Low-cost & low-power DIY NAS build: What would you spec for an efficient 6-drive pool?

TrueNAS General
41

And the common reason… if you decide to run a VM, you probably want to give it two cores for the same reason, ie two cores means a VM can actually do two things at once.

You have 4 threads.

If you run another VM, then another minimum of two cores…

So, that’s why you may want more than 2 cores. it comes down to if you want to run VMs (or even have the ability to run VMs)

OR if you are planning some heavy apps.

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42

These AsRock Rack/Datto boards, and often complete, have been available on eBay for a long time. They are very suitable as NAS, with only one drawback: Java-only IMPI.

43

Totally agree re cores for VMs - that’s what I wanted to to do re: blue iris in windows. IIRC, I gave it four cores or whatever the maximum is and my ’CPU meter’ in BlueIris remained pegged 100% of the time. Maybe blue iris is not particularly multi threaded and hence core count makes less of a difference than core speed?

Who knows.

I may have a go with plex on my core machine and that will hopefully run better.

44

I ended up getting the X10SDV-7TP4F board (non -2C-). I’m waiting on some RAM and SAS breakout cables but am excited to move over to this “new” platform.

Thanks everyone for sharing your advice!

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45

Don’t forget to add a fan to the cpu and hba heat sinks if not using server style airflow.

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46

Thanks for the reminder! The seller hooked me up with some noctua fans and zipties to keep things under control :+1:

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Really informative thread with great board searching. Would love to see more hardware discussions like this at various idle power consumption levels.

I’d love that dual 25gbe board for a OPNSense router lol but seems pretty dang expensive.

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48

See my signature, I use the X10SDV-7TP4F in a Lian Li A76 case. Zero issues with heat but I upgraded most fans to Noctua PWM industrial fans. For a bit of a visual journey through all the modifications, see here.

I also added a fan to the CPU, along with a copper heat sink (Jag series). Removing the stock heat sink was a bit of a journey. Then I added a very small dedicated fan to the HBA heat sink. A few more fans to push air in and out of the case.

Lastly, I added @Stux’ excellent fan script that takes advantage of the dual zone fan functionality of the motherboard to limit hard drive temperatures to 30* C. The fans loaf 99% of the time at a much lower RPM, which lowers noise and power consumption.

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