My Completed NAS Killer 5.0 Build

Builds [LGA1150] NAS Killer 5.0
1

So this is my first time building a NAS and I just have completed it with the help of the forum and everyone here including the discord server so just want to share my build and my completion with everyone as a token to show appreciation for the community.
I have not used UNRAID and I heard a lot of good things about UNRAID so I decided to join the journey. I owned 2 QNAP NAS, nothing fancy but it has served it purposed as a media server and self host for my back up document. But my QNAP is kind of slow and I almost run out of storage so it is the perfect time for me to look for alternative with the same cost of the machine and I found this forum. I thought about NAS killer 4.0 and was selecting some hardware that go toward the NAS Killer 4.0 but I guess when the time comes, I saw a deal on eBay for the motherboard and CPU so I pull the plug and decided to go with NAS Killer 5.0. Below is my cost and the part that I used for my configuration

  • |Case|Cooler Master N400| $66.05 |
  • |—|---|—|
  • |Mobo|SuperMicro MBD- X10SLL-F Intel Xeon i3 LGA1150 DDR3-1600 ATX Server MotherBoard| $82.58 |
  • |CPU|Intel Xeon E3-1280 V3 E3-1280V3 3.60GHz 8MB LGA1150 Processor| $105.68 |
  • |RAM|Micron 8GB (2x4GB) PC3-12800E 1600MHz DDR3 ECC| $33.02 |
  • |PSU|EVGA - W3 Series 450W ATX 12V/EPS 12V 80 Plus Power Supply - White| $35.22 |
  • |Cache Drive|Samsung 512GB| $- |
  • |CPU Cooler|ARCTIC Alpine 12 LP| $11.00 |
  • |SAS Controller|LSI SAS 9207-8i PCI-E 3.0 Adapter LSI00301 IT Mode Card Host Bus Adapter US| $57.20 |
  • |Cable|CABLEDECONN Mini SAS 36 SFF-8087 to (4) SFF-8482 Connectors with SATA Power 1m| $15.84 |
  • |Fans|ARCTIC P12 PWM PST Value Pack - 120 mm Case Fan, Five Pack, PWM Sharing Technology (PST), Pressure-optimised, Very quiet motor, Computer, 200-1800 RPM - Black/Black | $45.09 |

I have purchased the drive on Bitdeals Tech 2x12 TB (one for parity and one for my storage), I also have another 12TB WD drive that I want to shuck it to include in my build as well.
IMG_7230

IMG_7245
IMG_7245480×640 134 KB

IMG_7246
IMG_7246480×640 148 KB

IMG_7265

The whole journey was fun, that I actually need to do the research on my own and run into multiple hitcup along the way but thanks again to everyone on the server to help me remove that road blocks. The part of waiting for the part to come, put them together is exciting. The total time for me to wait for the part to come was about a month and a half, I’ve waited for all the parts include the hard drive to come to put them together and it probably took me about 2 day (on and off, just build it on my free time) and I have completely put them together.
Finally my UNRAID is up and running.

UNRAID
UNRAID501×884 62 KB

I know I need to do a better job on cable management but this is the best I can do so far so looking for some opinions. Also I have a question about the LSI SAS card, as you can see in the picture that I just plug it into the PCI slot, but does not screw them to the back of the panel to secure it, is it ok to leave it so or how can I secure the card for stopping it to fall out.

4 Likes
2

Build looks great! Where you could use the LSI card without bracket, I personally would not long term. Good news is a compatible bracket is cheap. Here is a link JDM shared a while back.

1 Like
3

Thank you. that is what I am looking for. I was thinking about zip tie the card to the back frame …

4

If you are all Mechanical drives on that server, you could also move that LSI card down a slot and free up the x16 for a GPU. It will not impact drive performance.

5

You mean move the LSI card to this slot ? Not sure I understand what are the mechanical drive but I am planning on using a mix of SAS drive and SATA drive (as what i have currently like the SAS HGST drive and SATA WD drive)

image
image483×639 154 KB

6

Your motherboard has three PCIe slots:

TOP BY CPU: 1 PCI-E 3.0 x8 (in x16) = 7800 MB/s
MIDDLE: 1 PCI-E 3.0 x8 = 7800 MB/s
BOTTOM: 1 PCI-E 2.0 x4 (in x8) = 2000 MB/s

The top two are the fast ones. The bottom slot is the slowest, but is likely fast enough for maxing out your LSI card. Some details.

The LSI card natively supports 8 hard drives. Let’s assume you are going to use all Mechanical Drives. The 12TB drives you got from BitDeals max out around 250MB/sec. If you used all the same 12TB drives, you’d be right at 2000MB/sec, the speed of that bottom slot. This assumes you are using all drives all at the same time. all running at max speed. This is not likely.

Now if you had a mixture of SAS SSD and Mechanical Drives, you’d start looking at maxing out the bottom PCIe slot’s max speed. Or if you used a SAS expanded to get more than 8 drives on the card, then yeah, you could possibly get bottle necked by the bottom port. But I doubt it.

My preference would be to save the top most, faster PCIe slots for a future GPU or NVME card upgrade as they could use all the extra throughput.

Of course, I’m sure someone else has a opinion. Anyone?

1 Like
7

You generally want to prefer the onboard SATA for SSD over the LSI anyways. Better speeds and TRIM support and all that.

8

Thank you and very appreciate the details explanation. I would never know that if you dont point it out for me. :D. And yes I am planning to buy more drive from Bitdeal, and good thing that now I know I have an extra PCI slot to upgrade some GPU in the future :slight_smile:

1 Like