NK4 + pfsense Build Feedback

Hi all,

This forum and discord has been an immense help in me getting off to a great start for my first ever NAS! I didn’t stop at NAS, because the pfsense custom router sounded very intriguing, so I figured I would build one of those too. I did overshoot my initial budget by quite a bit but I am justifying that by the fact that these builds will last me for a long time to come.

NK4 parts and cost

Type Part Cost
Case Fractal Node 804 $130
Motherboard Supermicro X9SCM-F REV 1.1A $81
CPU Xeon E3-1270 $44
RAM 16Gb 4x4GB ECC UDIMM Micron $49
PSU MasterWatt 550W $44
CPU Cooler Coolermaster Hyper 212 black $35
SAS Expansion PCI-E SAS9211-8l LSI $24
Cache drive Lite-On EP2 960GB 221100 M.2 $70
M.2 Adapter PCI-E M.2 Adapter 221100 $14
SAS cables Mini SAS to SFF cables $12

I bought 6 of the SAS HDDs from the RTG deal JDM posted for a total of $300. Impressive deal!

I am planning on using 1 of them as parity so I will have a total of 20TB available, which is plenty! I wanted a stylish case since this may lie around outside of a server room, hence the Fractal Node. I missed the cyber monday deal on the rosewill unfortunately.

I did not have patience to wait so I have bought all these parts already, but if anyone thinks there’s a better alternative i am willing to return/exchange.

For the pfSense build, here are the parts

Type Part Cost
SFF Unit Lenovo Thinkcenter E73 SFF $43
CPU Intel core i3-4130 included
RAM 4Gb included
HDD 250GB included
Ethernet NIC Intel I350T4V2 4 port with low-profile bracket $27
Wireless AP Ubiquity Unifi AP Lite $78

The plan is to plug the pfsense box to the switch and then NAS and the wireless AP to the switch.

Did I get everything? Do you guys see anything that I missed?

I am really excited and waiting for all the parts to arrive!!! Christmas is coming early!