NAS

RurtBeynolds

Hi, I'm looking to put together a NAS and I am getting a bit overwhelmed with all my options for each component.

It will be used purely for storage. I have another old PC that will be used as a media server/plex etc. The main features I'm looking for at..

1. Reasonably quiet, it will be in the living room

2. Smallish

3. Plenty of SATA ports. Will likely have RAID setup so would like scope to expand

4. Low power

I'm open otherwise. Don't have a budget in mind but as the spec isn't huge it would be nice to come under 500? (excl the hard drives)

Thanks in advance!

RurtBeynolds

How does this look?

PCPartPicker Part List: https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/QxxrmD

CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 3200G 3.6 GHz Quad-Core Processor (€84.54 @ Amazon Deutschland) 

Motherboard: Asus Prime B450M-A II Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard (€57.90 @ Amazon Deutschland) 

Memory: G.Skill Aegis 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 CL16 Memory (€35.90 @ Alza) 

Storage: Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500 GB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive (€45.90 @ Alza) 

Case: Fractal Design Node 804 MicroATX Mid Tower Case (€104.10 @ Galaxus) 

Power Supply: EVGA 500 GD 500 W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply (€66.56 @ Amazon Deutschland) 

Total: €394.90

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-11-19 14:09 CET+0100

Spear

What's the reason for going with a home made one from PC parts? Is it so you can control the OS more, e.g. TrueNAS Unraid etc. Otherwise there's plenty of dedicated NAS devices for sale for the half your budget.

RurtBeynolds

Partly just to give me something to do, and partly for cost efficiency. I'm not committed to any single os. I'm open to any and all suggestions.

K.O.Kiki

I'd definitely forget about building and look into buying an ARM-based NAS, e.g. Asustor Drivestor.

Being ARM it's going to use 9-23W total, compared to 100W for 3200G. That's a huge difference fora device that will be on 24/7.

Can start here:

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2021/raspberry-pi-holds-its-own-against-low-cost-arm-nas

Inviere

I'll go against the grain and recommend an i3 Intel build. It was the advice I got here for the same question when I asked a few years back (Unraid). The reason I say Intel is because if you decided to retire the existing Plex PC and run Plex from your upcoming NAS, the iGpu in the Intel chips is a low power beast for transcoding.

You can put a machine together for quite cheap, have it function as a NAS, a Plex Server, have redundancy with parity drives, have tons of expandability, full control over the OS, etc etc.

The all in one units seem nice, but the advice I got here a few years back is they are expensive for what you get and what they can do. Maybe that's changed though from reading the above posts?

Spear

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121390362#Comment_121390362

There's been a lot more flexibility in them recently. Many of the dedicated NAS devices are now standard enough hardware, allowing for more freedom in terms of OS and software. There's also more cases targeted at those building their own, e.g. Jonsbo N2 and N3, with provided backplanes, but fitting an ITX motherboard of your choosing.

RurtBeynolds

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121389869#Comment_121389869

That looks interesting, thanks. Something for me to consider!

RurtBeynolds

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121390550#Comment_121390550

Definitely more cases but there's a lack of availability online from what I can tell. The case I was looking at (fractal node 804) seems to only be available from amazon resellers, not amazon directly, and I am wary of going down that path. Looks similar for jonesbo.

The node 304 is available however and looks ideal, but that's mini ITX only, so would need to think on that.