2 VMs and 10 containers. Your feedback please.

[morethanenough]

Hi all,

 

New to the forum and ready to jump in. The machine will be running 2 VMs, one will be Home Assistant, undecided on the other, could be Windows with BlueIris. The containers will be undemanding. I have no need for any transcoding whatsoever, so I thought the addition of a GPU was not necessary. The intention is to run this machine headless. Being a NAS, it will be streaming media to an old NVIDIA Shield TV running KODI, which is perfect for my multimedia needs.

 

My aim is to have as low power consumption as possible and to be as silent as possible.

 

I don't have any huge needs for storage space. I chose the 3 IronWolf drives so that I can use 2x4TB for storage and one 4TB for parity. I'd like to avoid WD Reds because of the issue with SMR vs CMR drives.

 

Reason for choosing this specific motherboard is that the WiFi/BT dongle is removable (it is actually mounted on an M.2 slot) and can be replaced with a Google Coral M.2 Accelerator A+E key, which I intend to use with Frigate in association with HA. This is an option that I couldn't find in any other mini-ITX board, but if there is an alternative, I'm all ears.

 

The RAM is in pairs as this is needed for the APU (see below) according to the mobo's manual.

 

I know that the CPU is not compatible with the motherboard unless the BIOS is updated, but that's an easy problem to solve.

 

In regards to the CPU, I am not sure if this is the right one for the job, or a huge overkill. I like that it is in fact an APU, because this removes the need to buy a separate GPU (which would mean more power consumption). If you think there are other AM4 CPUs that could cover the needs of the VMs and LXCs above, and could actually be of lower TDP, let me know. I'd love to remove the need for a CPU Cooler with a fan and go fanless instead, such as with an ARCTIC Alpine AM4 Passive (that supports up to 47W TDP). I read somewhere that if the case is well ventilated, the Alpine could actually cool a CPU of higher TDP, so I have some hopes there that one of you will come up with a eureka! moment.

 

I am going for a Jonsbo N1 NAS Case for £130.76, mainly because of the size and the fact that the HDDs will be spaced out to improve cooling.

 

For the PSU, I chose the one modular platinum one below due to the dimensions and excellent reviews. PC PartPicker says the estimated wattage is around 183W, so the 450W PSU is definitely overkill and could be replaced with something smaller (and cheaper). Provided that the external dimensions fit the case (must be ≤150mm), I am open any alternatives you may recommend.

 

PCPartPicker Part List Link

 

CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 3200G 3.6 GHz Quad-Core Processor  (£205.99 @ Amazon UK)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-L9a-AM4 33.84 CFM CPU Cooler  (£39.99 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: ASRock Fatal1ty B450 Gaming-ITX/ac Mini ITX AM4 Motherboard  (£104.96 @ Technextday)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-2666 CL16 Memory  (£111.50 @ Amazon UK)
CACHE: Patriot VPN100 256 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  (£42.46 @ Technextday)
DATA Storage: 3 x Seagate IronWolf NAS 4 TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive  (£88.98 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: Corsair SF 450 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular SFX Power Supply  (£99.99 @ Corsair UK)
 

The above will leave me 1 SATA port on the motherboard for future expansion.

 

Based in the UK, and electricity costs are now quite high, so any suggestions for improvement, particularly in ways to reduce power consumption or total cost, would be greatly appreciated.

[doesntaffect]

Good combo. Could be optimized with a 35W CPU, Noctua redux fans and 2,5 inch disks if you want to lower the power consumption.

[morethanenough]

Thank you @doesntaffect

Are you referring to 2,5" HDD disks or SSD's?

Also, which CPU would you recommend?

How about an AMD Athlon 3000G?

Edited November 18, 2021 by morethanenough
Added CPU

[doesntaffect]

HDDs, for example Seagate BarraCuda Compute 4 or 5TB. Or Seagate SkyHawk (specifically certified for 24/7 operations, 3.5“), the latter has a slightly higher power consumption.

 

3000G should be ok for your purpose. If you can / want afford a 4 core 35W cpu I‘d pick that. But there are not many options, like Ryzen 5 PRO 2400GE or 5650GE.

 

Alternatively and if your bios allows pick a 65W cpu and set it to 35W through BIOS settings. Drawback is, that you noticeably limit the CPU performance for some use cases such as transcoding.

 

There are also much faster PCIE 4 NVME SSD with low power consumption available like the Kingston KC3000 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD 512GB. PCIE 3 NVMEs consume a little bit less, though they a slower. Watch out for SSDs with enough TBW, depending on your use case and expected life span. 
 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 18, 2021 by doesntaffect