

 

It's a bit more difficult to set up, but there are several guides out there if you need help. It's also developed by one of the former lead-developers of FreeNAS, and follows many of the same ideas.

I wi definately check this out I haven't fully decided software yet and still open to any