After dabbling with an off-the-shelf NAS server (Terramaster), I'm now considering doing a new build again.  I'm looking at the U-NAS 800 or 810, so looking for a micro ATX or mini ITX board - this is to replace a 20 bay server I built many years ago.

 

In terms of NAS usage, it's pretty straight forward:  streaming UHD blurays to a Zappiti 4k HDR player, and dockers such as sabnzb/radarr/sonarr.  Obviously I want to be able to utilise up to 8 HDDs, but I'm assuming there's no motherboards out there which will support that?  If not, I have a supermicro SATA expansion card which I can re-use from my original unraid build.

 

Not planning anything else at this point, and want to spend as little as possible.

 

Any recommendations? 

Edited December 10, 20196 yr by MrGrumpie

2 hours ago, MrGrumpie said:

Obviously I want to be able to utilise up to 8 HDDs, but I'm assuming there's no motherboards out there which will support that?

There are many available motherboards with 8 (sometime more) SATA ports even in Mini-ITX from factor.  My main server board (see my signature) is a Mini-ITX motherboard with 8 SATA ports.

 

I have 4 data drives, 1 parity drive, 1 cache drive, 1 Unassigned Devices SSD and 1 optical drive for MakeMKV connected to those 8 SATA ports.  You will need to decide how you intend to use the server and if 8 SATA ports is enough or if you will need to use the SATA expansion card.   The motherboard mounts on the top of the u-NAS 800/810.  Using PCIe expansion cards in that case gets a little tricky.

 

If you are using an 8-bay case, I suppose that will limit you to 8 drives (HDD or SSD) unless you get a motherboard with M.2 slots in which you can mount M.2 PCIe or SATA SSDs.  SATA M.2 SSDs will generally disable one or more of the onboard SATA ports so it does not really expand your storage options.

 

What are you looking for? Intel? AMD? i3/i5/i7/i9/Xeon? Ryzen/Threadripper?

17 minutes ago, Hoopster said:

What are you looking for? Intel? AMD? i3/i5/i7/i9/Xeon? Ryzen/Threadripper?

I have no preference really - I just want to be able to do what I've listed above effectively

I have seen server build with ASRock C236 WSI + low power Xeon CPU (can't remember which exact model now) + Noctua NH-L9i so perhaps consider that. The C236 WSI in particular has exactly 8 SATA ports.

Be prepare having to buy additional low-profile cable stuff while building due to the low clearance.

19 minutes ago, testdasi said:

I have seen server build with ASRock C236 WSI + low power Xeon CPU (can't remember which exact model now) + Noctua NH-L9i so perhaps consider that. The C236 WSI in particular has exactly 8 SATA ports.

@MrGrumpie So, testdasi just described my current main server setup 😁  ASRock C236 WSI (8 SATA ports) with a Xeon E3-1245 V5 CPU and Noctua NH-L9x65 CPU cooler.  The server idles at around 30-32W and under a heavy load draws about 80-110 watts depending on what it is doing.

 

The C246 WSI also has 8 SATA ports (4 through OCuLink) and supports E-2100/E-2200 Xeons (as well as i3/i5/i7/i9) and has an M.2 slot.

 

The C246M WS (mATX) has the same but all 8 SATA ports are on the board (as they are with the C236 WSI).

 

Any of the CPUs the above-mentioned boards support will support hardware transcoding in Plex/Emby with models with a built-in iGPU so no need for a separate GPU.  My 4c/8t Xeon has had as many as five concurrent transcodes going on and still had room for more.

Edited December 10, 20196 yr by Hoopster

I just went for the SM X11SCH-F, its a micro atx board and it has 8 onboard SATA ports.  I just returned an Asus P11C-I Mini ITX board which was generally pretty good, but did not support Wake-On-LAN, so wouldn’t wake up when needed.

 

I also store and stream blu ray rips and play through a Shield TV and you don’t need much cpu power for that, I have an i3 9100F and that does it with ease, as did the i5 8400t I was using before it. The 9100f can be had pretty cheap as it doesn’t have any built in graphics but it does support ECC RAM.

On 12/16/2019 at 1:27 AM, Dave-M said:

I just went for the SM X11SCH-F, its a micro atx board and it has 8 onboard SATA ports.  I just returned an Asus P11C-I Mini ITX board which was generally pretty good, but did not support Wake-On-LAN, so wouldn’t wake up when needed.

 

I also store and stream blu ray rips and play through a Shield TV and you don’t need much cpu power for that, I have an i3 9100F and that does it with ease, as did the i5 8400t I was using before it. The 9100f can be had pretty cheap as it doesn’t have any built in graphics but it does support ECC RAM.

I've just built a NAS with an Asus P11C-I. The feature is called Power On PCIE/PCI. Just enabled it and Wake-On-LAN works