Hey

 

So I have been messing around with the unraid demo software on my main PC and have decided to use it as my NAS/Media/Home automation server. I have come up with the following build, if anyone has any comments or suggestions or can point out something I may have missed I would be very grateful.

 

I am especially interested if anyone thinks I can get away with an ATX supply with this case. It seems pretty tight in the 304..Also, if I pony up a few extra beer tokens, would m2 cache drives be a more sensible option to preserve drive capacity for the future?

 

Ta

 

 

PCPartPicker Part List: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/TBgkb8

 

CPU: Intel Core i5-9400F 2.9 GHz 6-Core Processor
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Shadow Rock LP 51.4 CFM CPU Cooler
Motherboard: ASRock Z390M-ITX/ac Mini ITX LGA1151 Motherboard
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-2666 Memory
Storage: Samsung 860 QVO 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Storage: Samsung 860 QVO 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Storage: Seagate IronWolf NAS 4 TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive
Storage: Seagate IronWolf NAS 4 TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive
Storage: Seagate IronWolf NAS 4 TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive
Storage: Seagate IronWolf NAS 4 TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive
Video Card: MSI GeForce GT 710 2 GB Video Card 
Case: Fractal Design Node 304 Mini ITX Tower Case
Power Supply: Corsair SF 600 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular SFX Power Supply

 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Chunketh said:

I am especially interested if anyone thinks I can get away with an ATX supply with this case. It seems pretty tight in the 304..Also, if I pony up a few extra beer tokens, would m2 cache drives be a more sensible option to preserve drive capacity for the future?

I have the Node 304 as my backup server case.  You could get a short full ATX PSU in there, but I wouldn't do it.  The SFX PSUs give you more space for working in the case, better cable management and better airflow.  I have a Silverstone ST45SF SFX PSU in the Node 304.

 

If you are planning on using your server as a media server with Plex or Emby, you may want to consider a CPU with an iGPU (non F CPU).  It will relieve your CPU of the transcoding job (if needed) and free up the PCIe slot for another use other than a graphics card.  A graphics card would only be needed if you wanted to pass it through to a VM.

 

I am going to link you to a system I am selling so you can get an idea what I did with a similar Mini-ITX build and what it was able to handle;

 

 

Edited March 19, 20206 yr by Hoopster

Thanks for the reply!

Transcoding is important and i'm not wedded to the 710, so something like this then : 

 

Intel Core i5 8400, S 1151, Coffee Lake, 6 Core, 6 Thread, 2.8GHz, 4.0GHz Turbo, 9MB Cache, 1050MHz GPU, 65W, CPU, Box

17 minutes ago, Chunketh said:

Intel Core i5 8400, S 1151, Coffee Lake, 6 Core, 6 Thread, 2.8GHz, 4.0GHz Turbo, 9MB Cache, 1050MHz GPU, 65W, CPU, Box

Yes, that should work nicely. 

 

Of course, the i5 does not have hyperthreading enabled so 6 cores is 6 cores.  On the other hand, the i7, i9 and Xeon CPUs, do have hyperthreading enabled so however many cores they have are essentially doubled for processing purposes.  You probably already knew this, just pointing it out to make certain.

I'd actually missed that! Thanks! I am so used to looking at AMD's but just cant find an ITX board with enough SATA headers on it. Looks like I have to move up to an I9 to get the HT in 9th Gen or start considering a larger mAtx board / case

13 minutes ago, Chunketh said:

just cant find an ITX board with enough SATA headers on it

How many SATA ports are you looking for?  Most of the ASRock Rack Mini-ITX boards have 8 SATA ports. 

 

Like that system I am selling, it has 8 SATA ports and because I did not have to use the PCIe slot for a graphics card, I was able to put a Dell H310 HBA in IT mode in that slot to support 8 more drives.  Of course, when you are talking about a Mini-ITX case, you cannot usually exceed 8 drives anyway.

 

I only needed the HBA card when I moved the system into a larger case with capacity for 8 HDDs, 4 SSDs and an optical drive

 

The Node 304 only has a 6 drive capacity and the Lian-Li PC-Q25 (my small build case) has capacity for 8 to 11 HDDs/SSDs ( you can double stack drives on the bottom tray).  I only had 8 drives in that case.

Edited March 19, 20206 yr by Hoopster

By the way, even though the ASRock Rack boards are positioned as server or workstation boards and they often mention only Xeon CPUs in the summary bullets, they also accept Socket 1151 i3, i5, i7 and i9 CPUs and support non-ECC RAM.

 

Sure, my system I linked you to was a full server build with Xeon and ECC RAM, but I could have used a desktop CPU and non ECC RAM.  In fact, my backup server in the Node 304 case has an ASRock Rack server motherboard with an i5-4590 CPU and non-ECC RAM.

Edited March 19, 20206 yr by Hoopster

I think 6 SATA headers to match the 304 chassis, if I can dump the cache onto M2 x2 or even M2 x1 + SATA x1 then it gives me a little more to play with. If I need more space later I can always dump the chassis or start swapping out for drives with a larger capacity.

 

Any thoughts on using m2 as cache? If I can reserve the 6 bays / headers for spinners its going to give me 20-80Tb to play with, which is a lot

3 minutes ago, Chunketh said:

Any thoughts on using m2 as cache?

Lot of unRAID users are currently using M.2 NVMe SSDs as cache drives.

 

You don't have to worry about it disabling PCIe slots or SATA headers on a Mini-ITX board as it has only one PCIe slot anyway.  On some mATX and ATX boards, that is an issue because only so many PCIe lanes can be supported by the CPU and chipset.

8 minutes ago, Hoopster said:

Lot of unRAID users are currently using M.2 NVMe SSDs as cache drives.

 

You don't have to worry about it disabling PCIe slots or SATA headers on a Mini-ITX board as it has only one PCIe slot anyway.  On some mATX and ATX boards, that is an issue because only so many PCIe lanes can be supported by the CPU and chipset.

I think that might settle it then. I’ll stop being a tightwad on the cpu and grab an I9 9th gen I will doubtless end up running a VM or two so trying to save a few quid is probably a false economy.

 

will rework the parts and get building tomorrow. Thanks for the advice, highly appreciated 

👍 Good luck with the build.  You'll love unRAID.