Select NAS hardware (recommendations and help)

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Hi, this is my first post so sorry if I missed a related thread, rules or tags.

After watching “Mini Server!!!” I am about ready to finally get my own home NAS. I originally thought about getting a prebuilt(bundle like synology) unit but found that I was more interested in building my own.

I am lucky enough to have a micro center near me and was looking at the sever Wendell showed off. I found a different version on sale. My basic question is is there any reason I should not get the cheaper more workstation version?

Original

Workstation

As far as I can tell the difference are

  • 2.5 Gb

  • A few more cores

  • integrated graphics

  • more PCIE

The cpu is still 80W. Is there anything i am giving up?

To be clear I am not just using it as storage and share. I wanted to run a VM some docker instances and a few other projects. It does not need to be supper powerful but not weak either.

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Depends on what you actually want to do, to just serve files both are quite overpowered. Both are using rather old hardware by now however fwiw.

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I was planning on running some containers, VMs and a few other home projects off it.

Is there anything newer you recommend around the same prices?

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I’m not sure what the thread is about. Pre-built or DIY?

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Being cheap you might want to have look at a Dell PRECISION 3650 TOWER and rip out all extras, below 700 USD with a 11th gen Xeon CPU, 8Gb of ECC and vPro (not sure if always includes KVM functionality etc).

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If it is just serving files the Argon EON RPi NAS plus a RPi 4 should cost you $300, houses 4 SATA SSDs, draws roughly 20W total and could be just what you need, here.

Of course if you need MOAR POWAH I do think you should look somewhere else.

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It’s also a not so great SoC for the job, no crypto (SMB) and according to Toms Hardware everything hangs off USB :-/

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Prebuilt I linked to the microcenter web site. I could do a DIY but it seems easer to get a pre built.

I was more referring to a synology vs my own install and configuration.

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Thanks ill look into that, ill look into the dell and good to know about SMB and USB

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With the argon case they are proving a NVME SATA drives at 600 MB/second not great in a PC, but for a Pi4 it’s not a bad choice. But in no way should be considered a NAS for anything but Pi’s and maybe your phone.

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I’ll take the RK3399 SoC any day of the week over the Broadcom one :slight_smile: if you’re looking at cheap ARM SoCs. Sadly projects like https://kobol.io/ folded due to the pandemic :frowning:

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