Help Needed for Motherboard / CPU

[lemontart]

Hi everyone,

 

I am new to this community but I am super excited for this new Journey! I was a long time user of Synology NAS but as my need grows, I am looking for a new setup with more than 8 drives. Seems like Synology restricted the list of compatible drives with their NAS, so I would like to move away from them.

 

The new build would be for storage only, I don't need to run Plex, VMs, Docker, ... I am looking for something which meets these requirements:

• Somewhat low power consumption (24/7)
• Minimum 8 drives
• 10Gbe Ethernet

 

Here is the build I was thinking about:

• PSU (Re-used): EVGA 550 B5, 80 Plus Bronze 550W
• Chassis (New): Fractal Design Define 7 XL
• Motherboard (New): AsRock Rack Z490D4U-2L2T
• CPU (New): Intel Pentium G6405 (Intel i3-10110?)
• RAM (New): Crucial 8GB DDR4 2400 CL17 (x4)
• Boot Drive (New): SanDisk SSD Plus 240GB SATA III (x2)
• Cache Drive (Re-used): Sabrent 1TB Rocket NVME PCiE 4.0 M.2 (x2)
• Storage Drive (New): Seagate Exos X16 16TB (x8)
• HBA (New): LSI Internal SAS SATA 9211-8i

 

Here are couple thoughts around my decisions:

• For low power NAS, Intel is better when idle
• A new HBA card will be added when going over 12 disk as I have only 14 SATA connectors total but minus 2 for boot drives

 

I have seen people here with much more experience and knowledge than me as it is my first build, and I would love your opinion on the CPU/Motherboard combo? I was also looking at Ryzen 5 5600X with X570D4U. I would prefer to go with AMD as they don't change their socket every morning but the power draw at idle from the 5000 series might be a deal breaker.

Edited January 17, 2022 by lemontart

[trurl]

6 minutes ago, lemontart said:

Boot Drive (New): SanDisk SSD Plus 240GB SATA III (x2)

Unraid doesn't really use a "boot drive", except for a USB flash drive. That flash drive contains the archives of the OS. The OS is unpacked fresh from those archives at each boot into RAM, and the OS runs completely in RAM. Think of it as firmware.

 

That same flash drive also contains your Unraid license, which is tied to the GUID of that flash drive. And it contains configuration settings you make in the webUI so those can be reapplied at boot.

 

You could use those disks as another pool of fast storage separate from your cache pool.

[lemontart]

2 minutes ago, trurl said:

Unraid doesn't really use a "boot drive", except for a USB flash drive. That flash drive contains the archives of the OS. The OS is unpacked fresh from those archives at each boot into RAM, and the OS runs completely in RAM. Think of it as firmware.

Thank you @trurl, I have 0 experience with UnRaid and I did not know that. Does it means that I need a USB key always attached to my machine?

[trurl]

Just now, lemontart said:

Does it means that I need a USB key always attached to my machine?

Yes

[Hoopster]

23 minutes ago, lemontart said:

Does it means that I need a USB key always attached to my machine?

Yes to read/write configuration changes, but it also means the license and the configuration are transferable to a completely different machine if needed.

 

I have used the same USB key for unRAID for over 10 years and have changed cases, motherboards, CPU, RAM, etc. at least four times with always the same license and configuration to start.  Then I make some changes or add/replace disks and that becomes my new configuration that moves on to the next set of hardware.

[dtyree]

On 1/17/2022 at 4:42 PM, lemontart said:

Thank you @trurl, I have 0 experience with UnRaid and I did not know that. Does it means that I need a USB key always attached to my machine?

You can get a short pigtail going from your USB pins on the MB to a single USB port. Then you can plug the USB drive into the pigtail and then tuck it safely out of the way inside the case somewhere. 

That's what I did when i built my system a few years ago.