First build questions

[CEH1934]

I am planning my first NAS using UnRaid, having read and researched a great deal over the last year or so. We are a family of four, with two desktops and a number of notebooks, tablets and phones. Two of us do a lot of document creation and review and online research, often leading to downloading. We want to share video, music and photos. We use Microsoft OneDrive for cloud document synch and iCloud for video and music.

 

My overall plan is to build NAS that won’t need significant updating for 3-4 years, starting with 3X 4TB hard drives and an SSD for caching, 16 or 32GB ECC RAM and a decent CPU. The number of hard drives could grow. I was quite keen on an AsRock Rack MB, C236 WSI or WS, or C3558 mini ITX, and the Node 304 – the reason for favouring ITX. But I found it impossible to find any of the memory from the QVLs, all out of date. And I saw somewhere a reference to cable management and airflow issues with the Node 304. Also I read some user reviews on Amazon about serious memory compatibility problems with the C236.

Reading posts in another forum led me to Supermicro MBs like the MBD-X11SCL-IF and -F. These are relatively recent, and well-configured for my needs, except the -IF has only 4X SATA. Their memory QVLs list currently available Hynix memory, though it is expensive – almost $A100 more than the MB.

To help me decide, I’d be grateful for any comments but especially advice on these questions:

 

·      Are the Node 304 issues serious or mainly about convenience?

·      If QVL memory isn’t available or is really expensive, can we substitute, with some confidence, equivalent RAM from quality manufacturers?

·      Any reason to prefer Asrock or Supermicro (I built my desktop with an Asrock z270)?

 

Thanks in advance.