I’ve been thinking of getting a NAS, maybe a Synology DS923+ or DS420+. But Wendell’s video dropped at just the right time and the little mini-server he built is so pretty. I love that Wendell gives you details about things like power draw because that’s an area of interest. I want to put this thing in my attic and leave it alone as much as possible, just waking on LAN.
Now the DS923+ specs state power consumption is 35.51 W (Access) 11.52 W (HDD Hibernation) . Now I know I’m not going to get down to that with my approximation of Wendell’s build as it’s a lot more powerful but does anybody know if the Synology figures are inclusive of the mechanical drives or not because Wendell’s figures were. He gave a nominal draw of 60-70W and a peak of 280W, though the latter was doing some pretty heavy lifting which would be atypical for me. So it looks to me like this build would be drawing about five times as much as the Synology NAS but maybe it’s less if the Synology NAS figures don’t include fully loading it with drives (going for 4, probably).
I’m leaning towards Synology but I could obviously do a lot, lot more with the mini-server. I already have a pretty beefy desktop, though. Power draw is one of main considerations here. I live in the UK and energy costs are soaring right now.
Typically, power draw for HDD’s are not included for commercial NAS’es, as there’s soooo much choice of drives to fit, each with their own variations of power draw.
I don’t know how much storage space you need, but skipping HDD’s is a viable alternative now 1 and 2TB NVMe drives, as well as their 2.5" SATA counterparts, are getting pretty cheap over the last few months.
I thought it was pretty likely it didn’t include the mechanical drives.
I have considered if maybe I could get away with not having mechanical drives. I just totalled up the amount of disk space I’ve used on my desktop and it only comes to about 1TB in total. And my Desktop has copies of pretty much everything on it. Still, I want this for the long-term and who knows how my needs might change. I do want mirror redundancy, however so that does but the decision a little more borderline.
What a brave new world we’ve entered where an NVMe only NAS is actually a viable consideration.
I was going to augment my earlier post, but that would show up a little silly as your response was later. So here it is
I’ve purchased (but not yet received) a NVMe to PCIe adapter for 4x NVMe M.2 2280 drives and so far have obtained 2x Lexar NM620 series 1TB drives. I’ll have 2 more drives later, different brand-same capacity, to fully populate said adapter board. This requires a x16 slot with 4x4x4x4 bifurcation. For your use case, I’d recommend obtaining 2TB drives. Just make sure all drives are either PCIe gen 4, otherwise the port will automagically clock down to PCIe gen 3 speeds.
Provided the slot and drives match the above, you can create a (software) RAID6 to store your data redundantly. This allows for a 2-drive failure while retaining your data and a total of 4TB storage capacity. There is a write penalty for RAID6 (double parity calculations by the CPU) but realistically, unless you have a system from year zero, modern CPU’s can handle this overhead with ease and little (if any) delay.
If anything, not having mechanical drives in the N1 makes the unit less top-heavy and thus less prone to topple over while in use by pets, kids or a hyperactive S.O. Moreover, it allows you to repurpose said space later for more solid state storage solutions, provided the mainboard has the required connectivity.
Thanks, Wendell. That was a great video. Gave me some good ideas. I’ve been out of the PC building game for a while so it’ll be good to put something together again.
6-8W per drive isn’t much at all so that’s good to know.
Moreover, it allows you to repurpose said space later for more solid state storage solutions, provided the mainboard has the required connectivity.