These boxes do not look like good options for a NAS as they have limited drive space. Anything with SFF (Small Form Factor) is a clue that it’s not made to hold many extra drives.
I understand that it can be a bit overwhelming. You use case is for a basic NAS, and the primary function of a NAS is storage. Therefore a primary consideration should be # of drive bays. You don’t have to fill all them, but if you limit yourself to 2 or 3, then you limit your ability to easily grow your storage space. You should not need a ton of CPU or memory for this build.
I’d recommend going with the featured build above which I think you will be very happy with. Another option would be to go with one of the Chenbro builds on the NK4.1 thread. (you basically buy a cheap Chenbro rackmount and then move it’s internals over to a case you like.
If you want a smaller form box, the mini-itx build above looks nice.
I picked up a Supermicro X9SCM-F to upgrade my old NAS Killer build from 2018. Does the ram I have work with this board? It’s a bunch of 8gb PC3-10600R sticks. I’m not sure of the speed on them.
I’m very interested in your build since it is exactly what I am looking for. I like to have a super power efficient NAS and do not need any virtualization or “apps” running on it. I like to use a SSD for caching and hope that my RAID is sleeping the majority of time.
Can you help me out with some recommendations? I can’t find your board anywhere - I live in Europe.
You can’t find it, because I recommend it to often ^^
I’m active on several NAS building websites and many people bought this board. Even the Asrock C246 WSI is sold out, although it’s not as power efficient as the Gigabyte.
The Fujitsu D3644-B is still available, but it’s not an ITX Board and mainly distributed by German resellers. But some of them offer international shipping so check them out:
If you need ITX you are at the moment out of options if you need ECC and don’t want IPMI (which adds 5 watts). You could try to add an alert (it seems yesterday was some stock):
If mATX is ok for you, buy the Fujitsu (6x SATA, 1x M.2) or try to find the C246M-WU4 (8x SATA, 2x M.2). But I warn you, prices exploded in the last 2 months.
Do not buy the C246-WU4 (Full ATX). It can’t be as efficient as it has an additional controller for SATA ports 9 and 10.
If you can live without ECC RAM, you could buy a usual B365 board with 6 SATA ports. Some mATX versions even have 2x M.2 slots (like the Asrock B365M Pro4).
New member. Looking to build my first home media PC. My current setup is a 2015 Nvidia Shield Pro as my Plex Media Server and 4 WD Easystore/Elements Drives (Three 10 & One 14 TBs). My friend had equipment he gave to me on this recommended list.
Here’s what I have so far:
Case: Cool Master N400
Power Supply: Evga 500w
512 GB Internal Sata SSD - Pioneer (If I read above correctly I’ll install the OS I choose on this drive.)
Three 10 and one 14 TB drives ( WD Easystore Drives, I know how shuck them already)
For OS I think I’ll lean towards Unraid after doing some research. Can I still access my drives offline if the internet went down at my home? I currently use Radarr, Sonarr and Qbit can I use those on Unraid?
I’m basically building this for myself and several others in my family.
Thanks for the help in advance, still a novice at this but willing to learn.
First I want to say is thank you for taking the time to make guides like this.
I do have a question though. If it was covered I missed it, but has to do with how this works. Currently I have a gaming pc that I run plex off of to over 5 other people. Problem being is when it’s being used sometimes, it eats my cpu up and bottlenecks me in games. My media is stored in a external 8tb.
So I am building a new pc and am going to sell my old one because I want something more quiet and less power hungry to run plex to free my gaming pc.
I was looking at building the ultra quiet build one you have spec for. This seems ideal so I can ditch using externals at the same time. So if I built that pc, I am needing guidance on setting it up. I’ve never used unraid before. I assume there is a guide to setting this OS up? Do I need windows or anything first or do I install by booting from a flash drive? Do I install my plex server on this unraid and it works similar to a normal pc? I liked the idea of having a SSD for having a write cache but honestly not sure how to set that up.
I built the following setup:
ASUS P8B WS
Intel Xeon E3-1260L
4x 4 GiB Hynix 10600E ECC RAM
bequiet System Power 9 400W
LSI SAS 9210-8i
5x 3 TB Seagate Constellation ES.3 ST3000NM0043
I flashed the HBA to IT mode, ver. 20 and everything shows up fine, all 5 HDDs are recognized and I get all relevant information from the HDDs via Linux Mint Live.
The only issue I have is that immediately after HBA BIOS, when the disks are started, the HDD heads start to permanently make clicking noises as if they are tasked with heavy read loads, even though I’m just inside the mainboard BIOS or booted Linux Mint staying idle.
This causes the HDDs to heat up so much that they’re getting hot to the touch in literally 5-10 minutes, even though a 120mm Noctua fan is directly pointed at them and the server case is standing on my living room table at 22-24°C room temperature.
The HDDs are 7,200^-1 versions, so the physical spinning shouldn’t add that much heat, it’s rather like the HBA is tasking the disks with something which causes them to work under full load permanently.
Any tips as to how I can look into this matter or any info on if that happened to anyone before?
I’m feeling them with my hands. Can’t give you exact temperature numbers because I can’t read the S.M.A.R.T. values on my Linux Mint Live version without internet connection. (need apt-get) Have to move the server case to my PC desk to connect it to the internet first. Will do that tomorrow, then I can give you exact temperatures as S.M.A.R.T. is reporting them on a proper timeline.
Can you give me some info on the constant clicking of the drives? Is that normal?
As you can see, disk 3 which physically is sandwiched between 2 and 4 almost reached 50°C.
Checked the BIOS fan-settings of the mainboard, manually set all fans to 100%, removed the dust filter from the front intake and was able to bring the disks down to 40°C.
I conclude that the intake fan doesn’t cut it and despite wanting a silent system, I have to compromise lower temps with louder fan-noise.
By the way, the clicking of the HDD heads ceased after idling for about 20 Minutes. It still returns on reboot but it doesn’t take 20 minutes anymore for it to stop.
Thank you very much for your support.
Up till now I always only worked with SATA drives which are attached to the MB onboard SATA controller and drive temps always were between 27°C and 32°C, depending on room temperature and load.
As long as self-encrypting SAS drives are in their comfort zone between 40°C and 50°C I will just leave it as it is. The datasheet of the ST3000NM0043 states that the drive’s AFR shall be reached at nominal case temperatures of 40°C and that the drives internal tripping point is set to 65°C drive temperature.
I will have to see where the temps end up on normal read loads.