Hello, I am new around here, and am looking to build a NAS using trueNAS. I would like some help with figuring out hardware. My plan is to use an old Optiplex 790 desktop version (I am converting the CD slot to a HDD slot) . I currently have 2 sticks of 2gb ram, so I know that needs to be upgraded to 8 total at minimum. I have a plan to buy two 6tb manufacturer refurbished hard drives from server part deals, two of the same drive. I have an SSD from microcenter I will use for the OS. Is there any conflict here or anything I should be aware of? Any help would be amazing, thank you!
Just as a note, I know the motherboard doesnt support ECC ram which is unfortunate.
Hard Drives (2): Toshiba MD04 MD04ACA600R 6TB 7.2K RPM SATA 6Gb/s Desktop 3.5in Recertified Hard Drive
8 GB is the bare min to run, 16 GB is recommended min. If you are just using the NAS for storage and not apps nor VMs, you might be okay.
Make sure the hard drives are not SMR but CMR recording technology. You want to look for NAS hard drives. I don’t see anything listed on Toshiba documents. Their N300 in the consumer line is for NAS. Use TrueNAS Scale. Consider getting a different computer
If im not wrong, your pc should be a Sandy/Ivy Bridge right?
DDR3 at the moment cost really nothing, 15-20€ for 16gb, think about it
And, you definetily want an Intel dedicated NIC, if your mainboard has a Realtek one
Not sure what the processor is exactly, but I believe that is correct. I will definitely look into more RAM. I could mix RAM to get to 16gb but I am trying to avoid that. I am not sure what a NIC is tbh. Network interface card? I know it has a built in Ethernet/Integrated Intel® 82579LM Ethernet.
You can try out 8 GB but TrueNAS Scale / Linux hasn’t been a good as TrueNAS Core / FreeBSD with regard to RAM usage. It may be fine now but it did have growing pains with ZFS. The latest version, Electric Eel, doesn’t install with swap enabled due to tuning for ZFS and problems in the past.
For the ram amount i totally agree with @SmallBarky. I have experience with 8gb on Core, totally viable for quite usage, but don’t know if in EEL is better to avoid (considering that you will probably run some docker service too).
Until they have similar spec, there is not much to worry about.
But on a no-ECC system you really want to test them with regularity with memtest (and offcourse, as part of testing all the HW)
What you should pay attention on is if the modules can be single or double side: some mainboard supports 4 sticks just if they are single density. If you have 2 you should be fine putting 2 8gb stick anyway
If your Dell still has the service tag, use that to look up documents on their support. The service manual and user manual should give you everything you need.
