I have found there is nothing quite like standing there with a monitor attached as you install things and sort things out. This is why they still put VGA outputs on NAS server motherboards 
BTW I said GUI on the build mate. Not the software.
Yes, you did, and it makes no more sense now than when you said it.[1] None of what youâve discussed is graphical (which is what the G in GUI stands for). If youâd said âdo not underestimate the need for a local displayâ (which is apparently what you meant), no problemâthough, again, IPMI eliminates that need in 99% of cases. But words mean things.
âGUI on the buildâ also makes no sense; GUIs are a feature of software, not typically of hardware. âŠď¸
^ Goodluck navigating the quirks of a TrueNAs build without âa local displayâ. Sure it can be done. We all know that. And IPMI is one step. We get that (as well). So sure mate. Whatever. We all speak English. Some cultures express themselves differently. (Thatâs all) Itâs nice having âa local displayâ thenâŚand if that is helpful, why not HDMI?.. happy? 
Now I am moving on with planning my new build (as well)⌠and I will find an HDMI output very helpful. I quote from the chip I most likely will use : " the Intel Core i7-14700T has integrated graphics. It features the Intel UHD Graphics 770. This means it can handle basic graphical tasks and video output without needing a separate dedicated graphics card However, for more demanding tasks like gaming or video editing, a dedicated GPU is recommended". I intend to use that function directly to access and tweek the bios and do the initial load etcâŚHeaven forbid an orderly shutdown standing in front of the server without using the TrueNAS GUI (or the IPMI) for that matter⌠Have a good one mate. Cheers 
Iâm not certain that you understand the capabilities of IPMI. Via IPMI, one can do all of what youâve stated about system monitoring and interacting with the BIOS. I just did a fresh install of SCALE on my current system all âheadlessâ through the IPMI. I was able to attach the iso and then go directly into the BIOS to change the boot order so that the boot was from the iso. I see no use case that would require me to attach a monitor.
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Yep thatâs why you value Ipmi, itâs a monitor without a monitor.
@solarNAS just a little FYI about forum etiquette. I understand you are new and everyone has been nice and polite but you are doing a little something called thread jacking, hijacking the original posterâs thread. Many forum mods would have politely asked you to start a new thread for your build rather than interjecting in this one. It makes the conversation here focused and keeps it nice and neat. You can see that you are getting traction here so itâs not like your build would have been ignored, had you started your own topic. It can get very confusing and chaotic seeing who is replying to who. Just some friendly advice for future posts. Carry on. 
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Only time I ever connected a monitor to one of my IPMI servers was when i broke the BMC firmware during an attempted redfish upgrade. Used the monitor and a DOS based install process to recover the BMC/IPMI.
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Fact check : OMG! It looks like the ASUS Pro WS W680M-ACE SE does not support 4 NVMe drives on that PCIe 5.0x16 slot?? https://www.asus.com/support/faq/1037507/
âŚwith an Asus hyper cardâŚ
It gets so so confusing âŚ
In any case ASUS Pro WS W680M-ACE SE is not even listed!
whatâs worse AI is doubling back to this thread, saying it âdoesâ?
OMG!
It would only support two nvmes in that slot unless the card you has a pcie switch (to my knowledge the asus card does not; it NEEDS bifurcation support on the motherboard)
To quote:
PCIe Bandwidth Bifurcation Configuration
[Auto] Run full PCIe X16 mode.
[X8/X8] Split up PCIEX16(G5)_1 that runs at X16 into X8/X8
Seems the slot can only do either x16 or x8x8 - no option for x4x4x4x4
No need for AI; just rtfm 
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Yeah the current state of pcie lanes and slots is borderline evil. This supports it, that doesnât. Oh does your cpu have enough lanes, doesnât matter if your mb doesnât allocate them how you want.
Nvme is overpriced but fast. Perfect for boot drives where all your games are stored, not awesome for raid arrays for the money. I have an all nvme truenas test box, and it just uses the real big boy with 52tb of sata drives for all the bulk files it canât hold via nfs shares or smb. I keep waiting for them to get more dense but theyâre limited by surface area so memory chip density has to increase exponentially first. /rant
Refocus. Get familiar with shucks. Accept the spinning rust cmr sata drives. We can buy 26tb units now. That was probably most of the worldâs data back in 1992.
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Oh 100% agree. I am after a hi speed small form factor build on NVMe that I can leave on 24/7 without it costing me a fortune in energy bills. I already have a large HDD based TrueNAS server. The new Terramaster âProâ NVME NAS (I forget what it is called) was very close to what i want next âŚso are those Asustor Flashtors but neither are ECC and I think that is important with NVME drives⌠anyway - the quest continues
Hope youâve learned the lesson: LLMs are just spitting out statiscally plausible sequences of words⌠with a bias towards what you may want to hear.
âTruthâ or âaccuracyâ are NOT on the menu.
In that case, the most relevant manual is not even from Asus but from Intel: The CPU does not support x4x4x4x4. Full stop.
If Asus did its job correctly though, you can have x8x4x4 in the main x16 slot, and three drives working in an âHyper M.2â (or Shenzen equivalent).
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Sure - oh I have learnt my lesson! âŚits been a very interesting experience following the LLM âadviceâ, myself going back to check the actual manual and source reference of said LLM âadviceâ⌠only to find out they largely spit out a total load of BS!
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Take a look at my build in my signature. Something like that but updated would do well and fit under 900 with a fractal 804. For example X11SCL-IF with Xeon E-21xx/22xx (or even i3-9100F) or X12STL-IF with Xeon E-23xx. Choose simply by price and availability. Maybe start with 64 GiB RAM and leave room for 128 in future. Then an Intel Arc for transcode if you like, though the Intel iGPU in these also works well.
You could also do AsRock Rack X470D4U or X570D4U with a Zen 2/3 CPU (not APU). I think some folk are; caveat that Iâve heard of someone who had two DOAs with these boards. Also never misplace the IPMI password, it canât be reset. And they canât email you on ECC errors. The OS still can ofc.
For storage, if youâre going to do any apps do yourself a favor and add two SSDs, anything that is TLC and has DRAM.
Most of these boards have 8xSATA. For bulk media a simple 6x14TB raidz2 (or something along those lines) should do fine, leaving two for the app SSD. Boot from a single small NVMe on the M.2.
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@sieve007 First of all, it is very easy to be overwhelmed when building a new system, and we all can relate. There is one thing that will really help you out and that is specifying the system requirements. What âmustâ it do, capacity, speed, size, noise, power use, heat byproduct. There are a lot of things. Letsâ not forget the cost.
I read this thread and I did not see you specify the storage capacity or redundancy you wanted. The MB and CPU are major components, but also are the storage requirements and what drives you are looking for.
For example, if quiet is a main requirements, then SSD/NVMe is a path forward. The downside is the cost. So capacity, redundancy, cost, and interface type are also important. Thus overwhelming.
When looking into storage, if you are looking at spinning rust, plan on them lasting the length of the warranty, no further. They very well may last twice as long as the warranty, most spinners seem to be doing this these days, but think about what you think your storage requirements could be by the end of that warranty, then add a little buffer for the drives lasting longer than expected.
Here is a helpful tip: Look at your SMART data for all you drives, specifically the Read LBAs and Written LBAs. What is the percentage of Read to Written value? Read will be likely a higher percentage. But is it 95% Read, 5% Written, or 60% Read and 40% Written as examples. This can help determine the type of media if you are waffling between HDD and SSD. SSDs have a finite number of times they can write while HDDs are unlimited. But if you read a lot, the HDD will likely fail before the SSD. Yes, Iâm making it more complicated for you, sorry about that. But we are here to provide information so you can make the most informed decision you can. Anyone can recommend a full system and let you figure it out, but it is good when you can figure it out well before you purchase anything.
Spinning Rust is by far the least expensive but comes with some noise. Most new drives are very quiet, until they are in action, then some noise.
Also, knowing this fact we can help spec out a MB with the proper number of SATA ports for example, or if you need bifurcation.
It doesnât sound like you need a lot of RAM (over 64GB) but maybe you want the capability to add more, or this isnât a factor for you.
It also doesnât look like you need a super fast CPU, but one that is an upgrade and remains cool sounds like a good plan. Cool = None or Less fan noise.
My NVMe system is very quiet but was not cheap, and it serves my purposes perfectly. It also took me at least 6 months to decide on what I wanted. A 4TB NVMe cost me $200 each and I bought six of these. I would not recommend the system I built without a few changes, one being the case. While it is a nice case, airflow management sucks and it is very heavy. But damn if it isnât good looking and easy to use. And it isnât a case for spinners either.
I donât think I saw what LAN speed you were wanting. 1GbE is the typical home setup but many are jumping on the 10GbE bandwagon, or at least having that option and built in the MB usually mean a much less cost to get 10GbE.
Anyway, things to think about and post here if you have determined these requirements.
One last thing⌠Download the User Guide/Manual/Spec Sheet for whatever you are going to purchase. These documents typically have a lot of good technical data in them. Yo might hear that a MB has IPMI, bu then you see one that looks like an upgrade. You download the manual and find out it actually does not have IPMI. That is a silly example but yes this stuff happens.
And remember, you are apt to not get everything you want, for example, low power consumption we see a lot of, and high speed CPU. You will not get both but you could compromise and find something in the middle.
The folks here are giving you some good advice but do your own checking on these recommendations, it will hopefully save you some grief down the road.
You can see what people have built typically in a signature, and if you are curious about one of those systems, reach out, ask that person some pointed questions and always ask âIf you could change anything, what would it be?â Most of us would like to have made some change. Mine was the case and motherboard.
Good luck on your build.
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Check the Hardkernel Odroid-H4+ , you can set an option on the BIOS to enable IBECC, that is, ECC with normal RAM modules (the CPU reserves some portion of the RAM for parity bits).
In the UK NVMe is the same price as a sata SSD, if not cheaper. And roughly 4 times the price of HDD.
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Hereâs my compact but powerful home NAS if that helps anyone:
Fractal Node 806
AsRock Rack ROMED6U-2L2T
EPYC 7303
6x 64GB ECC RDIMM (initially was 6x 32GB, upgraded recently becuase was able to buy 64GB RDIMMs for cheap)
8x 8TB HDDs (shucked from WD MyBooks) for colder data
many M.2 NVMe SSDs in passive PCIe x16 to 4x M.2 adapters (each of the 4 PCIe x16 slots can be bifurcated to 4x4) - for Proxmox pools, for TrueNAS.
Two onboard M.2 slots used for Proxmox boot.
This all runs Proxmox, multiple VMs, including TrueNAS as VM (SATA controllers for HDDs and NVMe SSDs are passed-through).
This is not cheap build but this board has just massive PCIe/SATA connectivity even though it is mATX (cost - only 6 DIMM slots and 4 PCIe slots), two-port Intel X710 onboard, IPMI/BMC, hard to consume everything it has in terms of its connectivity.
You can save on RAM amount (not everyone needs 384GB) and CPU cost - there are cheap 8 core EPYCâs such as 7302p available.
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@joeschmuck Great post!..wow I have just spent 3 months designing a build (only using a Silverstone 2U mini rack case) I never saw yrs prior and low and behold pretty much settled on the exact same thing! (slight variation of this MB) ASRock Rack B650D4U-2L2T/BCM with a AMD 7600 (non X) stock fan. I couldnât source 64GB 4800hz ECC RAM so I am going to get 5600 and downclock it. It is supposed to be NYC. What arenât you happy about with your motherboard and case? Curious as Iâve just pulled the trigger!
This is easy to answer:
- The case panels pop off, which can be a good thing, until you are lifting it up to move it and then the top panel comes off, or the front panel, and down to the floor it goes. This is not a light case. I twisted the case and thought for certain I broke the motherboard. Thankfully after some work, the computer survived. I 3D printed two pieces that screw into the case so this problem will never happen again. If I need to access the computer, the side panels still pop off, and I can use a screwdriver for the top and front plastic pieces I added. Minor stuff.
- The case has poor airflow due to all the perforated panels. I knew this when I purchased the case and I had to 3D print a fan cover and punch a hole in the bottom of the case to mount a fan. You donât need to punch that hole, you can mount a fan however you have just under 50% of the area covered by the metal bottom thus restricting the airflow considerably. This is to cool down the NVMe modules. they were getting a little warm for my taste as the air circulation is terrible, so forced air was required.
- The Motherboard, the PCIe x1 slot is useless in its location.Also, what would you want a PCIe x1 slot for? You will find out that a PCIe x4 slot or better would have been better and if I could make that happen, I would. It is a done deal for me now.
- One other gripe about the motherboard, hopefully you donât have it as well⌠When using the IPMI and during the computer booting process, the link will drop if you are using the normal LAN connection. The maintenance port is automatically crossed over in the BIOS by default, at least mine was. That is probably the preferred method for a home system. I had to set in the BIOS a delay of 10 seconds so the link could be reestablished before the computer would bootstrap. This give me the time to hit the key after the link was reestablished to get into the BIOS if I need to.
Otherwise, Iâm pretty happy. I run ESXi 8 on it and then TrueNAS on top of that. All my NVMe drives are passed through ESXi, and it is stable.
As usual, make sure you update your BIOS and BMC firmware.
Hope this helps. If you have any other questions, just ask.
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