Building a new NAS, looking for critiques

[SgtAwesomesauce]

Building a new NAS, looking for some input. This will be running TrueNAS scale, and I’m planning to consolidate all my local services onto it.

Biggest questions are around the motherboard, memory and power supply.

I’m kinda lost when it comes to motherboards. I really don’t want to overspend on the motherboard, but I want the USB4 port that’s available on the B650E Taichi. This isn’t a hard requirement for me, but it’s a definite plus.

As for memory, I’m not looking for anything particularly fast, but I generally have no idea what’s reliable these days, so what I’ve got in there is more of a placeholder.

I’ve got an Arc A380 and a LSI SATA HBA that are going to slot into the PCIe slots. the LSI will do just fine in the x4 (electrical) slot, as it’s only controlling 8 spinning disks, and is a gen 3 device. Although, both of them are x16 physical cards.

I’ll be bringing the following with me from my old system:

• 128GB boot SSD
• 8x 8TB WD spinning disks
• 1TB SSD for metadata device

The 1TB SSD on the parts list will perform SLOG duties, with some serious overprovisioning, so that hopefully wear leveling will keep it alive for a long time. (If anyone knows of a better disk in this price range, please let me know. I really only need 128GB for SLOG, so I’d love to get something with higher endurance)

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 9 9900X 4.4 GHz 12-Core Processor	$382.55 @ Amazon
CPU Cooler	Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE 66.17 CFM CPU Cooler	$34.90 @ Amazon
Motherboard	ASRock B650E TAICHI EATX AM5 Motherboard	$279.99 @ Newegg
Memory	Patriot Viper Venom 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR5-5200 CL40 Memory	$129.99 @ B&H
Storage	Seagate FireCuda 530 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive	$114.99 @ Newegg
Case	Fractal Design Meshify 2 XL ATX Full Tower Case	$224.98 @ Newegg
Power Supply	SeaSonic FOCUS GX 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply	$141.36 @ Amazon
Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
Total	$1308.76
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-11-27 02:08 EST-0500

Ideally, I’d love it if I can knock the price down a bit, but I somehow doubt that’s going to be a real option.

[nutral]

What services are you running? A 9900X is serious cpu power for a NAS.

I would go for a corsair rm750 powersupply instead of the seasonic as it is more efficient and cheaper.

[H-i-v-e]

For the Storage a recommendation might be the Transcend MTE220S (beware PCIe 3.0). According to what I see the FireCude 530 with 1TB has a TBW of 1.28PB while the Transcend with 1TB has a TBW of 2.2PB. This might be an option to trade maximum transfer speed for longevity. The Transcend should also be a fair bit cheaper.

[H-i-v-e]

As for the memory, have you considered to go with ECC UDIMMs?

Like for example these Mushkin Redline Pro, 32GB per DIMM, 5600MT, CL46 and ECC

[wertigon]

@SgtAwesomesauce

I’m kinda lost when it comes to motherboards. I really don’t want to overspend on the motherboard, but I want the USB4 port that’s available on the B650E Taichi. This isn’t a hard requirement for me, but it’s a definite plus.

All X870(E) boards have USB4 as default as well. So you could save a few bucks there, but nothing major.

Build looks pretty good from where I sit.

[TryTwiceMedia]

@SgtAwesomesauce

As for memory, I’m not looking for anything particularly fast, but I generally have no idea what’s reliable these days, so what I’ve got in there is more of a placeholder.

Green ECC is the way to be for a NASty build like this

You already have ECC compatible CPU, and MoBo.

@SgtAwesomesauce

Power Supply SeaSonic FOCUS GX 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply

Anything Platinum or Titanium rated. I keep hearing about Super Flower, but just bought a SilverStone ST1500-TI when I was lookin for an 800 watt because it was somehow cheaper… WTF to that.

@SgtAwesomesauce

The 1TB SSD on the parts list will perform SLOG duties, with some serious overprovisioning, so that hopefully wear leveling will keep it alive for a long time.

I’m on the U.2 hype train for power users but that board only has 2 PCIe slots and 2 M.2’s (cannot use M.2_3 or it’ll disable your second PCIe slot),

@SgtAwesomesauce

I want the USB4 port

We always use add-in cards for servers/workstations running any virtualization. Makes pass through so much easier.

If you had 1 more PCIe slot, you could throw in a USB4 card that could be passed through.

If you had 1 more PCIe slot wired x8, you could run a pair of U.2’s in a PCIe caddy then use 1 for SLOG, and 1 for VM’s.

960G U.2’s are sub $100 brand new, 4TB is $400 brand new delivered all over eBay.

I bought 2x Kioxia 4TB CD8’s for $500 - used 120 days with 300 GB of writes 2 weeks ago

I’ve had great luck with U.2 PCIe cards, but M.2 to U.2 adapters are… hit and miss.

[Adubs]

How do you feel about rack mount cases?

Rosewill RSV-R4000U 4U Server Chassis Rackmount Case | 8 3.5" HDD Bays, 3...

Its a little bit cheaper than the fractal case but with some options for expansion in the future.

you can swap out the existing drive bays with these later if you want

Rosewill 3 x 5.25-Inch to 4 x 3.5-Inch Hot-swap SATAIII/SAS Hard Disk...

These technically can do SAS drives as well if you hook them up to the HBA.

Or you can do a different path with the front panel since its essentially 5.25" bays

I did all icy dock 6x hot swap.

Amazon.com: ICY DOCK 6 Bay 2.5” SATA HDD / SSD Hot Swap Tool-Less Backplane...

[ThisMightBeAFish]

@SgtAwesomesauce

The 1TB SSD on the parts list will perform SLOG duties, with some serious overprovisioning, so that hopefully wear leveling will keep it alive for a long time.

I don’t know if OP is still necessary nowadays. Does TrueNAS still use OP for their TrueNAS mini systems?

Either way, TBW of that drive is extremely high and since you probably will not have that many sync writes, it will last for a very long time

@Adubs

Its a little bit cheaper than the fractal case but with some options for expansion in the future.

It is, but is also a lot louder and shittier than the Fractal Case.
I switched from that case to a Fractal Define 6 and it is a night and day difference.
The fans are basically useless, and even with Noctua fans, temps are way worse in these hot swap caddies than in a Fractal.

For me, the occasional hot swap did in no way justify all the downsides of the Rosewill system.

[SgtAwesomesauce]

Thanks for the replies, all!

@nutral

What services are you running? A 9900X is serious cpu power for a NAS.

I’m replacing a 3 node NUC kubernetes cluster with this system. It’s not just going to be running a nextcloud server.

Without completely doxxing my workload, I’m running a NVR, a few gameservers, a jellyfin server, ollama (in the future), and some custom applications.

@nutral

I would go for a corsair rm750 powersupply instead of the seasonic as it is more efficient and cheaper.

Is there a review on that one we can trust? That does sound like a nice win!

@H-i-v-e

For the Storage a recommendation might be the Transcend MTE220S (beware PCIe 3.0). According to what I see the FireCude 530 with 1TB has a TBW of 1.28PB while the Transcend with 1TB has a TBW of 2.2PB. This might be an option to trade maximum transfer speed for longevity. The Transcend should also be a fair bit cheaper.

So this disk looks like it’s about the same price, so I think I’ll just go with this, for the increased endurance. The IO performance of PCIe 3.0 is definitely fine for me.

@TryTwiceMedia

Green ECC is the way to be for a NASty build like this

@H-i-v-e

As for the memory, have you considered to go with ECC UDIMMs?

Like for example these Mushkin Redline Pro, 32GB per DIMM, 5600MT, CL46 and ECC

I’m unable to find any UDIMMs that aren’t far more expensive, and to be completely honest, ECC is entirely overkill for my needs. Unless DDR5 has significantly higher rates of memory corruption than DDR4, I think I’ll be just fine. (I don’t have any DDR5 systems yet, so I can’t say for sure)

@TryTwiceMedia

If you had 1 more PCIe slot, you could throw in a USB4 card that could be passed through.

If you had 1 more PCIe slot wired x8, you could run a pair of U.2’s in a PCIe caddy then use 1 for SLOG, and 1 for VM’s.

Yeah, I’m starting to question my sanity in picking a board with 2 PCIe slots. I didn’t realize the USB4 HBAs were stable now, as well. Last I checked into that stuff, the thunderbolt cards were really iffy on AMD, but that was before USB4 was out.

@wertigon

All X870(E) boards have USB4 as default as well. So you could save a few bucks there, but nothing major.

From what I could tell, the X870E boards were more expensive. I chose the Taichi this go around because it’s a board I trust. If you’ve got a specific model recommendation, I’d love to hear it.

@Adubs

How do you feel about rack mount cases?

it’s been 4 years

You really do love me!

I’m not opposed to them. I don’t have a rack, and have no intention of getting one in the next decade, and I was always under the impression they were more expensive than a desktop chassis. I think the only concern would be dust filtration. I’m an absolute galaxy brain and put my NAS in the laundry room because I put sound panels in there, and lint is a big issue (duh). So, noise and dust filtering is hard to justify for the rosewill. I’ve had good experiences with the little brother of the Meshify 2 XL, so I thought I’d go with something I know.

@ThisMightBeAFish

I don’t know if OP is still necessary nowadays. Does TrueNAS still use OP for their TrueNAS mini systems?

I don’t know for sure, but the point is that I was looking for the highest TBW-rated drive I could find. I’m not sure if zfs SLOG sends discard commands, so trimming the whole thing then making a 64GB partition would guarantee wear leveling is operational.

[wertigon]

@SgtAwesomesauce

From what I could tell, the X870E boards were more expensive. I chose the Taichi this go around because it’s a board I trust. If you’ve got a specific model recommendation, I’d love to hear it.

Yeah, the X870 start at $209 and X870E start at $319, so it is more expensive right now. And the X870s are not really that hot, either… Here are all < $270:

Of that lot, I’d say only the Asus PRIME X870 (for ECC support) and the Tomahawk Wifi are worth much of anything. There is also the question of ECC support, if that is important to you. The Taichi is certainly not a bad option either.

[SgtAwesomesauce]

@wertigon

There is also the question of ECC support, if that is important to you.

It’s not. I don’t really buy into the ECC hype for homelab purposes.

@wertigon

Of that lot, I’d say only the Asus PRIME X870 (for ECC support) and the Tomahawk Wifi are worth much of anything.

Yeah, I’m a bit sketched out about some of those boards. But thanks for the info. I’ll have to give it a look when I’m not at work, but the MSI might be a good play.

EDIT: This MSI might actually be pretty good. I really wish they had boards that split the PCIe up better for lower bandwidth HBAs though. Feels like a big waste of 16 lanes of gen 5 to run an A380 on it

[diizzy]

As other have said, the 9900X is a waste for a NAS. AMD Ryzen 7 7700 is still overkill but it comes with a decent enough cooler so you don’t need to get an additional one and still packs a lot of power.

Motherboard: Probably fine but it does have some odd PCI-E layout, Asus ROG STRIX B650E-E would be a better option as far as layout/sharing goes. Another option might be ProArt B650-CREATOR but it comes with Realtek NICs which isn’t great. Both lacks USB 4 ports however. One board that many here uses for homelab/NAS/etc is ProArt X670E-CREATOR from Asus which ticks all boxes and also supports ECC if you’d like to upgrade futher down the road.

Memory: Stick with JEDEC specs and from a known memory brand,

Crucial Pro 64GB Kit (32GBx2) DDR5-5600 UDIMM | CP2K32G56C46U5 | Crucial.com

Kingston KVR56U46BD8-32
SK Hynix, Samsung etc

As for boot drive, get something decent, it’ll save you a lot of pain down the road. If you want a cheap budget drive P3 Plus is “decent” or the newer P310.

SSD: I would have a look at
Crucial T500 1TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe M.2 SSD with heatsink | CT1000T500SSD5 | Crucial.com or Crucial T700 1TB PCIe Gen5 NVMe M.2 SSD with heatsink | CT1000T700SSD5 | Crucial.com or Solidgm + SK Hynix offerings

Case: Fractal Design R5?

PSU: Get one that at least confirms to ATX 3.0.

[Adubs]

The rosewill has dust filtering in the cover. Its also really only noisy if you set it up to be… I dont have a rack either. I just put them on wire shelves.

I think they’re pretty nice for what they are. Obviously I like fractal too

It gets pretty dusty itself even with filtering… though not nearly as bad as without.

[TryTwiceMedia]

Lotta cool stuff in the enterprise space for AM5… onboard 25 gig, MCIO, ipmi, just generally cool shit…

https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/h13sae-mf
Key Features

    AMD EPYC™ 4004 series, Ryzen™ 9000 & 8700G* & 7000 Series Desktop Processors
    single socket LGA-1718 (socket AM5), up to 170W.
Up to 192GB ECC/non-ECC Unbuffered DIMM, DDR5-5200MHz, in 4 DIMM slots.
    2 PCIe 5.0 x16 (16/NA or 8/8), support up to 2 GPU cards(mechanical is up to 1 triple-width GPU card or 2 double-width GPU cards)
    1 PCIe 4.0 x4
2x 1Gbit LAN port(i210 AT); a dedicated Realtek 1Gbit LAN for IPMI.
Micro-ATX form factor
1 USB 3.2 Gen2x2 ports (type C, 20Gb, rear); 5 USB 3.2 Gen2 ports(2 Type C, rear, support DP 1.4 Alt mode)
1 HDMI 2.0 port, 1 DP 1.4a port

https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=EPYC4000D4U#Specifications
EPYC4000D4U !

1. Support ATX PSU or 12V DC-in
2. Micro-ATX (9.6" x 9.6")
3. Supports AMD EPYC™ 4004 and AMD Ryzen 9000/8000/7000 series Processors
4. 4 DIMM slots (2DPC), supports DDR5 ECC/non-ECC UDIMM
5. 1 PCIe5.0 x16*
6. 1 MCIO (PCIe5.0 x8)*
7. 1 MCIO (2 PCIe5.0 x4)*
8. Supports 2 M.2 (PCIe5.0 x4)*
9. 2 SATA 6Gb/s
10. 2 RJ45 (1GbE) by i210
11. 1 HDMI, 1 DisplayPort
12. Remote management (IPMI)

https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=B650D4U3-2L2Q/BCM#Specifications
B650D4U3-2L2Q/BCM

Micro-ATX (9.6" x 9.6")
Supports AMD EPYC™ 4004 and AMD Ryzen™ 9000/8000/7000 Series Processors
4 DIMM slots (2DPC), supports DDR5 ECC/non-ECC UDIMM
1 PCIe5.0 x16
1 PCIe4.0 x4, 1 PCIe4.0 x1
Supports 1 M.2 (PCIe5.0 x4)
4 SATA 6Gb/s
2 SFP28 (25GbE) by Broadcom BCM57502
2 RJ45 (1GbE) by Intel® i210
1 HDMI
Remote management (IPMI) 

https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=B650D4U3-2Q/BCM#Specifications
B650D4U3-2Q/BCM

Micro-ATX (9.6" x 9.6")
Supports AMD EPYC™ 4004 and AMD Ryzen™ 9000/8000/7000 Series Processors
4 DIMM slots (2DPC), supports DDR5 ECC/non-ECC UDIMM
1 PCIe5.0 x16
1 PCIe4.0 x4, 1 PCIe4.0 x1
Supports 1 M.2 (PCIe5.0 x4)
4 SATA 6Gb/s
2 SFP28 (25GbE) by Broadcom BCM57502
1 HDMI
Remote management (IPMI)

[EniGmA1987]

@SgtAwesomesauce

The 1TB SSD on the parts list will perform SLOG duties, with some serious overprovisioning, so that hopefully wear leveling will keep it alive for a long time. (If anyone knows of a better disk in this price range, please let me know. I really only need 128GB for SLOG, so I’d love to get something with higher endurance)

Not the same price range at all, but what if you got a P4800X 375GB Optane drive? It has even lower latency for better metadata performance, FAR higher write endurance, and no aging slowdown and potential corruption of any metadata that has been sitting a few years. $380 for the drive which isnt too bad a price. You may find a 905P somewhere potentially as well for a bit cheaper.

[thetazman]

@SgtAwesomesauce

• 128GB boot SSD

Double up on this and in a raid config so when 1 of them dies your not sol!

[twin_savage]

@EniGmA1987

P4800X 375GB Optane

If you get the m.2 version of this drive I’ve got a bunch of the EKWB heatsinks for them sitting around because the firesale they had made me buy a whole bunch.

It’s difficult finding 110mm heatsinks that actually fit the optane drives.

[SgtAwesomesauce]

@diizzy

As other have said, the 9900X is a waste for a NAS. AMD Ryzen 7 7700 is still overkill but it comes with a decent enough cooler so you don’t need to get an additional one and still packs a lot of power.

I was specifically staying away from the 7000 series because I’d seen a lot of hubbub about the 7000 series dying. I’m not sure if that was just an issue with PBO going crazy or what the details around it are. I’m not opposed to the 7000 series, and in fact, I think they’ll be a far better bang for the buck, I’m just building a system I expect to last me 6+ years, so I don’t want to take risks on the CPU.

@diizzy

SSD: I would have a look at
Crucial T500 1TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe M.2 SSD with heatsink | CT1000T500SSD5 | Crucial.com or Crucial T700 1TB PCIe Gen5 NVMe M.2 SSD with heatsink | CT1000T700SSD5 | Crucial.com or Solidgm + SK Hynix offerings

Both of those offerings have half the write endurance of the part I spec’d. I don’t think they’ll work.

@diizzy

Case: Fractal Design R5?

That makes a lot more sense than the meshify 2, especially considering price point.

@diizzy

Motherboard: Probably fine but it does have some odd PCI-E layout, Asus ROG STRIX B650E-E would be a better option as far as layout/sharing goes. Another option might be ProArt B650-CREATOR but it comes with Realtek NICs which isn’t great. Both lacks USB 4 ports however. One board that many here uses for homelab/NAS/etc is ProArt X670E-CREATOR from Asus which ticks all boxes and also supports ECC if you’d like to upgrade futher down the road.

I really like the STRIX B650E-E, but it looks like only scalpers have it right now, so I’m looking at the B650E-F as an alternative. Not quite as good, but the price is right and it has 2.5G LAN, which the other boards with lots of PCIe don’t tend to have.

I do have a bit of an aversion to Asus after their recent drama, so I’m going to see if Asrock has a similar board, but let me post my updated build below.

@Adubs

It gets pretty dusty itself even with filtering… though not nearly as bad as without.

Yeah, the fight to keep dust out of computers is a losing battle.

@TryTwiceMedia

Lotta cool stuff in the enterprise space for AM5… onboard 25 gig, MCIO, ipmi, just generally cool shit…

Man, I really wish I had the budget for it, but I just can’t justify it at this point.

Those asrock rack boards are sweeeet

---

So this is where I’m at right now. I’m still unsure on the motherboard, so I think that’s the biggest concern at the moment. If yall could also validate the power supply? I’m not super familiar with the Corsair lineup, but when I look up the RM750, there are like 15 models that match it and they range from like $60 to $180, so I’m feeling a bit lost there

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 7 7700 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor	$263.98 @ Amazon
Motherboard	Asus ROG STRIX B650E-F GAMING WIFI ATX AM5 Motherboard	$239.99 @ Amazon
Memory	Corsair Vengeance 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR5-5200 CL40 Memory	$129.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Seagate FireCuda 530 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive	$114.99 @ Newegg
Case	Fractal Design Define R5 ATX Mid Tower Case	$84.99 @ B&H
Power Supply	Corsair RM750x (2021) 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply	$79.98 @ Amazon
Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
Total	$913.92
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-11-27 16:49 EST-0500

[SgtAwesomesauce]

I’m running TrueNAS, so I believe all I’ll need to do is drop a new SSD in, flash it and import the pool. All the settings should be stored on the pool, right?

Right now, the SSD is NVMe, but I do have a couple 240GB sata ssds kickin around, I could use those, I suppose.

[SgtAwesomesauce]

I’ve looked at the P4800X, and as much as I’d absolutely love this drive, it’s just far far far too expensive. Looking at new skus, I’m seeing $1250 US, which is more than the entire rest of the computer.

That would be a flex though.