New Raid NAS

randombar

Hi All,

So I recently bought NETGEAR RN204 but I'm finding it not as powerful as I like. Also the fact that I can't install dropbox on it is quite annoying. (full dropbox not just dropbox up)

I'm looking for recommendations for an upgrade, build my own? (If so is there a thread of HW recommendations) get another hp proliant? or buy a better spec one?

Thanks for your time.
Gary

P.S. Apologies if this is a repetitive post, I couldn't find similar on my search.

davo2001

If you have the money then consider a Synology or QNAP.

I use Synology and Buffalo NAS's personally.

stimpson

I built a replacement unRAID box recently after bricking my HP Microserver. It was an N54L and struggled to transcode in Plex, so I wanted to sort it once and for all. On top of that I wanted it to run silent (or as close as possible) and I wanted space for 6 HDD's and 2 SSD's. The ITX board has 6 x SATA III ports and I have a PCI 2 x SATA III for when I need to add more drives.

Parts were:

Mini-Box picoPSU-160-XT High Power 24 Pin Mini-ITX Power Supply £41.68
StarTech.com 8in 24 Pin ATX 2.01 Power Extension Cable £3.32
Gigabyte H97N-WIFI Intel LGA1150 H97 Mini-ITX Motherboard (2x DDR3, 6x USB3.0, 4x USB2.0, GBE, LAN, HDMI, DP) £110.38
Crucial CT2KIT102464BA160B 16GB (2X8GB) DDR3 240 Pin PC3-1600 CL9 Unbuffered UDIMM Memory Module Kit £37.99
LEICKE PSU Power Supply Charger 120W 12V 10A 5.5*2.5 mm | Compatible with picoPSU, Routers, LED Strips, TFTs & LDC Displays £23.99
Lian Li PC-Q08B PC-Q08 Mini-ITX Case 3.5 Inches/5.25 Inches USB 3.0 Black £94.53

I got an i7-5775C at a deeply discounted rate which was complete overkill, but it suited my needs on TDP and speed and the price was right.

Total for the above was ~ €400

I already had 5 x 3TB WD Reds and a Crucial 480GB SSD from my previous build, but to buy them new would push you close to a grand. Looking at that it's hard to make the case for not buying a HP Microserver, but I may have hit performance limits and it would be far from silent.

As regards OS, I run unRAID and would highly recommend it (unless you need RAID read speeds). It's a small OS that runs in memory from a USB drive and offers parity protection without data striping (so more efficient use of space) . It's all configurable in a browser and supports many applications such as Dropbox as a Docker (again, all downloadable and configurable in your browser). It even supports full virtualisation if you want to run VM's.

randombar

stimpson wrote: »

I built a replacement unRAID box recently after bricking my HP Microserver. It was an N54L and struggled to transcode in Plex, so I wanted to sort it once and for all. On top of that I wanted it to run silent (or as close as possible) and I wanted space for 6 HDD's and 2 SSD's. The ITX board has 6 x SATA III ports and I have a PCI 2 x SATA III for when I need to add more drives.

Parts were:

Mini-Box picoPSU-160-XT High Power 24 Pin Mini-ITX Power Supply £41.68
StarTech.com 8in 24 Pin ATX 2.01 Power Extension Cable £3.32
Gigabyte H97N-WIFI Intel LGA1150 H97 Mini-ITX Motherboard (2x DDR3, 6x USB3.0, 4x USB2.0, GBE, LAN, HDMI, DP) £110.38
Crucial CT2KIT102464BA160B 16GB (2X8GB) DDR3 240 Pin PC3-1600 CL9 Unbuffered UDIMM Memory Module Kit £37.99
LEICKE PSU Power Supply Charger 120W 12V 10A 5.5*2.5 mm | Compatible with picoPSU, Routers, LED Strips, TFTs & LDC Displays £23.99
Lian Li PC-Q08B PC-Q08 Mini-ITX Case 3.5 Inches/5.25 Inches USB 3.0 Black £94.53

I got an i7-5775C at a deeply discounted rate which was complete overkill, but it suited my needs on TDP and speed and the price was right.

Total for the above was ~ €400

I already had 5 x 3TB WD Reds and a Crucial 480GB SSD from my previous build, but to buy them new would push you close to a grand. Looking at that it's hard to make the case for not buying a HP Microserver, but I may have hit performance limits and it would be far from silent.

As regards OS, I run unRAID and would highly recommend it (unless you need RAID read speeds). It's a small OS that runs in memory from a USB drive and offers parity protection without data striping (so more efficient use of space) . It's all configurable in a browser and supports many applications such as Dropbox as a Docker (again, all downloadable and configurable in your browser). It even supports full virtualisation if you want to run VM's.

Thanks for that, I like the idea of a new build all right and have all the disks. Had a proliant before didn't like the way when the mobo went I needed a new box. Nice low power PSU also.

Where did you order your kit from, used Hardware versand before but they're gone now.

stimpson

GaryCocs wrote: »

Thanks for that, I like the idea of a new build all right and have all the disks. Had a proliant before didn't like the way when the mobo went I needed a new box. Nice low power PSU also.

Where did you order your kit from, used Hardware versand before but they're gone now.

I bricked my N54L after taking it apart to clean. The PCI SATA card wasn't seated correctly and it toasted the motherboard on startup. Not worth replacing, but TBH I wasn't happy with the performance and there was no way to upgrade the CPU.

All of that kit was bought on Amazon except the case which I picked up on Adverts. I got an ARCTIC Freezer i11 on adverts too, but a large air cooler will only fit if you get a PicoPSU - a normal PSU will restrict your clearance over the CPU. Oh, and I got 6 right-angled SATA III cables on adverts too.

There was also a couple of StarTech.com 4x SATA Power Splitter Adaptor Cable daisy chained to give me 7 SATA power connectors as the PicoPSU only has a single connector.

The CPU comes in at around €400 retail, but it's overkill for a server. You should be able to pick something up much cheaper.

One reason I didn't replace my N54L with a Gen 7 Microserver is the lack of space for drives and the fact that they make a bit of noise. If that wasn't such a problem for you then it could be worth thinking about. You could replace the CPU with a Xeon and bump the RAM to 16GB for a fraction of what I spent

randombar

stimpson wrote: »

I bricked my N54L after taking it apart to clean. The PCI SATA card wasn't seated correctly and it toasted the motherboard on startup. Not worth replacing, but TBH I wasn't happy with the performance and there was no way to upgrade the CPU.

All of that kit was bought on Amazon except the case which I picked up on Adverts. I got an ARCTIC Freezer i11 on adverts too, but a large air cooler will only fit if you get a PicoPSU - a normal PSU will restrict your clearance over the CPU. Oh, and I got 6 right-angled SATA III cables on adverts too.

There was also a couple of StarTech.com 4x SATA Power Splitter Adaptor Cable daisy chained to give me 7 SATA power connectors as the PicoPSU only has a single connector.

The CPU comes in at around €400 retail, but it's overkill for a server. You should be able to pick something up much cheaper.

One reason I didn't replace my N54L with a Gen 7 Microserver is the lack of space for drives and the fact that they make a bit of noise. If that wasn't such a problem for you then it could be worth thinking about. You could replace the CPU with a Xeon and bump the RAM to 16GB for a fraction of what I spent

Hmmm can you replace the chip on the newer microservers? Might take another look.

stimpson

GaryCocs wrote: »

Hmmm can you replace the chip on the newer microservers? Might take another look.

Indeed you can:

https://b3n.org/installed-xeon-e3-1230v2-in-gen8-hp-microserver/