First NAS

[dracinn]

I'd like to know what you guys think of this build. Open to advice and suggestions.

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/dracinn/saved/rsTP3C

[Curufinwe_wins]

3 minutes ago, dracinn said:

I'd like to know what you guys think of this build. Open to advice and suggestions.

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/dracinn/saved/rsTP3C

What are you planning on running for OS, and are you doing anything other than file server, if so, what?

[dracinn]

1 minute ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

What are you planning on running for OS, and are you doing anything other than file server, if so, what?

I plan on using it for Plex with Freenas.

[Streetguru]

10 minutes ago, dracinn said:

I'd like to know what you guys think of this build. Open to advice and suggestions.

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/dracinn/saved/rsTP3C

Are you doing live encoding with plex? What resolution would that be? multiple 720p or 1080p?

[dracinn]

1 minute ago, Streetguru said:

Are you doing live encoding with plex? What resolution would that be? multiple 720p or 1080p?

I will be live encoding from mkv files unless h.265 mp4 would be better for streaming and I'll be using 1080p.

[Curufinwe_wins]

2 minutes ago, dracinn said:

I plan on using it for Plex with Freenas.

So... Freenas highly recommends ECC memory, just fyi. This application also doesn't care about ram speed (really), so don't bother paying more for faster ram. Also make sure your motherboard has as many sata connectors as you might want down the road. I'd look for one with at least 6 personally.

 

Ignoring that... the stuff seems reasonable. That cpu will let you transcode ~4 1080p videos at once with plex default settings, which is probably good enough. I'm running a 1231v3 atm (basically a 4770k), and that works great.

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/7GfLbX

 

Grabbing an ITX board also lets you use the very nice and quiet Node 304, which I highly recommend for a small nas with decent drive capacity.

 

As far as HDD's go, grab the cheapest of WD Red, HGST Deskstar NAS, Seagate NAS drives. In case of a tie, buy the Hitachi/HGST drive (they are much faster than WD Red's).

 

Also remember 1GB of ram per TB of storage minimum, and not much point in a NAS without some redundancy if that's RAID-1 (or equiv) or RAID-5 (or equiv).

[Streetguru]

1 minute ago, dracinn said:

I will be live encoding from mkv files unless h.265 mp4 would be better for streaming and I'll be using 1080p.

Probably want to use H264/265 for streaming I'd imagine.

Possibly stick to Ryzen for the far better upgrade path, 8 core CPUs are only $200 though I think it's more single threaded focused. Otherwise get a pentium why the highly overpriced i3?

 

You could also try looking for user servers

PCPartPicker part list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/7HNVLJ
Price breakdown by merchant: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/7HNVLJ/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 3 2200G 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($98.89 @ B&H)
Motherboard: ASRock - B450 Pro4 ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($88.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill - Aegis 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory  ($127.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Hitachi - Deskstar NAS 4TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($139.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $455.86
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-09-23 23:56 EDT-0400
 

 

 

[dracinn]

I plan on starting with 8TB with with a redundant drive using RAID-5.

[Streetguru]

15 minutes ago, dracinn said:

I plan on starting with 8TB with with a redundant drive using RAID-5.

You would need 3 8TB drives to do that...And it's kind of overkill for just a media center NAS, just use like one drive and keep an 8TB external drive with back ups of the stuff

Also you can buy external hard drives with more storage space than NAS built drives, though 24/7 reliability may come into question.

[dalekphalm]

16 hours ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

Also remember 1GB of ram per TB of storage minimum

I absolutely agree with everything else in your post. Some great advice and good places to start off on.

 

But this is entirely false. The 1GB per TB of storage is only recommended when using Deduplication on your storage array. And not many use dedupe on FreeNAS (or ZFS in general) because the current iteration of it is quite bad, with noticeable performance hits being typical, and there being design flaws. The FreeNAS devs are working on a new version of it but I'm unaware of the current ETA for that.

 

Anyway, my point was simply that 1GB per 1TB of storage is not necessary. You can run a multi-TB setup off of 4GB easily. Though more RAM for VM's and dockers/jails (Plex, etc) can certainly be useful. I'd recommend 8GB of RAM minimum here, but I would say anything above that should be calculated based on estimated VM usage. 16GB is fine if the budget allows, but most of that will be wasted unless used by another service like a VM.

[Curufinwe_wins]

1 hour ago, dalekphalm said:

I absolutely agree with everything else in your post. Some great advice and good places to start off on.

 

But this is entirely false. The 1GB per TB of storage is only recommended when using Deduplication on your storage array. And not many use dedupe on FreeNAS (or ZFS in general) because the current iteration of it is quite bad, with noticeable performance hits being typical, and there being design flaws. The FreeNAS devs are working on a new version of it but I'm unaware of the current ETA for that.

 

Anyway, my point was simply that 1GB per 1TB of storage is not necessary. You can run a multi-TB setup off of 4GB easily. Though more RAM for VM's and dockers/jails (Plex, etc) can certainly be useful. I'd recommend 8GB of RAM minimum here, but I would say anything above that should be calculated based on estimated VM usage. 16GB is fine if the budget allows, but most of that will be wasted unless used by another service like a VM.

Sorry. I meant to say... 'remember 1GB per TB minimum is generally recommended by FreeNAS.' Not you need it. 

 

The simple fact is that is the recommendation in documentation. Just like ECC is. I think the 1GB per TB is a more important and valuable guideline than "just always use ECC", once you factor in that extra ram in zfs rarely goes unutilized, even if it is underutilized.

 

But yes, you dont need it. I wouldnt do less than 8 to start, and 16 isnt bad anyways, but yes I agree.