Yeah sorry, forgot about AM4. Also yeah you’re blowing the budget I suspect at that point.
Unless you have a Microcenter near by and can get one of those sweet bundle deals.
I actually found and bought a couple old Lenovo P520 Workstations on Ebay that can support bifurcation. Its motherboard is based on Intel C422 chipset. Come with Xeon W-2145 that can support 48 PCIe lanes. The motherboard has 2x - PCIe X16 slots (each can bifurcate x4x4x4x4). It’s a beast of the machine that guzzle power like no tomorrow. I’m idling around 140W and burst up to 300W Yikes!!
I’m running Xpenology DS3622xs+ built on ARC loader on one of the P520. It runs smooth for last 4 months now. But that power consumption is not sustainable for me. I need something more efficient.
Anybody excited to see what Aoostar will release this year. Rumor of 6-bay NAS with 6 NVME slots based on AMD Ryzen 7 5800U. With dual 10G RJ45 + dual 2.5G. This sounds like my next NAS if all is true and under $1K barebones.
For folks looking for an “Affordable” (using that term loosely) rack mount case, it looks like an old crowd favorite the Rosewill RSV-L4500U 4U case is currently on sale, possibly clearance, at Newegg for its original retail price of $119: https://www.newegg.com/rosewill-rsv-l4500u-black/p/N82E16811147328
The case is still kind of expensive for what it is at $120. It is an entry level case in terms of features and build quality. No hot swap bays for the 15 drives. It is however rack mount will accommodate a range of boards and at 4U you can still use tower coolers and it takes larger fans 120mm / 80mm so you should be able to get decent airflow at reasonable noise levels.
Back when it was a recommended case for earlier NK builds it still retailed for $119 but apparently could at that time often be found under $100. However for the last few years it has been selling new for around $230 so this is a relative deal.
Still thought I would throw this out here in case anyone is looking for a rack-mount case for their build.
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$120 is just fine for a 4500 type case. Good, even. Good to know.
I mean, it’s cool - but it’s well out of the price range of what we’re talking about here.
Lenovo P520 Workstation can be found on EBay for relatively very cheap. Here’s an example for $172. Just add RAM, cheap GPU, and bunch of NVME drives and you got yourself a killer all NVME NAS.
This is a beast of a machine built on Intel C422 chipset. CPU supports 48 PCIe lanes. Bifurcation x4x4x4x4 is supported on both PCIE-X16 slots. It also have 2X NVME slots on-board. With this board, it can support up to 12 NVME drives. Cheapest entry to build all NVME NAS that I can source. This thing is built like a tank with server grade parts. Much better than all the consumer grade parts mentioned in this post IMO. And you don’t need to source a case or PSU.
It’s nice but it’s still not NK6 gear
What does that mean? None of the MB’s mentioned in this post support bifurcation AFAIK. CPU are also mostly low-end consumer grade that doesn’t support many PCIe lanes. If someone wants to build all NVME NAS I like do, none of the parts listed here can support more than 2x NVME. Let me know if you can find anything else that can support up to 12x NVME with bifurcation support and 48 PCIe lanes.
I know someone with this exact build. His NAS has 6 NVME and idles around 60W. I suspect mine is idling higher due to having 4x - 18TB WD Red Pro and I’m using Xpenology which may not support higher C-State for lower power consumption. But 120W idle isn’t bad.
You’re well out of the price range of what we’re talking about here. Besides, the listing you posted doesn’t have a GPU (required as there’s no display output) and RAM is not included. It can also only fit 4 HDD, and is overall much larger than the recommend NAS Killer 6.0 build.
The hardware you linked is great and is a pretty good value.
There’s little reason to use NVMe for bulk file storage.
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Actually the P520 is dirt cheap on EBay $172 for Xeon W-2123 4c/8t. Thow in cheap $40 GPU and $120 for 128GB ECC RDIMMs or $60 for 64GB if you don’t need that much RAM, you have a nice system. Total $332 you have a full system minus HDD. Don’t need to worry about sourcing a seperate case or PSU. P520 comes with a beefy 900W tank of a PSU. That’s comparable in price to system you’ve quoted here for much better hardware. The case can support up to 6 HDD via Flex Bays and 12 NVME drives via bifurcation with AIC cards like Asus HyperX M.2 that can be had for ~$50.
Maybe we can called this Killer NAS 7.0 . It’s not as expensive like you are making it out to be. Only negative I can think off is power consumption. But if you built with all NVME, it can idle ~60W. I know not alot of people will use NVME for bulk storage. Agreed HDD is still more affordable per TB. I use it for ultra fast database access and moving huge files between my NAS and workstation on my 10G network. NVME are coming down in recent months. I pickup up 4x - 2TB NVME Gen 4 for $67 each. Got a ultra fast 8TB scratch disk in RAID0 for my projects. I replicate that data to a 2nd NAS for cold storage so data redundancy is not a major concern on NVME media. Planning to add a 2nd AIC card with another 4x-2TB. That’s 16TB in raw NVME storage. Ultra quiet and efficient which is important to me since my NAS sits next to my desk.
That’s a well priced prebuilt no doubt, but certainly isn’t a new build guide. It’s a 6th gen workstation on the Skylake HEDT socket (2066), which grants you extra PCIe lanes and memory support, and potentially higher core counts - if that covers your use case, go for it, and by all means make a new thread about it and what you’ve done with it to share your experience and allow others to do the same.
The guides are written to have a breadth of options to cover many use cases, using a wide variety of commodity hardware (each one being centered around a particular socket) so they remain relevant even if the linked listings dry up. Not a single prebuilt, or using proprietary motherboards and power supplies. If we were to publish a guide on LGA 2066 systems, that would probably make the list of prebuilts that often are a part of the hardware guides here.
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Totally agreed. I forgot about the proprietary PSU and MB that may turn off some people. But it’s very well built. Should last a very long time.
It has always been the case that prebuilts (both tower and rackmount) offer newer gens at a lower price than the whitebox builds represented by the build guides here. The prebuilt towers are even relatively quiet. Dell T5820 is pretty similar.
What you give up in exchange is flexibility. Non-standard chassis, motherboard form-factor, PSU, power cables (the PDB is integrated into the motherboard), drive trays (even incompatible with other Lenovo towers), etc.
The exception is SuperMicro, and even they produce relatively few chassis that fit standard motherboard sizes. Those chassis that do (826, 846, 847, etc.) command a premium price for that reason.
Historically, the NAS killer builds here have been targeted at home media/plex storage, for which a large array of SAS spinners is a better value than all-NVMe. 16TB raw capacity is nothing for those folks with a lot of media; they’d start from 10x that and go up from there.
If the P520 works for your needs, that’s terrific. If projects are actively using that RAID0 NVMe array, just make sure your recovery processes are well-tested and documented; the purpose of parity RAID is not as a backup but for continuity of service while you source a replacement drive.
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Thanks for the tips! Is the fan you put in the 2.5 drive tray an intake fan or exhaust fan? And do you place it on the top or bottom? New to building computers, so I’m worried about the air flow with my 5 fans.
Hi all
I was planning on upgrading my Super Micro X8DTL-iF, LGA 1366 based build as I don’t love the power use and I want to consolidate my machines. My QNAP is slowly dying due to LPC clock issue, and my unraid uses a lot of power so want something more modern to do the lot.
I am in Aus, and whilst researching the LGA1151 options I end up spending more than I want for that gen system. I have found a few 10th gen parts though that I could get to put a slightly more modern system together for ~$500, which is acceptable to me. Those prices you guys list are simply unattainable down this way unfortunately.
Can someone reality check these parts please and see if I will have any compatibility issues:
- ASUS PRIME B560-PLUS Intel LGA 1200 ATX Motherboard REFURB
- Intel Core i5-10400T 2.0Ghz 6 Core / 12MB LGA1200 SRH3F DESKTOP processor
- Thermalright Assassin X120 Refined SE CPU Air Cooler, 4 Heat Pipes computer Fan
- Corsair CMK32GX4M2E3200C16 Vengeance LPX 32GB (2x16GB) 3200MHz DDR4
- SK Hynix PC801 PCIe Gen4x4 NVMe 256GB - Size 2280 - Gen4 - High Speed x 2 for cache pool
Most concerned about RAM and NVMEs as the compatibility list on the mobo website isn’t helping - all options from that I can find in decent speed are stupid expensive.
I have a LSI SAS 9210-8i from last time I plan to keep using. And I will re-use my Fractal Define R5/ fans etc. No need for more storage at this time.
Cheers all!
Looking at a build with X11SCA and need to choose a cpu. I will only be running TrueNAS for storage and plan to use ECC DDR4 memory. I was think i3-9100t?
I’m also considering the Asrock Z370M which does appear to support ECC but it appears only supports the i3-8100t? I do have the 4 drive mini-its case that was post here last year.
The X11SCA doesn’t fit in a mini-itx case.
Either board will take either i3.
Those components should work just fine together and if they cost less than the previous generation parts then the upgrade makes sense.
The compatibility lists only really matter if you are wanting to get support from the motherboard manufacturer concerning those parts. Just about any DDR4-4600 or lower speed ram should work in the board without issue, it will use XMP to auto set the speed and timings.
One of the M.2 slots on the board is PCIe Gen 3.0 x 4 so your NVME drives in Raid1 will technically be “Limited” to Gen 3.0 x 4 speed but don’t sweat it; that isn’t going to be a bottleneck for you.
The board only has 4 SATA ports but you already have the HBA so no issue there.
Get your build on and enjoy your new converged home server!
Thanks for putting my mind at ease Ian, parts ordered 
Now I need to strategise canabilising storage from my two nas’s into one box without losing everything…