I do agree with this statement.
But my cry of despair here is going through lots of comments, stating that things like IronWolf (even the nonPRO) is loud (crunches, header parking and so on). I now recalled why my last HDD was 2TB and not 4-6-8+ - I ran into the same set of complaints, and went for the “old trusty” Barracuda.
Ok, let’s test that theory. Let’s build a system with modern parts and 64 GB of RAM, a 13400 with 10 GbE and 8 ports in that case you recommend. 
| Type | Item | Price |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core i5-13400 | $207.99 |
| Motherboard | MSI MPG Z690 EDGE WIFI | $229.99 |
| Memory | TEAMGROUP T-Force Vulcan 2x32 GB DDR5-5200 CL40 | $149.99 |
| Storage | TEAMGROUP MP34 1TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 | $42.99 |
| Case | Fractal Design Define R5 | $124.99 |
| Power Supply | Thermaltake Toughpower GX2 600W | $64.98 |
| Wired Network Adapter | Syba SD-PEX24055 10 Gb/s | $90.52 |
| Total | $911.45 |
Good so far? You could probably shave off $100-$150 on Black Friday sales, cheaper motherboard and whatnot, but let us take that and run with it. That means our table extends like so:
| Base NAS | Base price | Bays | Disks | Price | Capacity | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Asustor Flashstor 12 Pro | $799.00 | 12 | Teamgroup MP34 4TB | $158.99 | 48TB | $2706.88 |
| Synology Diskstation DS1823xs | $1765.99 | 8 | Toshiba N300 12TB | $207.99 | 96TB | $3429.91 |
| Homebrew build | $911.45 | 8 | Toshiba X300 8TB | $139.00 | 64TB | $2023.45 |
This means the HDD option has 33% more capacity, for a RAID6 solution though we’re talking 40 vs 48TB which to be honest, isn’t that much more capacity.
You are paying a premium of 33.9% more for the SSD solution, or ~$685 for the privilege of having exceptionally faster rebuild times, whisper quiet operations and a 12 bay as opposed to an 8 bay system. That is not a bad deal.
Is it more expensive, yes. Is it less capacity, yes. Are you trading capacity now for a better experience in the future, maybe. Do you need more than 8-12 TB capacity now, also a maybe. Are you prepared for m.2 bonanza in 2028 when a 32TB m.2 should cost $300, f*ck YEAH.
The sun is now setting on HDDs, and while yes it still might make sense to build an HDD NAS, especially in the higher tiers and for use cases that require a ton of capacity… There is very little reason left to not invest in the coming m.2 Solid State NAS future. Within a few short years, there will be no reason left. Especially if you are not already invested in HDD infrastructure.
I think I will let the matter rest here, since it is clear you will always prioritize $$$/TB at all times over other factors, sorry OP for spending far too much time on what is ultimately a tangent.
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OP is currently looking like that meme with two red buttons. On one button, a raspberry performance grade device with the fun times of putting it all together.
On the other - “is it really that much to have a 100W lightbulb running when I’m home”. I’m even considering to write some small app/script, that would monitor my smartphone or watch for BT signal being in radius and throw the pc into deep sleep the moment I leave my appartment…
not really would not pic that combo.
try this :
totaling ~$860
shave 40bucks got us dual 10gig a 5800x and ipmi which is a super handy feature for nas’s probably could do bettter.
and if you spent the other 40bucks you could change the 4sata expander out for a 8 or 12.
Also stop comparing to the Asustor its absoullte junk. what is a n5105 going to do with 12 m.2 ssds with its measly 8 pcie 3.0 lanes. you need 4 lanes of pcie per m.2 slot. you cant even fully use more than two m.2 drives at once. Its a absolute joke. Go find an actual flash storage nas or bulid one that actualy supports all the flash your jamming in it that justifies the flashes price premium and allows me to use the speed it offers. the 10 gb port also needs 4pcie lanes on the asustor so you really can only use 1 drive and the 10 gig at a time
There is no consumer grade hardware that has enough pcie lanes for 12m.2 drives that would require 48pcie lanes which is in hedt teritory which comands a huge price premium. The max you could do is probably 6 m.2 on consumer grade hardware.
So, AM4 system, sure, that works. For AM4, I would pick 5600, ECC memory (which is like $30 extra on AM4), ECC supporting motherboard with 8 SATA ports and most definitely NOT a white PSU, I would not trust an always-on server with that. Gold with 10 year warranty or I walk away, but that’s just me. Also, I do not see a system drive with that spec. Not having SATA ports on the same board will lead to complications I would rather not have.
AM5 systems make the best server systems on the consumer side but then to get ECC and all bells and whistles we’re talking $1.1k so still a bit too pricey right now.
In the end, your system and my system cost about the same, so you say potato, I say potato.
Wow… You really are running miles to knot yourself 
This comes from the same guy who said SATA speeds of 110 MB/s is perfectly adequate for this use case.
All that matters is, can the Flashstor saturate a 10 GbE connection? Yes, easily. Does it need to do anything more as a NAS? Not really. Do you want to do more stuff with it? Yeah, then might be a good idea to look elsewhere. But this is already known.
why are you comparing 11th gen celeron jasper lake to zen 4 which should be compared with 12th gen and saying its too old
I go by current market value and price.
If I can get current gen and last gen for about the same price why would I go with last gen? For some features, sure, like ECC, last gen makes a bit of sense. Other than that…
ok but you wanted to include the cost of the coputer that you attach the storage to along with other needed hardware, why would you pay more for flash storage to not be able to ues it. In fact the whole reason for you wanting to include it in the first place is to make the point that the supporting hardware to use hdd is more expensive when as im trying to demonstrate thats not the case first off, and second off when consdering the value of the hardware platform the storage is attached to the 5800x its extra usable 10gig port its 60gb of extra ram and more than justify its extra $60 on your asustor which looks lame as a hardware platform in comparison.
You have been trying to tell me there equal or the extra price of flash justifies its cost and it has not. I cant use the speed of the flash that i paid extra for. i have less comput networking, and features. not to mention expandablity.
Reason why I keep bringing up Flashstor is that it is the first consumer level m.2 NAS, nothing more, nothing less. More will come from Synology, QNAP and others. m.2 NAS is still a new thing, but the market is ripe to transform the world of bulk storage like smartphones did with dumbphones.
And no, the point is not to show that the HDD infrastructure is expensive as opposed to m.2 infrastructure, the point is to show that if you include the infrastructure, you end up with much closer numbers overall. HDD infrastructure is more expensive due to it’s physical size and requirement for cabling and backplanes, but while Price / TB is around double or even triple for SSDs vs same capacity HDDs, the whole package is only about 30-40% difference even when the infrastructure costs are roughly the same.
So, that brings the question - is it worth the added 30-40% for the benefits of getting on the m.2 train early, or not? I would argue there is very little you lose by going to m.2 storage today, even though the Flashstor specifically is a NAS and only a NAS, it is not a very good media server. The technology is ripe, but not perfected yet.
At the same time, most gains are for the future when the larger capacity m.2 drives (16TB+) reach below $300-$400 in price. But that will take a few more years. By going m.2 now, you can easily move your NAS activities to say, a four drive 12TB RAID5 or ZFS drive, and expand to a 48 TB or even 96 TB in a few years when it has become more affordable to do so.
But while there are almost no obstacles left to go m.2 NAS or full SSD NAS - there are also not really any compelling reasons to make the transition as of today. Those reasons will show up with time and as SSDs and m.2 becomes affordable more and more of us will trade our infrastructure to m.2 infrastructure. But it will take around a decade before everyone is on the other side, minus the nutters that mutters about “prying their HDD NAS boxes from their cold dead fingers” of course.
In the end, you do you, your money, your choice, your hardware. Investing in m.2 infrastructure now is a viable option, especially if you have modest storage needs (below 20TB for now). It is not the only option.
Ok im going in circles here there is no benfit of using the Asustor. Its garbage. Its a $5cpu $5 of ram packaged in a $20 plastic shell. Yes the put a probably $300 pcie bifurcation chip in it, and a 50 10gig card, but that does not justify its $700 price tag. I dont think any true homelab person or data hoarder would use it.
Where is the benefit of a m.2 ssds over 10gb network when 75% of the m.2’s speed cant even be transmitted over it?
Wheres the benefit of a 12 m.2 ssds in a Asustor which can only one at a time and does not have the compute to do anything with the data its reading?
The numbers for reasonable hardware for a given task show just the opposite of what your saying. Back to above lets compare 3 4tb drives of each type to make a 8tb pool. Thats something reasonable that a home user would want. That is, not to data hoarder levels of 20-100s of terabytes. Again were taking excluding the hardware platform you can get a mother board to support 3 sata drives. ~$150 vs ~$450 thats a not insignificant difference. Especially considering the home user considering these two options probably does not have 10gig networking to make use of the speed of the ssds your paying an extra $250 for.
Agreed, it’s nice if you only use it as a Network Attached Storage, if your NAS is standalone it’s a good product but not if you want to push lots of data for say, database usage. And obviously a 12x4 TB stack got nothing on a dedicated 12x20 TB disc shelf, nor does the Flashstor handle server workloads very well, being about half as good as the infamous Raspberry Pi.
It’s main selling point right now is to consumers who want a small and easy-to-use NAS.
As long as it can saturate the 10 GbE protocol, what is the point of reaching full m.2 potential?
These guys asked the same thing and realised it is a non-issue on the Flashstor - But it is a NAS and only a NAS. Using this in combination with, say, a Ryzen 9 7900 box that does the heavy lifting makes sense.
In 2023, you do not buy a 4TB HDD for a desktop, you either buy an 8TB HDD or a 4TB SSD. The reason for this is that you gain very little from a 3-way 4TB RAID5 compared to a 2-way 8TB Mirrored drive. Sure, the 4TB HDD is marginally cheaper, but buying a 4TB HDD over a 4TB m.2 is basically bottom scraping. If you cannot afford 8TB HDDs or 4TB SSDs, you should not be buying hardware, you should be investing your money on something that helps you earn a stable income.
This advice goes to people in the US primarily here.
What are you talking about, the Pi’s cpu is a 5th of asustor and the pi only has 1 pcie lane i forgot what gen it is. The Asustor is decades ahead of the pi but still lightyears behind any competently built nas for the same price.
Then whats the point of paying for the flash storage socketed into the m.2?
It’s small, sips very little power, and is silent. The flashstor is only about as big as a Playstation 2 after all
Oh, and you can put a cheap 32 TB SSD in there in 2028 without having to give two fucks about SATA to NVME converters to get stuff into your SATA-based NAS. In 2028 a 32 TB HDD will cost $400 and a 32 TB SSD will cost $100.
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cpus are still fine for av1 e.g. newest intel igp’s can decode av1 fine. e.g. uhd-730
So, in summary: NVMe SSDs have a ton of advantages, with near zero combined impact in OP’s use case, while HDDs have one single advantage with direct impact on OP’s wallet.
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Depends, OP specifically wants something that is quiet and space saving. That has a bit of impact, but in their case I’d probably just go with a 6 bay Flashstor and two 4TB SSDs and call it a day for the next 3 years.
With that your NAS needs are settled until 2035 sometime and you will be able to laugh at people stuck with HDD infrastructure when SSDs blow past them in price/TB
My two drops into the sea of information you’re gathering:
-
Noise: I have my NAS right next to my desk. I used to have 4TB 5400rpm Ironwolfs, now I have 12 TB 7200rpm WD Red Plus. I’d say the WDs are quieter, but that’s probably because I expected them to be louder; in reality, they’re probably around the same (and that’s what they are rated as by their respective manufacturers too). Essentially, one spins slower and the other is filled with helium. In general, at least for the NAS lineups, up to 6TB you get 5400rpm, which makes them quieter, but slower in some ops the bigger they get, then at 8TB it jumps to 7200rpm, which makes them faster and noisier than the 6TB, and from 12 onwards, at least Plus and Pro versions (would have to check the regulars) they use helium and the noise goes down a bit.
Having said all that: only when I’m hammering my drives with large reads or writes they become audible (e.g., migrating all my data from one pool to another), the rest of the time I couldn’t hear either over my fans. I don’t have an ideally fan tuning, though. If you put them in a really quiet box, you mea hear them a bit. Reading one movie won’t probably trigger the highest noise level in any case. -
Speed: opening files from my HTPC (or any device really), no difference between the drives. I also have a PCI NVMe x8 (3.0, so like a regular 4.0 ssd) shared now, same difference. I think I could have Sata II drives and it still wouldn’t matter for watching movies over ethernet. May I be missing some corner, high bitrate case? Don’t know, maybe.
My only issue ever was due to ethernet cabling running for too long to keep a stable connection. Adding one powered switch along the way took care of it. -
Power I use to have a 990FX board with an Opteron 3280, R7 240 GPU, quad-port NIC, 1 sata SSD, 4 HDDs, an 280mm AIO, 2x120mm fans, 2x140mm, 1x230mm. It would sit at 105W idle or regular use. Doing something intensive to the drives, then it would go to 150-180W. Now I have an X399 board with a 1920x, same GPU an NIC,1 sata SSD, 1 space-heating PCIe x8 SSD, 6 HDDs. Air cooled (2 more fans), more or less same case fans. It sits at 135W from the wall. Peak consumption is still the same.
Bottom line: a reasonably efficient consumer PC, all power-saving features on except going to sleep (for constantly running NAS), with 1-2 HDDs, will probably put you in the 60-70W or lower range (warning: guesstimate, also not a lawyer). -
Software: I don’t know, never understood the need, I just share the folders in the network, then open the files from whatever I’m using to watch them. So file explorer, I guess
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Your disk drive prices are off.
Check out:
4TB disks are $18 each.
I linked a parts list of what you would need to add to an old computer to make a 152TB nas that did 7.6GB/s on each of 2 arrays all for under $1700 plus enclosures.