I’m planning to build my first proper TrueNAS SCALE setup and could use some advice from people with more experience. I’ve done quite a bit of reading and have a general plan, but I’d like to sanity-check my choices and hear what you’d recommend.
What I’m aiming for:
Around 6 × 12 TB or 6 × 18 TB in RAIDZ2, which should give roughly 65 TiB usable.
A single vdev layout for simplicity. I will use dataset to organize my different needs
Preferably 6 bays, though I could go 8 if it’s significantly better for thermals or expandability.
ECC RAM and an NVMe boot drive (not sure if it’s that valuable vs other boot drive).
At least 2.5 GbE, ideally 10 GbE if it fits the budget (can’t have too much I guess).
Budget: about €1000 (excluding drives).
I’m based in Western Europe.
Low power draw and quiet operation are as important as possible.
Intended use:
Store media (1080p/4K movies and series), game ISOs, photos, PDFs/documents, and homelab data (persistent volumes, backups, etc.).
I’ll run Jellyfin + the ARR suite directly on the NAS, though I can move those containers to my homelab if needed for performance, power or cpu (transcoding) reasons.
Hardware ideas so far:
Intel build (e.g., i5-13500 or i7-14700) for Quick Sync transcoding.
AMD option (e.g., Ryzen 5600G) if it’s better for a low-power NAS without needing iGPU transcoding.
RAIDZ2 for data safety.
Planning future expandability (add another vdev if needed).
What I’d love input on:
Motherboards that support ECC reliably and work well with TrueNAS SCALE.
Thoughts on Intel Quick Sync vs Ryzen APUs for this use case.
Compact cases that stay quiet and easy to service.
Reliable 2.5 / 10 GbE NICs for SCALE.
Any compatibility quirks with these platforms (BIOS, IPMI, etc.).
Appreciate any guidance, build lists, or shared experience!
I’d argue that the build in my bio would fit your needs & is within budget… only problem is that asrock rack motherboards are a pain to get.
I’d personally avoid 13th & 14th gen intel; speaking from personal experience of manually setting voltage curves after all the endless bios ‘fixes’ that did nothing for stability. Go for 12th gen if you really want lga1700. If I’m not mistaken, you’d need a ‘k’ variant for ecc compatibility.
I’d avoid boot from nvme as it is a waste - nvme is nice for vms & apps… boot pool can live on a sata ssd happily.
Haven’t looked into AMD & transcoding, but if it used to be that basically no one supported it - maybe that has changed. Decent chance that you’d need a gpu is going amd route.
Don’t get a compact case; nothing worse for thermals, noise, or future expansions.
Would a Jonsbo N5 NAS case work? (Assuming it’s available in your part of the world)
It fits a full ATX motherboard and has 12 bays that can be accessed from the front.
Personally, I like using decommissioned (used) Supermicro brand motherboards, their X10 and X11 generations work for TrueNAS in my builds, and they take Registered memory which includes ECC.
Spinning drives make more noise than fans in my builds, so I separated my Jellyfin server into its own case with solid state media. I use TrueNAS for storing backups of my PCs, and turn it off when I’m not backing up or restoring.
As for Jellyfin’s transcoding, I use a dedicated Intel Arc A310: It handles 4K movies without trouble.
Intel and Aquantia (Now Marvell) make good 10GbE NICs.
And perhaps you could benefit from using RAID-Z3 for even better data safety?
Has a m.2 slot for a boot device, dual Intel 10 GbE, IPMI (with HTML5 IP-KVM), up to 128 GB RAM. Six SATA ports onboard, and a PCIe 3.0 x16 slot for a HBA if you need more.
Case, fractal node 804 but it limits your motherboard selections. Graphics, Intel arc a310, quicksync is stupidly fast at transcoding in real-time, maybe an Intel chip with an on die apu that supports quicksync is adequate. Had an old Xeon handle that duty nicely.
No nvme, waste of money. Boot from a pair of cheap ssd’s mirrored, you can get low capacity drives sold in pairs. Or maybe just a single drive and you backup the config daily. Stuff it with as much ecc ram as you can afford.
For the case, I recommend the “Sagittarius” case on AliExpress. It’s not the prettiest thing, but the thermals are excellent since it uses 4x 120mm fans, 2 on each side, to pull air straight through. One side is just for the 8 hot-swap HDD bays, the other side (isolated) holds a mATX motherboard and full-size ATX power supply. The only things I don’t like are there’s no power or activity LEDs, no reset switch (these can all be added easily with some parts from AliExpress for $5), and no HDD activity LEDs (not so easy to add).
I agree!
Just save the config to an external place, where you can access it, in case the system dies.
No need for mirrored boot drives.
It takes like 15 minutes to reinstall the whole system and import the configuration.
I really like the aesthetics of the Jonsbo N5 and it seems compact enough for my needs and as it can handle an ATX mobo I guess it gives me more choices. And I can reuse my ATX 750w PSU with it so it’s a win-win
Where I’m at, the only place to get a Supermicro for less than ~600$ is from ebay reseller and I’m not a huge fan of used/second-hand from particular especially when it’s regarding my data / backup / …
I got it for the NVME part, I will just use a single ssd with regular backup to my storage for the boot and config part.
For the RAID-Z3 part, I’m planning to backup my essential data to a remote location (possibly S3 or Backblaze) and another physical backup (in the future) so I think Z2 is the right compromise between disk usable space and safety
Regarding the transcoding part, I heard that the 13/14th gen of intel cpu are to avoid if possible so I don’t mind either going 12th gen but may lack a bit of whatever compared to newer amd cpu + arc A310 (go around ~100$ here so not that pricey if the amd mobo + cpu are cheaper and less power hungry than intel counterpart)
I understand your hesitation when it comes to parts from ebay, but:
gaming/office parts were never designed to operate 24/7
gaming/office parts lack some very convenient features, like a proper IPMI and official ECC memory support
RAID is NOT a backup. The RAID array is only part of it.
I trust used server gear a lot more than new offfice/gaming gear.
invest what you save into higher quality or more storage and/or a better back up
a crappy or overheating chip on an used board, can for sure corrupt your data. But then again, the chances of finding such a low quality chip are alot lower on a server part than on a gaming/office part
A X10SDV board in a Node 304 case fits this perfectly, including 10G.
If transcoding is required, throw in an Arc A310, possibly on a x8x4x4 riser so you still have two more M.2 slots for an app pool.
I would NOT trust a Jonsbo N case for cooling.
DDR5 ECC SO-DIMM does not match my own definition of “nice”… YMMV.
A lot of us are using a lot of used gear–I bought almost everything in my rack used. A NAS doesn’t need or really even benefit from the latest-generation tech, and you can save quite a lot of money buying ~5-year-old used equipment.
…which is no real loss as nobody should be using those anyway.
X550 actually should do that. But you want the full 10G at least to the switch; there are plenty of cheap switches, including managed switches, with 1/2.5G ports and one or two 10G ports in all combinations of copper and fibre.
Sidenote, many times it’s up to the sfp+ module to negotiate. The ones I use go 1-2.5-5-10 then supply that speed to the card. Ideally you want 10 from the Nas to a shared switch. Many ways to get it there.
First and foremost, thanks for your answers and your advices !
After checking with my available way to buy those, I had to redo a list of potential cpu+mobo combo that could match my needs (minus a need for hba / arc gpu).
For intel based build I have
CPU
Mobo
i5-12400
ASUS Pro WS W680-ACE
i3-12100
Supermicro X13SAE-F
Intel Core i5-12600
ASRock W680D4U
CWWK W680
For Amd builds I have
Ryzen 5 5600
ASRock Rack X570D4U
Ryzen 7 5800X
ASRock B550D4U
Ryzen 5 Pro 4650G
Asrock B550 Pro4
Ryzen 5 PRO 5650G
MSI MAG B550 Tomahawk
ASUS PRIME B550-PLUS
B550i Aorus Pro AX
Gigabyte MC12-LE0
From my pov, Asrock and Supermicro are solid brand to go for.
Do you have any strong no-go for either of those piece of hardware ?
If they are mostly the same then I will go for the one available
I have this for one of my other systems - had some trouble with booting until I found a specific bios version (not latest, I straightup was testing them 1 by 1 until something worked). The IPMI add-on card is a minor pain to setup & will look like a jumble of spaghetti unless you’re masterful at cable management.
Only other comment is that you mention non-k cpus for intel; I’m 90% sure that only the ‘k’ skews have support for ECC, which you previously mentioned was important to you. You may want to double check intel’s product pages if you want ecc support.
Asrock & Supermicro are solid, no additional notes on my end for those.
