New To All Things NAS and Home Build

General Introductions
1

Hello!
New to all things NAS/Server related and I’m looking to buy/build.
Was debating Synology (ds220j) until I found this site via YouTube.

I’ve spent the las couple of days reading over the NAS Killer 4.0 thread and safe to say I’m a little overwhelmed.

That said, I’m still debating but also came across some Lenovo ThinkCentres (m83/93 SFF or m93 tower) or Dell optiflex (7010) that are listed on the 4.0 thread on Amazon’s Woot! This week for a seemingly decent price.
Could these be an option and just add extra HDDs?

My needs are simple. Mainly want a place for file share/backup and dump all my photos vs all the cloud services I currently use. Possible remote workstation and would like to be accessible from my phone/iPad. No real plans for streaming but who knows. Also want to keep things somewhat small and power efficient but not opposed to a tower.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

2

Welcome!

I’d take a look at the NAS Killer 4.1 supplemental, and build your own!

3

Much appreciated! Working on that now. Gathering my list and will likely do with combo 4.

One question. I found the HGST drives renewed on Amazon for a decent price with a warranty but they’re SATA vs SAS.
Is that a problem?

4

The 4.1 motherboard has sata ports, so those drives should be fine. And it has way more sata ports than those SFF PCs you mentioned.

5

There are better prices than buying drives on Amazon. One of our users here @BitDeals offers great pricing on both SATA and SAS drives.

6

Holy crap you weren’t kidding thanks!!

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7

BitDeals midweek mayhem just dropped with a great deal on some 8tb drives. But will these work with the Nk4.1 builds?

8

Yes, you’d need a 4Kn compatible SAS controller like the LSI 9207-8i.

9

Well guess I’m all in. Combo 5 on the 4.1 builds just arrived. 2 6tb hgst drives and psu on the way. Will put a list together soon and update here.

Thanks for the help!

10

Sweet, did you decide on a case yet?

11

Yessir! Going with the recommended N400 case. Similar to the completed builds I’ve seen here. Waiting on a Kingston SSD, better usb drive, cpu cooler, cables and psu. Fired it up and flashed the sas controller without issue so far. Looking forward to playing around with unraid. May add Blu-ray drive to unload some disks.

12

Finally put together the parts list and everything is up and running with an Unraid trial. Just waiting on the power supply and looking for an ODD to rip my movies.

Type Part Price
Combo Motherboard/CPU/RAM 142 (Combo 4 • 16GB Option) $151.00 OBO ($135)
Case CoolerMaster N400 $59.99 Amazon
Motherboard Tyan S5512WGM2NR Included
CPU Intel Xeon E3-1240 Included
RAM 16GB DDR3 ECC UDIMM Included
SAS Controller LSI SAS2008 onboard Included
CPU Cooler Thermaltake Gravity i2 $11.99 Amazon
SDD Pioneer APS-SL3N-256 $26.99 Amazon
HDD 4 X HGST Ultrastar 6TB $250 Amazon
PSU Thermaltake SMART 600W $50.00
Total ----- $483.97

Not including a couple of fans and cables because I already had them around.

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