I’m building a NAS for the first time on my own, so I wanted to share the story so far here.
I’m not a stranger to custom builds, in fact I don’t think I ever bought an assembled PC (not counting second hand 386 box a million years ago). But this is my first small, low power build, so it’s not perfect, I already ran into a wall (more later).
I base the build on an AsRock mini-ITX board, the CPU is included, it’s passively cooled, low power consumption but still powerful for a NAS. I’m sticking it into a Node 304 Fractal Design case. Here’s the full list of parts I got:
- AsRock J4125-ITX board with a Celeron 4125 (4-core CPU)
- 8GB DDR4 RAM (a Crucial kit)
- a 500GB NVMe SSD (which I can’t use)
- a couple of Seagate IronWolf 4TB drives
- 90W PicoPSU and some no-name power brick
- Fractal Design Node 304 mini-ITX case.
I planned to have an SSD for OS, these two disks for my photography and media, and then later on expand with more storage (preferably SSD, when I can afford it).
As mentioned, I messed up: the M2 slot on the motherboard is a “Key E” slot. I never bothered with these keys before, so I didn’t know that a Key E slot does not have a SATA protocol, it won’t take my SSD.
Another thing, the PicoPSU is a 20-pin power supply, and the board has a 24-pin slot. It should still be fine, the specs say that this is still okay, but I’ll have to see. According to my back-of-the-napkin calculations, 90 Watts should be enough power for the mobo and CPU, the SSD and the two spinning disks.
Anyway I’ll get a regular SATA SSD tomorrow and see how it’s shaping up. Let me know if you want me to post more on my progress/end result or if you have any questions.
Yeah that makes more sense. But with power, better a bigger block than just enough power. I read somewhere that a powerunit works better if it has more left then just enough
Well, yes, kind of. More power means the PSU or the power adapter is heating up, generating more losses. Closer to their top power, it’s also a bit spikier. You have a bigger reserve for spikes.
The downside is a slightly higher power draw (in absolute values, it’s negligible, but in comparison, it can be a double-digit percentage difference).
I’ve been reading a bit, and I believe that my setup won’t exceed 50 Watts, maybe a bit more if I add two more spinning disks. It should be quite a good match, I think.