I’m delving into NAS territory for the first time and while I think my initial plunge is relatively modest, I’m worried it may be inappropriate. Between official documentation, the TrueNAS forums, and general internet resources, info is all over the place and it’s hard to know what’s “right” with TrueNAS when you’re blind.
I have a loose list put together below to serve as a foundation. My main criteria being I want it to be Mini-ITX and use an AMD cpu which is understandably limiting but I don’t anticipate it being a problem.
I understand ECC memory would be ideal but I’m ok with normal RAM for now as I intend to learn and improve upon this in 3-4 years, with possible upgrades along the way.
Basically, any guidance on what I’m doing wrong (or right?) would be particularly helpful. I know I’ve made it more difficult than necessary due to form factor but hey, that’s part of the fun.
Main goal is simply more redundant file storage
Secondary goal is to learn about TrueNAS & NAS tech
Learn enough for future use
Concerns
Consumer parts relatively short life as a NAS?
Weak CPU for future experimentation
Wrong angle of attack for NAS/TrueNAS
Completely lost in sauce
PCPartPicker Part List
CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 3100 3.6 GHz Quad-Core Processor ($149.99 @ Newegg) CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black Edition 42 CFM CPU Cooler ($29.99 @ Newegg) Motherboard: Gigabyte B550I AORUS PRO AX Mini ITX AM4 Motherboard ($206.12 @ Amazon) Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (1 x 16 GB) DDR4-3000 CL16 Memory ($69.98 @ Amazon) Storage: Samsung 970 Evo Plus 250 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive ($54.99 @ Amazon) Storage: Seagate IronWolf 6 TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($139.99 @ B&H) Storage: Seagate IronWolf 6 TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($139.99 @ B&H) Storage: Seagate IronWolf 6 TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($139.99 @ B&H) Storage: Seagate IronWolf 6 TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($139.99 @ B&H) Case: Fractal Design Node 304 Mini ITX Tower Case ($99.99 @ Newegg) Power Supply: Corsair RM (2019) 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($101.05 @ Amazon) Total: $1272.07 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-12-22 07:20 EST-0500
UPDATE
Here's what I've decided on and will run with. Not as cheap as could be but I didn't mention I have an informal personal timeline and am fine with it.
Fractal Design Node 304 Mini ITX case
GIGABYTE B550I AORUS PRO mini itx mobo
AMD Athlon 3000G Picasso CPU
32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 RAM
Seasonic FOCUS SGX-500 500W PSU
4x Seagate IronWolf 6TB 5400RPM HDDs
Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.2 250GB PCIe Gen 3.0 x4 SSD
Thanks for the help and feedback folks, it was a great welcome to the community and helped a ton.
Point to consider, you may need a GPU for initial set up and some AMD cpus wont boot without a GPU but some board and AMD CPU combos will. Or you can consider maybe the Athelon 3000 APU?
Those parts are more than enough for a NAS depending on if you plan to have PLEX running on it or something similar that needs native decoding and encoding of video support.
Theres no real right or wrong. People can use a old PC and a bunch of drives. Some people use a Raspberry Pi. Then there are people that go all in on virtual machines and storage in one with thread ripper build.
Your on the right track. Knowing what you will be using it for will also help get better support for you.
My two cents go Intel for a NAS you wont regret it if you do go AMD go for a Ryzen 3600 at least and don’t go Athlon I just upgraded from an Athlon to a 10400 no regrets with QSV transcoding is great.
I only recommed the Athelon because if it’s only for file serving that should be fine. I dont know if trancoding and jellyfin or Plex is on the table yet lol
I just upgraded my old server which had been running desktop parts for over ten years without issue. As long as you don’t get the most bargain basement stuff it will be fine.
Depending on your needs, consider the EPYC 3000 series by AMD. Those come on mITX boards (at least the ones I found so far). I’m actually eyeing up the Gigabyte MJ11-EC0 board, which has a 3151 SoC (8 cores/16 threads) and cooler+fan included. Also has an IPMI port, so you can access the hardware w/o a GPU and do so remotely for extra lolz
Add onboard M.2 slot, 4x SATA, 1x miniSAS ( =4 more SATA) and PCIe16x slot and it looks exactly right for a NAS. Costs about 500 USD, but I only found one (1) supplier here in Europe, so prices where you are may (and probably will) differ.
As for your list, it’s fine apart from RAM: either add another 16GB stick or swap the single stick out for a pair of 8GB sticks instead. Dual channel config is much better over single channel.
You may want to use a pair of 14T/16T/18T drives instead, that would leave enough space in the case (and ports on the board) for you to add more once you fill it up.
As long as you’re not using desktop class or SMR hard drives you should be fine with consumer parts. Those IronWolf drives are a solid pick.
I agree with @HaaStyleCat on needing either a cheap GPU or consider getting an APU. TrueNAS itself doesn’t need much CPU horsepower. So if you’re only using it as a file server you’ll be okay with almost anything. But transcoding plex video for mobile devices can be pretty demanding. Take a look at the Ryzen 5 5600G if you think you might run Plex. It’s $100 more than the 3100 but includes graphics. I think you’ll get more value upping the CPU for $100 vs spending $50 on a cheap GPU.
You can always add another stick of RAM, a SATA card, or a ZFS cache drive to the build later. So I would focus on making sure your case, power supply, and CPU will meet your future needs first.
I suggest installing 2x 12TB drives instead of 4x 6TB drives. 2x12TB will give you the opportunity to increase your disk space in the future without having to remove one of your 6TB drives. Running out of space with 4x 6TB installed requires you to replace and essentially lose one of your 6TB drives.
To run in a 2x 12TB drive configuration you would need to mirror the disks which would limit your usable space to 12TB. Plus your drive read/write speeds will be limited to speed of a single drive (at best 190MB/sec which is miserably slow).
In a 4x 6TB configuration he could configure them RAIDZ1 which would yield 18 TB of usable space. And I would expect speeds to be +400MB/sec.
Thanks for all the replies, this gives me some ideas and confidence proceeding. I’m going to swap out the processor and think about my needs within the context of the individual drive size.
My current train of thought is as said above, 4x 6TB with RAIDZ1 as 18TB should be sufficient for at least 3 years and then I can upgrade with another pool or redo the initial pool to include any new drives.
This part makes me nervous, you have 1 disk worth of fault tolerance, so even if you do go with two different manufacturers, say 2xWD, 2xSeagate, you could still lose the second one from the same vendor during rebuild.
Some of these apply to RAIDZ too:
This is baby’s first NAS, I’m not trying to make it as robust as can be. That said, I appreciate the concern and info as it’s new to me and not something I’d considered until your posts. Will keep this in mind as I explore further and likely expand this NAS in a year or two.
Just to save an extra buck I am buying the same Seagates but half from Newegg and half from another seller so they’re almost certainly different lots.
Not likely: drives are produced in batches (really large batches!) then distributed amongst the many vendors carrying the particular brand. And having “old stock” wrt hard drives is very unlikely in 2021. Best buy the 2nd drive from a different brand. My quad-drive RAID6 has drives from 4 different manufacturers: Hitachi, Seagate, WD and Toshiba.
FourOFour,
The point of my previous message was the hard drive’s capacity not the quantity of hard drive.
“To run in a 2x 12TB drive configuration you would need to mirror the disks which would limit your usable space to 12TB.” This is incorrect. Mirroring two drives is only the default setting. You can switch back to Stripe. Please review: Checking Out TrueNAS Core - YouTube 11 minutes and 50 seconds into the video Ryan demonstrates how to do this.
Striping two drives is wildly dangerous and should never be used on a NAS. It should only be used in scenarios where you need a high performance scratch disk.
