You don’t necessarily have to use ZFS, but it is strongly advised to do so. If you mount the array to /mnt/whatever you should in theory be able to use most features of TrueNAS. I don’t think it’s worth doing that tho as you miss out on the best features like snapshotting, zfs send receive and checksumming. If you’d rather do standard raid you can try out OMV instead. With a little trickery you could use BTRFS and ZFS with it as well.
Ok then I shall use it, I can’t find any info on if my Asus Prime B450 Plus will support ECC so I’m going to use my 2x8gb Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200mhz CL16 kit till I can find a suitable board that supports and works with ECC. Most of the board confirmed working are x470 and the Strix B450-F that I tried to get new but cannot locally:( Not sure if I asked this question but do I really need ECC? This NAS will be for Videos mainly with some photo storage but it will be backed up again on another NAS and drives on my main system.
ZFS doesn’t strictly require ECC, but it is strongly encouraged. If ZFS encounters a bit error it will assume that both the CPU and the RAM did their error handling and so the data on disk is wrong.
If you are using 3200 non-ecc memory I would suggest not actually running it at 3200 unless you are absolutely 110% certain the overclock is stable and doesn’t produce errors. Otherwise run them at default speeds (probably 2666).
AFAIK B460 and basically all Intel consumer CPUs don’t support ECC. AMD has ECC support but not all boards support it.
Oh, nevermind. I have seen many ready-to-go NASes using i3s, Pentiums and Celerons but they didn’t have ECC RAM so I got confused.
Actually the Ryzen Pro series APUs support ECC, it has been tested. For people who don’t want a GPU in their NAS these ones are great.
Its running stable right now DOCP 3200mhz 1.350v but I will set evrything back to default.
Stable doesn’t necessarily mean it doesn’t produce errors. I had that happen with my kit when I enabled XMP. The system was stable, but when I hammered it with a memtest it produced tons of errors. On a daily system that’s not usually much of an issue, but I wouldn’t run a NAS on that, especially ZFS 
What would you suggest then? I picked up the 1600AF and board already, I looked for cheap servers like old Dells HP’s etc but they’re priced very high, higher than even just buying another Synology NAS which is looking like the best option considering I cannot find which boards work with ECC or not.
Well first of all running a memtest once you have it all put together on 3200. If it’s not producing errors over a couple hours of memory testing then it’s probably fine. On the other hand you can also just let it run on default without XMP, since you’re not leaving that much performance on the table in a NAS anyway. The gains from memory OC are nice in a daily system, but I doubt it makes much of a difference in a NAS that is idling most of the time anyway.
Yea I didn’t intend on running DOCP anyways just wanted to specify what Ram I was using. I’ll give it a go with the Non ECC Ram, I put an add up here in AUS for a Strix F B450 see if I get any bites. I know that board works with ECC.
Board partner claiming support for ECC and it not actually working is a pain
Ok so I’m about to embark on the TrueNas Core build but I have some questions. I’m looking at 2x BX500 240gb Crucial SSD’s for the primary TrueNas install duplicated also I’ve settled on 2x 12tb Seagate Iron Wolf drives with either a 480gb BX500 SSD as Cache or a 1tb BX500 SSD. Is it worth even using an SSD as cache? Would using a Samsung 970 EVO 250gb make it faster to access?
So far I have a Ryzen 1600AF Asus Prime B450 Plus board 2x8gb Corsair Vengeance LPX NZXT 650w PSU and an RX550 2gb GPU. I plan to build it in a Silverstone Grandia GD07 case. I realise ECC is best but this is what I’m working with. Is there anything else I need or anything else you guys recommend me to buy or do?
Would you recommend another 16gb of ram for 32gb total? I will be using Mirror Raid 1 with the SSD Xche and duplicating the TrueNas Core install.
Another question, can I access my TrueNAS NAS from my Samsung smart TV? I currently access my Synology NAS from my TV as a multimedia device. Thanks.
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I don’t know if you would be up for it (as some people hate it) but Plex has worked great and has a app on the Samsung TV my wife uses and she loves it. Makes it easy for her to access content. Just a thought. I have had a life time membership for years now.
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I think Synology just serves via DLNA by default, and TrueNAS has a plugin for that.
Otherwise Plex as mentioned, or Jellyfin in a container.
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Jellyfin, never heard of it. My Synology NAS comes up in the menu easy, its what I’ve been using. I’ll have to research more about the plugin you mentioned. Thanks.
Plex is what I was looking at, I watched a few how to videos last night. I’m just trying to educate myself as much as possible before I order the drives case and SSD’s. Thanks.
Would I need anything else other than the stuff I mentioned guys? Thanks to everyone here that helped me.