[Guide] NAS Killer 4.0 - fast, quiet, power efficient, and flexible - starting at $125

Hey noob here. Just wanted to say thanks for the guide. I’m new to NAS and home server builds - I recently setup an HP Mini 800 G4 with an i7 6600T, 16GB ram, 256GB nvme with proxmox, pfSense as a VM and a cheap netgear managed switch with VLANs to route WAN/LAN traffic. Also 4 atomic pis I setup as nodes to cluster for playing with. Digging the home setup and what I’m learning so far.
I have an i7-2600s, 2x4gb SO-DIMM ram, 3tb, 1tb, 500gb, 250gb 3.5" disks and a couple of 19.5v HP power supplies that were for their SFF (19.5v, 135w-180w) all lying around and wanted to build out a simple NAS for media and serving the VMs and aPis. I’m trying to find a reasonable DQ77KB and get a case, possibly a Cooler Master Elite RC-110 and I’d be all set. The mobos are bit hard to come by at this point other than $100 listings on eBay but I would like to finish up with $100 tops for the case/mobo. Would a Gigabyte GA-H77TN fill the mobo requirement okay for something similar to the 6-bay Mini-ITX NAS?

Thanks for the awesome guide. I just orderded my parts, X9SCL w/ E3-1220 V2, 8GB PC3-12800E, LSI 9210-8i. I decided to go with the Fractal Design Define R5 for the case since I currently have a Meshify S2 and like their products. The Antec P101 looked like another decent option, although neither a “budget” case. The Node 804 looks pretty nice as well, but I don’t care for the window and want the option of using a full size ATX board in the future. Now I just need to decide on using shucked WD drives or paying a lot more for “NAS” drives. I’m leaning towards Unraid, but will look into OMV as well.

edit: The Fractal case came in slightly damaged, I wasn’t sure if I should bother returning it or not since it wasn’t too noticeable. Then I checked Newegg and they have the Antec P101 on sale for $85 AR. The Define 5 was $130 + $14 for a 2nd intake fan, so that made my decision easy. Returnig the Define 5 and ordered the P101.

The Dell prebuilt option is labeled as " Dell Poweredge T210 II" but I think you meant " Prebuilt Dell Poweredge T110 II"

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Wanted to give a shoutout to crew running this board. I’ve got my NK4.1 up running Centos 8.1 with 6x8TB in raidz2. I’m replacing a QNAP TS-251 that I paid $350 for 5 years ago (for hardware and RAM). For well less than that, I’ve got a ton more performance plus a Mellanox Connectx-3 10gb nic.

If anyone is interested in doing a Centos build, I’m happy to share some tips to resolve issues I had to address.

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Hi…I’m in the process of upgrading my unRAID server since I’m currently running it on an old Phenom 965. But, I’ve started to play with VMs and my actual config can’t do GPU passthrough. So, I would like to build an unRAID server capable of GPU passthrough for 3 concurrents gaming VMs with 3 GPU. And for now, I hesitate between a brand new 2700x on an Asus board or an old dual Opteron (G34) or dual Xeon on a Supermicro board or any other dual Xeon socket motherboard.

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Hi,
Is there anyone that bought components for nk4.0 that would fit fractal node 304 or similar case? I’ve created new thread in main forum NK4 with parts from EU

Hi, I was looking into building the mini-itx build as described, but it’s looking like the recommended motherboard DQ77KB is in short supply and whatever stock is available is pretty expensive. Unfortunately physical space is a consideration for me, so I would really like to go with a mini-itx build. Are there any other mini-itx boards that could be substituted for the DQ77KB and keeping the rest of the build the same?

Hey, I have some old hardware that I was hoping to re-purpose for a NAS. I plan to have it host media to a separate Plex Server, a combination of 4K x265 and 1080p x264 content.

Trying to keep costs to a minimum here while achieving a stable/capable build, here are the components I have already:

Motherboard: Asus P8P67 Revolution
CPU: i7-2600K
Memory: 16GB (4x 4GB) Corsair DDR3-1600 / PC3-12800 DDR3 SDRAM UDIMM
SSD: Crucial M4 128GB SATAIII CT128M4SSD2

Before I begin setting up Unraid and throwing some HDD’s in the case, is there anything I should swap out from the list above?

Thanks, I appreciate your help!

Interested in starting with a Dell PowerEdge T110ii but have a few questions.

  • The guide says it has 5 3.5" bays but all the documentation and photos I’ve found only show 4. Can anyone confirm it has 5?

  • My understanding is that it has 5 internal SATA ports. Can all of them be used with UNRAID? Another thread suggested that they could’t be used because they’re provided by an integrated RAID controller and that a SAS expander should be purchased.

Thanks

I am currently using a Dell PowerEdge T110II as my unraid box, it only has 4 3.5" bays, but you can likely find a drive cage for the 5.25" bay, or what I did was just velcro an SSD into the gap below the DVD drive for my cache.
Yes it has 5 internal SATA ports. The default config has 1 of them for the DVD, but I’m currently using all 5 for drives in unraid. You can easily disable the built in RAID via bios.

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By drive cage do you mean a single cage that holds multiple drives? It looks like the tower only has 2 external 5.25" bays and most HDD cages take up 3?

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In this case if you just wanted to make use of the 5th SATA port with a mechanical hard drive you could get a 5.25" to 3.5" bay converter kit that holds 1 drive. If you were thinking of adding a SAS card there are modules that covert 2 5.25" to 3 3.5" drive bays. Some of them are even hot swapable.

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Decided to build my own. What do you guys think of the Intel S1200BTL? Xeon and Core i3, 2 x SATA3, 4 x SATA2, ECC UDIMM only, ATX, 3 x PCI-E VGA only, dual NICs. There are several on eBay for $30.

I just finished a Micro-ATX build recently using the SuperMicro x9scm. There are SuperMicro models x9scm, x9scm-f, x9scl & x9scl-f. These boards require ECC DDR3 ram, it’s best to also verify that someone has flashed the bios to Rev 2.0. That would allow you to use the E1200v2 series Xeon processors. If the board bios revision is below 2.0 then you are limited to E3-1200v1 model CPUs and DDR3 1333 ram not 1600. I just did a build with one of these in the Fractal Design Node 804 case. You can see my build here: [Build Complete] - NK4.0 Node 804

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Hey everyone, stumbled upon this place while looking to update my home storage. Already convinced the 4.1 killer and HP 290 is the right setup for me. Digging through available hardware and could use some advice.

Already bought the 4.1 combo 4 rack server. Looking for a case and power supply. If available, I probably would have purchased the Rosewill RSV-L4500. Just not an option anymore. What I do see for cheap is the RSV-L4000C
I’m wondering If I can combine it with 3 hot swappable HDD cages and mount it in somehow. Something like lsv-cage or generic-cage.

So something like $64(case) + $75(enclosures) plus whatever mod time. I noticed even the front end on the 4000c looks different, just raw sheet metal. Missing a filter? Not quite sure the difference there.

My gut feeling is that I’ll get nickled and dimed to death on this and is not worth the effort. Not sure what else is available in that price range that would compare either though. Thanks

Hey! I have a Q77H2-AM with the cooler master 350 case.

I’ve literally been unable to screw the mobo in because the screws i got with the case are not long enough for the mobo to be screwed in…

What screws would you recommend?

You need to install the standoffs into the case before screwing the motherboard down.

Yeah. Woops, i have already done that now, stupid question lol.

Sadly the PSU doesnt have any labels on its wires and i’m trying to figure out how to connect the CPU to the motherboard (mobo does not have anything either)… They usually come with manuals, but these were eBay steals so I have to figure out how to do everything now. I literally do not see a CPU power input on the motherboard.

It also looks like the PSU has a loottt of wires (ig to be compatible with everything?), so I’m trying to figure out which ones I need for this mobo… Also, i dont know where the restart/power/hdd led/etc (of that batch) go, is there any harm in trial an error?