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NAS build. Need help

What are you going to use it for?
How much space do you need?
What RAID setup are you planning to use? Raid 1?
Hardware RAID or Software RAID? Which operating system are you going to use?
 
All depends on what you're doing with it, but that seems like way overkill for a NAS. NAS is generally more about disk (and potentially memory) than it is about CPU. And a board with WiFi? Honestly your NAS should be hard wired into the network and your clients access could be either WiFi or hardwired, but your use may differ than mine.

It does appear that a CPU price is not included in your list, not sure if that means you already have it or what, but if you don't I wouldn't waste the money there. If anything you could throw more memory in there, but I also don't see much point in that unless you plan on running FreeNAS which 'requires' it.

Here's what I would start with around your budget:

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/dm6rgs
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/dm6rgs/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Pentium G3220 3.0GHz Dual-Core Processor ($47.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: ASRock H97M Anniversary Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($51.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Crucial 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($14.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($91.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($91.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: Antec NSK4100 ATX Mid Tower Case ($36.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: Corsair Builder 430W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($19.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $355.92
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-08-09 08:09 EDT-0400

Add drives until your budget is used up.
 
mvbighead said:
All depends on what you're doing with it, but that seems like way overkill for a NAS. NAS is generally more about disk (and potentially memory) than it is about CPU. And a board with WiFi? Honestly your NAS should be hard wired into the network and your clients access could be either WiFi or hardwired, but your use may differ than mine.

It does appear that a CPU price is not included in your list, not sure if that means you already have it or what, but if you don't I wouldn't waste the money there. If anything you could throw more memory in there, but I also don't see much point in that unless you plan on running FreeNAS which 'requires' it.

Here's what I would start with around your budget:

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/dm6rgs
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/dm6rgs/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Pentium G3220 3.0GHz Dual-Core Processor ($47.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: ASRock H97M Anniversary Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($51.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Crucial 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($14.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($91.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($91.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: Antec NSK4100 ATX Mid Tower Case ($36.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: Corsair Builder 430W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($19.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $355.92
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-08-09 08:09 EDT-0400

Add drives until your budget is used up.
Click to expand...

It really depends - good CPU and large RAM can be VERY important if you plan to do anything but pure storage.

If you want your NAS to house media and have it host for streaming, to include any necessary transcoding, you must consider a good CPU and RAM combo.

All the quality QNAP and Synology NAS boxes have just that, Core i3 CPUs with sometimes 8+GB of RAM.


OP, have you considered what OS/software you will be using? What method for handling RAID or will you be simply utilizing a JBOD approach?

edit: I see the first post addressed my questions for the OP.
 
From looking at it, the build seems rather unbalanced with components which don't make sense from a basic NAS perspective.
ATX case and expensive mITX motherboard with Wifi? Doesn't make much sense.
Expensive CPU compared to what you could get, and a T series even though there's no significant advantage in idle power for T vs non-T. Plus you're only going single channel RAM. Do you need CPU performance or not?
Not much spend on the actual HDDs.

What mvbighead posted is much more sensible overall IMO if you don't need CPU power for transcoding.
 
I put a xeon in my unraid server. Mostly so i'd have plenty of grunt transcoding untouched bluray rips and running vm's/dockers. But yeah, if you don't need it buy a lower end cpu and spend the extra money on more hard drives or something.
 
Last edited:
destrekor said:
All the quality QNAP and Synology NAS boxes have just that, Core i3 CPUs with sometimes 8+GB of RAM.
Click to expand...

Most synology nas's still have Atoms in them. Even their top end 1815+ still only has a quad core atom in it and can't transcode worth shi$t. It's great for storage and other low cpu tasks but that's about it.
 
rchunter said:
Most synology nas's still have Atoms in them. Even their top end 1815+ still only has a quad core atom in it and can't transcode worth shi$t. It's great for storage and other low cpu tasks but that's about it.
Click to expand...

Yeah I know, I was only thinking of the NAS units that were actually worth anything. 😉

I've only been looking for ones that were on a certain list that quantified transcoding capabilities, as any NAS I get will be running Plex and likely the HD HomeRun DVR recording engine, as well as additional duties that I can find to throw its way...
 
Ok i plan on using this nas for keeping all my pictures and videos on it. Yes i will be doing raid 1 and with a hardware raid. The hdd i prefer the wd reds since their meant to be on for long durations. Also, what is a good cpu used for in nas? Someone mentioned transcoding. What is that used for? I will also most likely be using free nas. Another question, whats the expected read and write speed of a nas such as this? Becuase the pre built ones from netgear and wd only have read and write speeds of around 65MBps
 
Last edited:
Ajelvani said:
Ok i plan on using this nas for keeping all my pictures and videos on it. Yes i will be doing raid 1 and with a hardware raid. The hdd i prefer the wd reds since their meant to be on for long durations. Also, what is a good cpu used for in nas? Someone mentioned transcoding. What is that used for? I will also most likely be using free nas. Another question, whats the expected read and write speed of a nas such as this? Becuase the pre built ones from netgear and wd only have read and write speeds of around 65MBps
Click to expand...

Transcoding would be used if you stored movies or similar media on the NAS and expected to stream to other devices directly from the NAS, such as using Plex on a Roku or other similar devices. Transcoding is not always necessary, it depends on whether that end device can read the native file format of the file on the NAS. I suspect pure streaming isn't much of an issue.

You are correct to choose WD Reds, those are exactly the drives you would be expected to use for a NAS. They are intended for 24hour operation.

It sounds like if all you plan to do is host files and FTP to download or upload files, you should be going with the absolute cheapest yet reliable CPU and Motherboard combination. Up your RAM to dual-channel (have 2x1GB, that is likely plenty for your usage scenario).

I'd suspect you would want more storage, but, if you don't have that content and aren't storing any media, then perhaps not. I'd suggest having 3 HDDs though for a more superior redundant array, with 2 disks you are relegated to RAID 1-level, which doesn't bring any real benefit other than mirroring. With multi-disk arrays, you gain an increase in both read and write performance AND maintain redundancy through parity stripes.

I can't really quote any read/write speeds, as a quick search shows different numbers based on the review site. Everyone has different methodology, and I haven't found one (this was a quick search) that tested for and noted RAID performance numbers. But in passing, you will basically get the same thing from most of the NAS-based drives, be they consumer or enterprise rated. The biggest difference is long-term reliability and cost, but as a home-user, it is likely disks will sleep more often, and Reds are still incredibly reliable when used in smaller setups. Having 10-20 drives in one server introduces a lot of variables that almost mandate the need for enterprise-class drives; with 4 or so, perhaps even 8, in the home environment, Reds should be perfect.

Own them long enough, all hard drives fail; it's just a matter of how long until they do, and if you get any bad samples that fail earlier than they should... which again, happens no matter the product price level.
So as a home user, it is mostly most effective if you just get the cheapest reliable drives rated for NAS use. Unless things have changed, those would be WD Reds.
 
I still prefer wd reds. So from reading this i most likely will also transcode. And i would be using 2 wd reds 1tb in raid 1 for reliability. What build would you guys recommend for my situation? I also would like the diskless build to be around 250$
 
Do you already have the disks? Typically the cost per GB on 1 TB drives is much higher than 2 or 3 TB drives.

As you mentioned FreeNAS, I'd suggest you grab at least 8GB of RAM as they say that is required nowadays. If that concerns you, you could certainly try a different platform. You may also want a flash drive to boot the OS from. Most tend to have the OS separate from the storage.

As for components, I believe the parts I mentioned are generally good. If you find you need more, just look for the cheapest I3, but that'll likely to at least be twice the cost of the Pentium.

As for the drives:
Western Digital WD10EFRX Red 3.5" 5400RPM 1TB 64MB $0.058 (10) $57.99 Add
Western Digital WD20EFRX Red 3.5" 5400RPM 2TB 64MB $0.043 (11) $85.95 Add
Western Digital WD30EFRX Red 3.5" 5400RPM 3TB 64MB $0.037 (24) $109.99 Add

The number just past the cache is $/GB. You'd pay nearly 6 cents per gigabyte for a 1TB drive vs just under 4 cents per GB on a 3 TB drive, which appears to be the sweet spot in terms of value. The 2TB drive is just over 4 cents, so it's a pretty good in between spot.

Like others, I'd recommend at least three drives, but no one will know what you need but you.

Also, the case and board in my build is suppose to support 6 x Sata3 3.5 inch drives, which I why selected them.
 
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/zmqHgs

This should work for a basic system. It's got room for up to six hard drives, and is a fairly compact box. 8GB of RAM and a not-an-Atom CPU mean you can at least experiment with VMs and other server functions, and transcoding should work well for 1-2 clients.

Add as many TBs of storage space as the budget allows, I guess.

Estimating likely performance is... tough. It can depend a lot on the clients and the type/amount of data you're moving. My NAS (server in sig) will transfer data at around 100MB/sec pretty reliably, but it varies quite a bit with the NIC/drivers that the client is using. Not to mention the usual caveats about switches, WiFi, etc.
 
Seems like a good build. However, is that psu good for 24/7 operation? And what do you think the noise level on that build would be?
 
Ajelvani said:
Seems like a good build. However, is that psu good for 24/7 operation? And what do you think the noise level on that build would be?
Click to expand...

Should be. Noise level would be similar to an off the shelf office PC - most PSUs are fairly quiet, as are WD Reds. It's the CPU coolers and video cards that create most of the noise.
 
As far as a NAS OS goes, I'm going to give my usual spiel: FreeNAS is great, the community sucks though. NAS4Free is the same core tech. unRAID makes better use of a bunch of different-sized HDDs as well as spinning down individual drives for power savings. Your best bet if you want ultimate flexibiliity and feature support is a generic Linux installation which you can then configure to suit, but it's more complicated.
 
My addendum:
1. If you are going to use FreeNAS, do not use hardware RAID, use RaidZ with ZFS.
2. Install FreeNAS on a USB stick as recommended in their instructions. If you don't want a USB stick on the outside of the case, use an internal USB header
3. 2GB of RAM per every TB of disk space
4. 1TB is really nothing these days, I'd invest in bigger capacity disks and be good for a few years.
5. I heared some bad stuff about WD Reds, if you can find a nicely priced HGST instead I'd recommend them over WD or Seagate any day.
 
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