Spec me a NAS....

covenantuk · 20 Nov 2020 at 17:55

In the past I;ve always used an HP Microserver for NAS duties, but mine is a bit long in the tooth and it;s time for an upgrade. The current Gen10 Plus is way overpriced for my needs....

So - what kind of things would you recommend?

Low noise and small form factor are important
I will be running VMs - around 16GB RAM is probably fine for current needs
I run Vembu on the NAS to back up devices and ODrive to send photos to Amazon storage
I have a Plex server, but mainly only for serving up music to my Sonos system but transcoding ability would be nice. 4k not necessary but a nice to have.
I have 4 x 4TB Seagate Ironwolf drives available

Case-wise - the Fractal Design Node 304 maybe? I mainly want some recommendations for Mobo/CPU/Cooling

joelk2 · 21 Nov 2020 at 22:35

I can recommend freenas as the os at least. I’ve recently switched my hp n54l to freenas and it runs so much better than the whs11 I had on it before.

pompeygreg · 2 Dec 2020 at 22:09

I'd hoped to find someone had specced a Nas for you! Interested in the same myself vs buying off the shelf.

pc-guy · 8 Dec 2020 at 12:39

if you want hot swap chasis try the following chassis
Mini-ITX A7879 4-Bay NAS Chassis
In-Win IW-MS04-01 4-Bay ITX

intel CPU has iGPU which supports Quick Sync so able to offer 4K transcoding on fly wiht Plex. but the same thing can be achieved with a cheapy nvidia card.

so i would still go with a A520 or B450 itx board with Ryzen 3600 (6c12T should be enough for VM)

depend on your VM software, you may need intel NIC for passthrough for the VMs

ASRock A320M-ITX Board with AMD Ryzen CPU Support, Up to 32GB DDR4, 2x HDMI, Ultra M.2 & 4x SATA 6Gb/s, Gigabit LAN, USB 3.1 Type-C

ASRock Fatal1ty B450 Gaming-ITX/ac Board with Ryzen CPU Support, Up to 32GB DDR4, HDMI, DisplayPort, Ultra M.2 & 4x SATA 6Gb/s, Gigabit LAN, 802.11ac WiFi, USB 3.1 Gen2

Intel board with i5 10400

ASRock H410M-ITX/ac Mini-ITX board with 10th Gen Intel Core Support, Intel LAN, Ultra M.2, 4x SATA, HDMI, DisplayPort & 802.11ac WiFi

all of these are gong to be showing on electricity bills. if you are using VM occasionally and dont need 24/7 then maybe it is worthwhile splitting your 24/7 NAS and VM server seperately and building VM with some old parts with MATX format - low cost.

for NAS with Plex, you can get the Asrock J4125B board with integrated Intel Celeron CPU. and one of those 4 bay chasis and a SATA card in PCIE slot. all of that will cost half as much as a 4 bay NAS of similar spec from Qnap or Synology

Avalon · 14 Dec 2020 at 08:11

covenantuk said:
In the past I;ve always used an HP Microserver for NAS duties, but mine is a bit long in the tooth and it;s time for an upgrade. The current Gen10 Plus is way overpriced for my needs....

So - what kind of things would you recommend?

Low noise and small form factor are important

I will be running VMs - around 16GB RAM is probably fine for current needs

I run Vembu on the NAS to back up devices and ODrive to send photos to Amazon storage

I have a Plex server, but mainly only for serving up music to my Sonos system but transcoding ability would be nice. 4k not necessary but a nice to have.

I have 4 x 4TB Seagate Ironwolf drives available

Case-wise - the Fractal Design Node 304 maybe? I mainly want some recommendations for Mobo/CPU/Cooling

Do you have PlexPass and what host OS will you be using? No PlexPass or OS unable to pass through the iGPU = No HW transcoding. Also don't transcode 4K if you can avoid it, output is capped at 1080/8 anyway and if it’s HDR it’ll still look like crap as tone mapping is still broken last I looked.

If you will be HW transcoding, buy Intel with iGPU. If you won’t be AMD brings more performance at a lower price point in general and can support ECC. Whichever you choose I wouldn’t generally go with ITX unless you are 100% sure you won’t need anything like an extra NIC/HBA/GPU down the line and are OK with a 2 DIMM limit.

Performance wise if you will be HW transcoding then literally anything with an Intel iGPU from the 6th gen onwards is OK and nothing really changed, 8th gen onwards got a core bump from i3 upwards to compete with Ryzen. If you won’t be HW transcoding AMD are generally cheaper and performance is usually better, they also (usually) support ECC, that can open up some cheap memory options/extra safety. As to a specific CPU, we’d need some idea of how heavy the VM’s are going to be, but if they are running on a microserver now, then literally anything i3 or above or entry level Ryzen will be a significant upgrade, as you only have two slots I’d consider that 32GB is likely not much more than 16GB and generally people add more VM’s/dockers as time goes on for different tasks. Cooling and cooler size will be dictated by the case choice and chip, I get on quite well with the Noctua NH-L9a as it’s low profile, but you need the case clearance to confirm, and if you can go bigger a greater surface area is obviously preferable to low profile as it means the fan can do more at lower RPM.