Thoughts on my first build before i pull the trigger

[multiplY]

Hi, I did a lot of research over the last few weeks but im still very new to this topic so i would be glad if somebody would take a look at my build and point out some flaws or recommendations.

 

What is your budget?

At first it was 1000€ (drives included) but i highered a bit, my current build costs around ~1200€ and im still ok with that but i dont want to go significantly higher.

 

How many drives do you want your server to be able to support and how much capacity do you need?

I thought alot about that and im OK with the 6 drives that the Node 304 can hold. I will start with 4 drives, which gives me 24TB minus 6TB for parity. That should be enough for the foreseeable future and then i can still easily add another two drives. When the 6 drive setup still isnt enough in the far future im totally OK with upgrading the whole setup and get a new Case, MoBo and so on.

 

Is expandability important to you?  If so, what's your long term goal?

This is allready partially answered in the previous question. I like the ability to add another two drives but that should be enough for a long time. I'm not willing to get a bigger case just to be able to add more drives in 6 years or something.

 

What is your use case? Are you interested in running any unRAID Add Ons?  If so, which ones?  Be specific.

Pure network storage for movies and a backup of my Computer is the main use case here. I want to experiment with dockers like plex, piHole ,syncthing, OpenVPN and stuff like that but that will not be the main use case and i dont want to spend much more on a better CPU.

If i will use plex, one video stream at a time will be enough and i think this CPU is able to handle that.

I dont want to run VMs, i know i would need a better CPU and more RAM for that.

 

Power consumption is very important to me. At first i planned to use a Atom CPU but then i learned that a modern Coffee Lake CPU will use about the same power in idle, is that correct? I like the idea of having some head room for stuff like plex but also having a low power consumption in idle mode.

 

I know i have chosen consumer grade hardware, the first NAS software i looked into was FreeNAS and i looked into server grade stuff like supermicro boards and ECC RAM but i learned that this is not really needed for a home use NAS for 1-3 users and replaceable data on it. Data that is really important to me and not replaceable will additionally be saved to other places like external HDD and maybe some cloud. I know that this hardware will die at some point but given the fact that this is my first NAS and its not ment to hold forever, thats OK for me. I still hope i will get alot of years out of it and i dont have to replace everything at the day the warranty is over.

 

Do you want to run green/low power drives or faster 7200 rpm drives?  If you don't have a specific need for 7200 rpm drives, then choose green drives. What do you plan to run for hard drives?

I think WD Reds will be a solid choise.

 

Do you have any spare parts laying around that you would like to apply towards your build?  This includes drives.

No spare Parts, need to buy the whole setup.

 

TLDR - Main Goals:

- Low Power Consumption

- 4-6 drives with RAID5-type redundancy

- Use Case: Casual Home Use Network Storage and some spare processing power to play around with some Dockers but in a very Limited way

- Budget 1000€ - 1200€

- Low noise level but not silent

 

The Build: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/K8xgQZ

 

CPU: Intel - Pentium Gold G5400 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor

Motherboard: ASRock - H370M-ITX/ac Mini ITX LGA1151 I know i could get a cheaper board when i switch to Micro ATX but i like the case and it only fits Mini-ITX

RAM: G.Skill - Value 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory

HDD: 4x Western Digital - Red 6TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive

Case: Fractal Design - Node 304 Mini ITX

PSU: SeaSonic - 450W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX

Fans: 1x Noctua - NF-A14 PWM 2x Noctua - NF-A9 PWM 1x InLine 33328Y Y-Adapter for 4-Pin Fans CPU Cooler: Stock

USB Stick for OS: Kingston DataTraveler SE9 16GB, USB-A 2.0 (DTSE9H/16GB)

[witalit]

All looks good to me, this seems like a pretty solid build. unRAID is super versatile, you can pretty much run it on anything. 

 

I think this CPU will be enough for your needs and will be low-power. 

[multiplY]

Thanks for looking over it, i just pulled the trigger

[witalit]

Keen to see a build log , Good stuff!

[Jorgen]

Thanks for looking over it, i just pulled the trigger

I know this is too late, but I recommend a SFX PSU in that case. Nothing wrong with the seasonic, I have the exact same model. But it takes up more room than necessary and it doesn’t have a silent mode, the fan is always spinning. Space is at a premium in the node 304 especially when you have 4+ drives. You will discover this soon when trying to wrangle all the cables into submission...

The standard case fans are pretty good too, I wasn’t able to justify the noctua cost when I was trying to make my server as silent as possible.

Please post build logs!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Jorgen]

Also check out this thread for some more thoughts on building in that case:

 

Edited August 1, 2018 by Jorgen
Stupid Tapatalk messing up links

[multiplY]

Quote

I know this is too late, but I recommend a SFX PSU in that case. Nothing wrong with the seasonic, I have the exact same model. But it takes up more room than necessary and it doesn’t have a silent mode, the fan is always spinning. Space is at a premium in the node 304 especially when you have 4+ drives. You will discover this soon when trying to wrangle all the cables into submission...

Yup, kind of too late I was thinking about getting the fully passive cooled seasonic but the prive was double of the PSU i have now, i also switched to the FOCUS Gold 450W because the G-Series was too hard to get because its not produced anymore i think. But the NAS is not going to be in the room where i sleep so it'll be ok.. My bigger problem with noise right now is that i cant get Fan Auto Control to detect my PWM Fans, it just detects nothing, i allready installed pearl and System Temp. Is there a rundown of how to install the driver manually? I cant find anything. The other solution of controling fans with a script just works for mainboards with IPMI, right?

 

Space for Cable management is kind of ok right now with 4 disks installed but i allready see that it will much harder to do it clean when you have all 6 disks installed.

 

Also, are there any other must have plugins, dockers?

 

For Buildlog: sadly i didn't had time to do photos since i put it together at work but here are some pics of the final product.

Edited August 3, 2018 by multiplY