SFF Home NAS

[GGE4R]

Hello guys,

 

I am planning my first NAS build at the moment and would appreciate some help. This is going to be used for media file storage/backup. I would like to start with 4TB of useable storage adding additional drives in the future. Maybe I will throw in an old 128GB SSD as cache.

 

My budget for this build is 650€ - 750€; buying the parts in Germany.

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Pentium G4560 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor  (€64.60 @ Mindfactory)
Motherboard: ASRock H270M-ITX/ac Mini ITX LGA1151 Motherboard  (€129.23 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Memory: Kingston ValueRAM 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2133 Memory  (€54.59 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Storage: Seagate IronWolf 4TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive  (€147.84 @ Mindfactory)
Storage: Seagate IronWolf 4TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive  (€147.84 @ Mindfactory)
Case: Fractal Design Node 304 Mini ITX Tower Case  (€80.32 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 450W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply  (€76.84 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Total: €701.26
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-04-08 14:47 CEST+0200

 

This is what I have got so far. Note that the estimated price is not very accurate, I am able to get this for 650€ give or take a few euros.

 

Now to my questions:

 

Are these sensible hardware choices for what I want to do?

 

I chose this motherboard because it is the cheapest ITX LGA 1151 motherboard with 6 SATA 6Gbs ports I can get. Now I am wondering if it would be smarter to get a B250 board with 4 SATA 6Gbs ports only and add a PCIe card with two more SATA ports. If so what do I need to pay attention to when buying a card like that?

 

Thank you for your feedback.

 

 

Edited April 8, 2017 by GGE4R

[Smitty2k1]

Stick with the mITX board with 6 SATA slots. Use your PCIe slot for a SSD for cache or some other future expansion.

 

I would definitely recommend getting an SFX sized power supply. Even though ATX does fit in this case the SFX power supply will give you more room. Also, I ran into a problem where I had SATA ports that came out the SIDE of the motherboard instead of the TOP. They were only usable with an SFX power supply.

[HellDiverUK]

I've had good results from my Gigabyte Z170N-Wifi - M.2 slot, 6xSATA, 2xIntel NIC, and low power consumption.  Nice board for unRAID.

[GGE4R]

On 10.4.2017 at 6:22 PM, Smitty2k1 said:

Stick with the mITX board with 6 SATA slots. Use your PCIe slot for a SSD for cache or some other future expansion.

 

I would definitely recommend getting an SFX sized power supply. Even though ATX does fit in this case the SFX power supply will give you more room. Also, I ran into a problem where I had SATA ports that came out the SIDE of the motherboard instead of the TOP. They were only usable with an SFX power supply.

 

I did some research on storage controllers and apparently not all of them work well with unRAID so I'm sticking with the 6 SATA port motherboard for sure. Don't wanna deal with troubleshooting that unless I have to.

 

I think using an ATX power supplie should be fine though. I think I will try using the one that I had in mind first, should there be a problem I can always return it. Thanks for the heads up though.

 

On 11.4.2017 at 0:32 PM, HellDiverUK said:

I've had good results from my Gigabyte Z170N-Wifi - M.2 slot, 6xSATA, 2xIntel NIC, and low power consumption.  Nice board for unRAID.

 

Interesting, had some problems with DOA boards from Gigabyte in the past but I will take a look if I have any problems with the ASRock one.

 

Thanks for the feedback guys, I realize this isn't the most exciting project so I really apreciate the replies.

[tdallen]

SFX power supplies are definitely the way to go with these SFF cases.

[Airedo]

I agree with the SFX power supply. think  the best available at the moment - at least on the German market - is the Corsair SF450. Test on ComputerBase. The only drawback is the lack of an ATX adapter plate. I bought this one: SilverStone PP08 SFX zu ATX.

 

The Fractal Design is a good case. I decided to spend a bit more and went with the Lian Li PC-Q25B because of the hot swap bays - ok, not really hot swap, since the back planes lack condensators and removing a drive will restart all other drives. Therefore I recommend to power the system down anyway. The back planes are nice for cable management though. Connect all 5 SATA ports and the 3 power connectors when you set up the system and unless you want to change the mainboard you won't have to bother with that again when adding or exchanging drives. The recommendation for a SFX PSU is for the Lian Li as well, it makes things less cramped and gives you about 95 mm for a CPU cooler if you want to go with something other than the boxed cooler. - The boxed cooler is ok though, comparatively quiet in that case, same goes for the preinstalled case fans, quiet with fan management.

There are lots of theads for both cases if you want to look into that further.

 

Noise:

The Corsair's fan woudn't be used with your hardware, except for a few seconds when the system gets powered on.

The Seagate Ironwolf is comparatively hot and noisy. If you want to place your NAS in the living room, bedroom or a quiet office you should choose other drives, like the WD Red. Those 3 to 4 db that the Ironwolf is louder in idle and under load make a difference in quiet surroundings.