I’m trying to select hardware around the Jonsbo N2 case. It says it’s an “ITX” form factor, but I don’t even thing that’s a real form factor so I guess it’s Mini ITX?
Anyways, this build I would like to be able to handle 4k transcoding with plex. I just need help with the PSU, motherboard and CPU selection. Some
Major gripes:
Acquantia NIC is not preferred for server use.
“On-die ECC” is not real ECC. It’s not clear from ARK whether the G7400 supports real ECC UDIMM, as (iGPU-less) Xeon E-2400 Xeons do.
Minor gripes:
Having a N1, I’m not convinced by Jonsbo’s method of drive attachment with elastic handles. And I have doubts about the cooling power of a 15 mm thin fan behind a backplane—the N1 is certainly better here.
A 850 W PSU is distinctly overpowered for a maximum of 5 drives.
You want at least Plex as an app, but have no provision for an application pool.
With five bays and a 2-way mirror to start there’s no good plan to expand storage. Maybe a stripe of mirrors plus spare, or a stripe of mirrors plus a single SATA SSD for apps.
Overall, this feels like an unbalanced plan, where you’re spending a lot on motherboard and PSU but skimping on CPU (which is fine if you do not need computing power) and drives (more drives → raidz2).
I want to share in @etorix concerns about cooling in that case. It’s a nice-looking case, but I’m just skeptical it could adequately cool disks. I used small mATX 8-disk cases that had two 80x25mm fans, and while the cooling was sufficient for 8 disks, it wasn’t great. I made a lot of modifications just to keep the disk temps 40-45c. Not ‘terrible’, just not great. In comparison, a different mATX 8-disk case with 2 x 120x25mm fans kept the disks at ~35c, my preferred temp. It might be OK, I’m just doubtful.
For the CPU, I’m surprised dual-cores are still produced, but it’ll be powerful enough. I’d also look at what Xeon options are available since the chosen motherboard supports it. You might be able to find something cheaper?
For the RAM, I would value capacity over speed. I don’t think RAM speed is that important for a home NAS. I’d rather have more capacity for cache than higher speed that will probably still be bottlenecked by disk latency.
For the PSU, it’s definitely overpowered. For some perspective, my old NAS was a Supermicro mATX motherboard with onboard 2 x Intel x550 10gbit, Xeon e3-1275v6 (w/iGPU), onboard LSI 3008, a 9400-16e hba, 4 DIMMs, m.2 drive, and 8 Exos disks – all on a 350w Flex PSU without issue.
Xeon E-2400. No iGPU for QuickSync transcoding.
To find a Xeon E with an iGPU you have to look at previous generations: E-2300 (LGA1200), E-2100/2200 (LGA1151-2, and then Core i3-8100/9100 are also an ECC-enabled option). Motherboard availability may be an issue, especially in mini-ITX.
Ouch! For 8 drives (and two HBAs) the guidance would be around 600 W.
450 W for (up to) 5-6 drives here:
Subject to availability (second hand), and possibly undisclosed requirements (10G NIC?), my suggestion for a smallish, reasonably quiet, build would be a mini-ITX X10SDV board (Xeon D-1500, 6 SATA, 1 M.2, possible 10G, uses cheap DDR4 RDIMM) in a Node 304 case (6 drive bays, standard ATX PSU). Add a x8x4x4 bifurcating riser in the x16 slot, a pair of M.2 for an app pool, and a half-height A310 dGPU for transcoding.
A2SDi is not even old, for an embedded board. But a C3558 forces to choose lanes between 4 SATA and PCIe x4 or 8 SATA and no PCIe. You have to move up to a C3758 to enjoy 12 SATA and PCIe x4 and possibly 10G on top (A2SDi-H-TF).
AUDHEID K7 - 2 x *90mm x 25mm
U-NAS 810A - 2 x 120mm x 25mm
350w was the highest Flex PSU I found at the time. Not sure if that has changed. No issues for 4 years, but has been replaced.
Current system has redundant 920w PSUs supporting Supermicro H12SSL-CT, Epyc 7702 64-core, 8 x 64GB DDR4, 2 x quad m.2 cards, 2 x 9400-16e cards, 2 x onbard nvme, onboard LSI 3008, 4 x Exos HDD, 10 x Toshiba SSD, 10 x lil Optane nvme, 2 x onboard Broadcom (bleh) 10gbe, 3 x 80x38mm case fans, 60x25mm cpu fan, Intel Arc A380. Reported by SMC motherboard power consumption: 432w max, 145w min, 255w avg. I’m expecting that hot-swapped disks and backplane wattage is not being included in the above figures.
Point wasn’t that he should drop down to 350w, it’s that people often overestimate PSU requirements and that 850w is definitely overkill.
Hey all, I appreciate the input but the main struggle I’m having is the CPU and motherboard. Can anyone recommend specific models?
I can’t understand why it’s so hard to find current generation motherboards and CPUs that support IPMI, QuickSync, and ECC. Seemed so easy to find when I built my last one about 10 years ago.
I’m OK to move to micro-atx if that makes hardware selection easier. The use-case is for plex, photo storage, and some minor docker containers (git, etc).
That would open more motherboard options.
But for bulk storage, some containers, hardware transcoding but no requirements for high computing power (“minor” containers), (and 10GbE?), I stand by my above suggestion.
If you can find, say, a X10SDV-4C-TLN2F or -TLN4F…
Both those motherboards are Mini-ITX. Also they’re old as the hills (2015). I don’t want to look for vintage hardware, I want readily available and current gen hardware. The system I have right now is from 2015.
Embedded hardware lives on different time scales… X10SDV boards are still sold new and make great little NAS.
“Current gen” is generally not a great choice for a home server, and better value can be found in slightly older hardware, be it second hand or new old stock. Consider that the server can be expected to serve for 7-10 years; in 2030, a LGA1700 or AM5 system from 2025 will look just as “vintage” as a LGA1151/LGA1200/AM4 system.
From your requirements list, I second the use of SuperMicro motherboards. Good move now considering mATX. I had an iTX X11SCF-IF-O which didn’t passthru the GPU and moved to the mATX X11SCH-F which does (and ups me from 4 to 8 SATA ports. Since I was migrating I also moved from an E2126G to an E2146G with an extra two cores. Finally I went with the Audheid 8-bay (with the wood paneled front, similar to the K7) from a Node 302 (still love that case), which makes drive swapping effortless.
HBAs) the guidance would be around 600 W.