[Guide] NAS Killer 5.0

This is super helpful. I have an 1150 CPU and a couple 4G RAM sticks after upgrading another box and had just purchased an LSI SAS controller to upgrade my file server, but it’s an old socket 775 board with only one pciex16 slot and won’t boot with the SAS controller installed. After reading this I managed to find a supermicro X10SAE on ebay for $80 and ordered the Cooler Master N400, a CPU cooler and a SAS breakout cable on Amazon. Back to ebay for four 3TB SAS drives and I’m all set, almost. Just have to remember to look for a PSU at EVGA on Wednesday. Thanks!

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Regarding the HDD Options, I know you’ve mentioned used Hard drive options. However, from inquiring from the Ebay sellers I’m being told some of the drives have thousands of hours logged. Is there a baseline for the number of hours that are fine for the used drives? Or its more if the drive is healthy? Just wanted to be sure before I purchased by hard drives

I had read a while back on backblaze that you should expect to start seeing errors on HDDs after the 4 year mark (someone please correct me if my memory fails me here). That said, if these drives were running 24x7 in a data center, that would be 24hrsx365days or 8,760 hrs of use. So, how many thousands of hours logged are we talking about here? The four year mark turns into a little over 35,000 hours. Hope this give you a baseline to go off of for future reference.

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Great guide! Here is a silly question: My wall mounted rack has a total of 6U. I have 3U available. I was going to pull the trigger on one of these Rosewill 2U Server Chassis that have 5 bays. Currently I have my collection on 3 external drives (totaling around 10 TB).

Other than overall storage capacity, are there any other downsides with this? I suppose I could just focus on buying larger drives, too. Any recommended 3u rack mounted chassis?

What kind of performance upgrade do you think you see on say from the most basic lowest power 4.0 build to one of the better 5.0 builds assuming your not trying to transcode?

Well, the CPU is the main determining factor, so let’s take a look at Passmark scores.


Common low-end NAS Killer 4.0 low-end CPU:

  • Xeon E3-1225 v1 (4C/4T)
    • 5889 multi-core
    • 1739 single core

Compared to a higher end NAS Killer 4.0 CPU:

  • Xeon E3-1230 v2 (4C/8T)
    • 8860 multi-core
    • 1947 single core

Compared to a couple NAS Killer 5.0 CPUs:

  • E3-1225 v3 (4C/4T)
    • 7238 multi-core
    • 2012 single core
  • E3-1280 v3 (4C/8T)
    • 9841 multi-core
    • 2259 single core

This information was taken from the CPU compendium.

Theres a lot of considerations with 2U chassis, such as cooler height, louder fans (smaller fans have to work harder to move the same amount of air), shorter and/or fewer expansion slots, etc. Not to mention potentially harder to find or more expensive PSUs, fewer drive bays, and cramped build conditions.

Sure, you only have 3 HDD now, but that can change really fast. Get a 4U Rosewill and don’t look back. That should leave you with 2U of room to play with for smaller/shorter equipment, don’t forget with smaller items you can rack things from and back.

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Yeah that makes sense just trying to see if you have a feeling for kind of difference this makes in real world performance in NAS like tasks. Does network storage work faster with a higher passmark? Are there other services you run on a NAS box? I currently have an HP290 running my plex server, soulseek, and my torrent client. I’m not sure if any of those tasks would move off to the NAS or not. I have a pretty simple network with just me and my wife.

@JDM_WAAAT It looks like there are some typos in both the Consumer and Server Motherboards sections. In the SATA column there are several entries that include errors such as “SATA4” or multiple “SATA3” lines. Below I have included a small section of the table as an example (Note the bold text in the SATA column). If you could please double check the information provided it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your assistance.

Sure, I’ll give that a look. It’s basically google sheets auto incrementing numbers… :anger:

I think you’ll find that any of those CPUs will be fine for NAS like tasks. My NAS has been running since 2014 on an AMD E1-2100 Dual Core (CPU Mark of 406). It runs plex server (no transcoding with a max of 1080p content), a torrent client, and some other LAN only webservers. I joined this site because it’s finally time to upgrade (can’t run Home Assistant).

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Yeah after shuffling around I think I’m going to end up using a slightly hacked together SFF Dell Optiplex 7020 with an I5 4590. Still trying to think out everything though. I would think that would be good from a processer standpoint especially with offloading plex transcoding to its own box. How big a role does ram play in a NAS box? Like is 8 gigs enough?

The 7020 can hold 1-2 hard drives depending on the model. Surely that’s not enough for a NAS, unless you have some other plans?

Yeah that is the hacked together part. It’s currently sitting in a bigger case with a different 430 watt power supply. To get it to work you have have the OEM front io panel, fan and power switch. The io panel is just sitting next to the MO hooked up and the power switch is mounted in a hole I drilled in the side of the case. I did this to fit a full size 1650 supper I have. Its been my main rig for a little while and works fairly well.

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Hi! I’m trying to follow this guide to build my NAS 5.0 system. It is my first build so am getting overwhelmed. I bought the ASRock B85PRO4 Motherboard and am trying to figure out where to install the ssd.

I bought HP SSD EX900 M.2 but i do not see M.2 slot in the board :frowning:

That’s because the motherboard does not have a M.2 slot. However, you can get an adapter.

PCIe → M.2

  • JacobsParts adapter (link)
    • PCIe x4, x8, x16 (cuttable if needed)
    • M.2 2230, 2242, 2260, 2280 support
    • No PCIe bracket needed for high/low profile
  • EZDIY-FAV adapter (link)
    • PCIe x4
    • M.2 2230, 2242, 2260, 2280, 22110 support
    • PCIe bracket for high/low profile
  • RIITop adapter (link)
    • Heatsink included
    • PCIe x4, x8, x16 (cuttable if needed)
    • M.2 2230, 2242, 2260, 2280 support
    • No PCIe bracket needed for high/low profile
  • ULANSeN adapter (link)
    • PCIe x4
    • M.2 2230, 2242, 2260, 2280 support
    • PCIe bracket for high/low profile
  • Asus Hyper M.2 x16 adapter (link)
    • supports 4x NVMe
      • Requires PCIe bifurcation support
    • PCIe x16
    • M.2 2230, 2242, 2260, 2280, 22110 support
    • High profile only

I recommend the JacobsParts adapter.

Thank you for the quick reply! Would it be better to return the M.2 SSD and get a regular 2.5" SATA SSD? I still have a 10 day return window i can take advantage of. Just making sure i keep everything compatible with each other and there’s no issues.

What software do you plan on running?

I’m just going to run Plex on it, no other servers. I’m planning on getting the Unraid OS and running everything using dockers. The other applications it’ll run are the sonarr, radarr and all related apps for gathering media. I will be using it mostly to Direct play, with 3 - 4 transcoding streams for friends.

If you’re running Unraid OS, you’ll have no problem with using a NVMe adaptor. It’s what I would recommend anyway!