Hi,
Since r/NAS is not available and the [email protected] could not provide that much help I am here again to ask stuff ;D.
My 10years old NAS quited work and I am looking for my opportunities. And since I am tinkering with my raspi and am generally interested in selfhosting stuff like jellyfin, joplin e.g. I decided to take the step to build my own Nas instead of buying another Synology device.
I would like to provide my needs but since I am not sure about it it is only a try… Moreover I cannot say where the journey will take me to^^
What I know:
- 4 sata slots so I can use my actual drives and have the option to upgrade
- Transcoding with jellyfin would be nice
- having my own cloud storage is a long term aim
- joplin server
- maybe some terraria dedicated server could be cool also
- low power usage and low noise are two criteria i would consider important since the energy prices only know one direction where I life
- x64 architecture to use debian server or TrueNas Scale (I need to dive deeper into TrueNas before deciding)
My former favorite is this fanless board:
MITAC PD11EHI-J6413 MINI-ITX
Con:
- I realised that the second M.2 slot does not supports M key SSDs but I planned to run the OS on an NVME… and since there is no PCIe the singel M.2 slot with M Key support is the only way to upgrade to 4 sata slots.
My actual favorite (but more expensive) choice seems to be:
MITAC PD10EHI-N6415
Con:
- price (not so much of problem)
ECC compatibility feels unnecessary.
Is there anything that I have forgotten? Any better choices from european vendors? Ordering from america is not an option because it would take forever to arrive and the process to get it from the zoll is time consuming and would put taxes on top.
Thanks in advance 😊
Take a look at Asrock’s mITX Line with builtin Intel chips. I use a J5005 and it has pretty much all that you are asking for:
It runs quiet and sips power. It runs quite a few services for me:
Nextcloud is snappy. CPU utilization is minimal. RAM is basically empty. I am happy!
You still need a case and a picoPSU, but those are cheap and allow you to properly fit all drives.
I boot off a small 120 GB SSD (slow SATA3), my media lives on a large HDD (slow SATA3) and all docker services, user data and databases are stored on a 2x 1TB SSD RAID (fast SATA).
There’s a free PCIe 2.0 slot on the mainboard which would allow me to add 1 fast SATA3 or 2 more slow ones. The slow ones are ideal for spinning drives.
Both devices you listed are 6000 chips and should be even faster and more efficient. Do they have PCIe 3.0? That would make them twice as fast I/O-wise than my setup!
BTW, stay away from USB HDDs and stick to directly attached SATA or NVMe. Much less finicky, reliably show up after reboot (!) and have SMART statistics! Also, external enclosure are made to look nice but heat up instantly. They degrade performance and life span.
Thank you for your answer. the picoPSU is the next point that causes headaches. I have two questions about the pico.
How to calculate how much energy is needed without knowing how much the board needs? My actual HDDs and planed parts are:
It seems like a 80 watts picoPSU should be sufficent. What I don’t understand is, how can I supply the power with this psu when it is a 24-pin ATX but the board needs only 4-Pin-ATX?
I didn’t take a closer look at your board, sorry. The picoPSU is of course only possible if you need an ATX-Style power supply. If your board has an irregular connector, you’ll first have to find out what that is and where you can find an appropriate supply. It may be a “12 Volt Only” style connector, which would mean you only really need a fitting 12V power supply.
Your max power calculations look fine.
I have written a mail to the shop and asked them how to supply the power and if it is even possible with a picoPsu. If not, I guess I will take a Asrock instead. Using a regular ATX psu only for the one connector somehow feels not purposeful 🤷🏻♂️