NAS case or barebones?

[Ivan747]

I have a relative that is getting serious with backup solutions since he's growing his software small/home business. I convinced him to have an actual x86 PC as a NAS instead of buying a commercial one, so that we can have Linux and run some scripts and automatically back up the NAS to a different NAS that we have offsite, via FTP. With that in mind, I need a good case for this new NAS. The main requirement is wife appeal, as it's a home office and it is going to be seen. I also require at least support for two 3.5" drives, 3 or 4 drives is better because we can use RAID 5. I am expecting to use a mini-ITX motherboard but any solutions are welcome, even barebones or off the shelf products.

 

I have already looked at these cube mini ITX cases, like the Core V1 or the Elite 110. The Elite 110 is good because it supports three 3.5" drives.The V1 doesn't look professional (with the plastic window and all that), so that doesn't help me persuade him that all of this being a good idea haha.

 

Towers are way too large. I considered an ASrock DeskMini barebones, but you can't find many large capacity 2.5" drives, let alone fast drives specialized in NAS/server applications. Plus they're only two drives.

 

Trying to keep the total budget at US$300 +/-$50 without counting the storage drives, but counting a small M.2 boot drive. RAM is going to be 4GB, the boot SSD about 64GB to 128GB, and I don't think I'll need anything more than a Celeron. The MoBo might have dual Ethernet interfaces, because I might use this as a firewall and/or content cache (though I don't know if combining a firewall with a NAS is good practice).

[Jurrunio]

Fractal Node 804?

[Ivan747]

1 minute ago, Jurrunio said:

Fractal Node 804?

Niiice.

 

Ouch! Pricey! I can try to justify it with all those drive bays.

[Ivan747]

The 304 is $30 cheaper, and a bit smaller. The total price is going to end being the same, since the $30 I save on case will end up spent on a mini-ITX motherboard. So size or capability, pick one...

[Jurrunio]

14 minutes ago, Ivan747 said:

The 304 is $30 cheaper, and a bit smaller. The total price is going to end being the same, since the $30 I save on case will end up spent on a mini-ITX motherboard. So size or capability, pick one...

btw not all mATX or mITX boards have enough SATA ports from the start to benefit from all the 3.5" bays the cases have, so do consider the price of an adapter or going for boards that do have enough ports itself.

[Ivan747]

Yeah, I'll need a SATA interface card if I ever want to fill the 10 drive bays. But hey, many mobos support 6 SATA ports, that's enough for us at the moment.

 

How's this? I only need to check if the motherboard/chipset support hardware RAID. Otherwise I'll probably do XFS or some type of software RAID.

 

PCPartPicker part list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/B8Z24q
Price breakdown by merchant: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/B8Z24q/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel - Celeron G4900 3.1 GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($44.69 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: ASRock - B360M Pro4 Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($78.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Crucial - Ballistix Tactical 4 GB (1 x 4 GB) DDR4-2666 Memory  ($33.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: ADATA - XPG SX6000 128 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive  ($31.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Fractal Design - Node 804 MicroATX Mid Tower Case  ($119.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Corsair - VS 450 W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply  ($34.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $344.63
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-11-18 15:27 EST-0500

 

International shipping is gonna kill me on the case but I'll let it be. It's only an extra kilogram vs. the 304 and the micro ATX really opens up some nice possibilities, like expansion in the future. This system could easily last 10 years of service on the same B360M platform with small upgrades if the hardware holds up. It could also double as an HTPC with a modest video card for casual games.

 

I haven't checked if the PSU can sustain this many drives. It probably doesn't, I need to check. If it does 4 drives then it's good for at least 3 to 5 years.

 

The upgrade paths:

6 SATA ports, with that I can start with one RAID 5 array, then add another RAID 5 array (assuming the M.2 drive is NVMe, which I think it isn't and I have to address)

4 RAM slots, allowing me to go from 4GB to 8GB, then to 16GB if we decide to use this for gaming. Having lots of RAM slots also allows us to use this as a virtualization host, so we can have servers in here.

4 PCIe slots, allowing me to have a GPU, SATA controllers, network cards, etc.

 

So I can take this NAS and turn it into an HTPC, a TV gaming PC, a very large NAS, a small server farm or a network applicance, and possibly some combinations of those.