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

[JDM_WAAAT]

Looks good to me. I don’t think the case is very good, though.

[Yuri]

Thank you for your feedback! I was looking for a cheap solution and found that case. N400 is 83 dollars now. Do you have other suggestions for the case? How the case can play the important role unless MB won’t fit in?

[JDM_WAAAT]

I think the N400 is perfectly fine at $83. The N400 can hold many more drives than the Zalman can, and is much easier to work in.

[Yuri]

Thank you for the advise! I just realized that the original case I selected can hold only two 3.5 hdds. Do I need RAID card to connect the drives as SAS? I am planning to order WD 4TB red two drives and run them in RAID 1 I believe when the data is duplicated in case one of the drives fail?

[Yuri]

Once the two drives fill, expected to add another pair of drives.

[JDM_WAAAT]

Well, if you’re running Unraid or TrueNAS, you explicitly do not want a RAID card. You do want a SAS HBA, however. This allows you to connect SAS or SATA HDDs.

[SgtBatten]

Would anyone be able to share some anecdotal power consumption figures?

My current dual xeon x5667 Lego build is drawing 170w with 7HDDs and 2 SSDs. That’s $1 a day just to be on.

I’m considering modernising it with low power mobo and CPU as I already have a Plex quicksync box with i5 8500.

[faultline]

150-400w

Dual x5670 24 hdd 1 ssd

[palti0r]

(Sorry for my bad english)
Hi,
i upgraded my old pc and still have the following components:

Mainboard: ASUS P8Z77-I Deluxe (90-MIBI70-G0EAY0DZ)

CPU: Intel Core i7-3770K, 4C/8T, 3.50-3.90GHz, tray (CM8063701211700)

RAM: Corsair Vengeance LP schwarz DIMM Kit 16GB, DDR3-1600, CL9-9-9-24 (CML16GX3M2A1600C9)

Case: SilverStone Sugo SG08 with 600W ATX 80 PLUS Bronze (only 1x 3.5", 2x 2.5" but i could use the graphics card space for 2~3x 3.5" for the beginning.)

Are the existing things good enough or do I have to replace something?
I am new at server/nas building.

[ratt]

Looking to build my first NAS with Unraid. Don’t need it to be super quiet but pretty much am looking at a similar build to the Ultra-Quiet “Plus” build

Case	Fractal Design Node 804
Motherboard	Supermicro X9SCM
CPU	E3-1270 V2
Ram	2x8GB PC3-10600E
Power	EVGA 500 W1
SAS HBA	LSI 9201-8i

Open to suggestions / modifications. This will likely just be a standalone NAS. I know it’s overkill in some aspects but I want to make sure it’s future proof and upgradable. I’m currently using a ReadyNas that’s maxed out and overdue for an upgrade. Still need to add a cooler? And not sold on the case, eventually I’d like to move to a rack, but currently don’t have one and that case was in stock/available.

[JDM_WAAAT]

Looks good to me so far. E3-1230v2 or 1240v2 will probably be cheaper with nearly the same performance.

Check out the Adaptec ASR series cards, they may be cheaper.

[Official] Adaptec ASR series SAS HBA overview

Overview The Adaptec ASR series RAID/HBA cards listed in this thread are known to be compatible with Unraid, FreeNAS, Windows, Linux, and more. Special thanks to @riggi for his knowledge and encouragement to give these HBAs a try. Caution You’ve probably seen people mod their LSI cards and strap a little fan to them. I don’t think it’s necessary to do it with LSI cards, as I’ve never had one throw an overheat alarm. However, it’s definitely necessary with these Adapte…

[zzyzx]

I was going to build a NAS Killer 4, but I noticed that the M92p Tiny with a 3rd gen processor is listed as a prebuilt recommendation. In fact, that’s already my current server build.

I’m pretty happy with it except that its ‘storage’ is one internal SSD and two external USB-A drives. It runs Nextcloud and my backup software, that’s it.

Would you guys recommend I build a ‘proper’ NAS Killer 4.0 or should I just build a DAS for this little guy? Maybe 2-4 drives in a DAS and run unRaid?

[m00fster]

@m00fster

To start, thanks for putting all these various build guides together and taking the time to engage with the community! I’m not sure on everyone else, but I’m in need of a dual purpose box: mostly media server (for my local LAN only) but it needs to be a Windows box with dual monitors for remote work purposes. I know this defeats some of the groundwork laid out around here (I think around talk of unRAID and the like) but I think I could still manage a build with the hardware suggestions here including the RAID cards. The real part where I don’t have experience: can you install “normal” Windows on the server grade boards/CPUs or would I be stuck/better off looking at the suggested consumer grade components?

Man, it’s been a hot minute since I first discovered these builds and signed up here! So a bit of a follow-up to this post; I haven’t yet followed any of the advice contained within here BUT I was given an old PC by a coworker not too long after the “COVID WFH shift” and all along I’ve been intending to make it my workstation file share hybrid box. I have it up and running Windows 10 for work (and light gaming) purposes but I haven’t truly been utilizing it much yet due to avoiding the storage situation.

So to get my storage handled, acknowledging (like in my original post) that most on here follow a different path, what’s the most straightforward option to train storage and redundancy? I know the board I have has onboard RAID but am I better suited to pick up one of the suggested controllers in IR mode and have the card manage it instead? Ideally I’d want to acquire some (3-4?) of the 8TB Sun SAS drives I’ve seen JDM suggesting in other threads, but not sure if I just use the card to throw them in a 1E array or what. The intended use is just to backup family photos and share some media content across my LAN (via Plex/Jellyfin/Kodi/etc.).

Thoughts?

Freebie PC consists of:

• CPU: Intel i7-3770k
• Motherboard: ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe
• RAM: Crucial Ballistix Sport 32GB (8GB x 4) DDR3 PC3-12800 (BLS8G3D1609DS1S00.16FD)
• GPU: SAPPHIRE 102-C67111-01-AT Radeon R9 290 4GB