I’m just another lost soul trying to figure out what components to build a TrueNAS Scale server. I’ve been trying to use the 2021 hardware recommendations guide. The problem is the hardware listed doesn’t seem to be readily available used for less than I could locate latest generation components new. Sure, the new components may be way overkill, but they seem to be cheaper than buying old components listed in the guide.
I already bought four 12TB WD Red Plus (WD120EFGX) which I plan to run them in RAIDZ2. The components I’m considering are:
$369 newegg ASRock Rack Server Motherboard W880D4U
Case or CPU cooler not yet identified. I have a 23” telco cabinet is 72″H x 29″W x 32″D. Rackmount cases would still sit on a shelf but look clean with 19 to 23 adapters. A non-rackmount would also be fine.
Unless anyone has something I’m missing, I have just one main sticking point. RAM!!!
True ECC UDIMM is a requirement for me. I would rather do 2 x 16GB and have true ECC and add more later than settle for on-die ECC.
Is the memory just not in stock anywhere? Maybe I’m searching for the wrong thing “DDR5 5600 PC5-44800 ECC Unbuffered UDIMM”
Help is greatly appreciated. I will run TrueNAS on bare-metal. Top priories are reliability and data protection. It’s a home use machine and my family will not demand much of it. Storage, Plex (minimal transcoding), Nextcloud and a few other lightweight VMs. Running a Virtual Machine for Windows on occasion could be useful.
This one matters. How many drives do you plan for, taking future growth into account?
Four and that’s it?
The rackmount case would make rack-class noise.
Very fine. But RAM price is over the top right now, and ECC UDIMM is probably the worst offender so you might have to work backwards: See what kind of ECC RAM you can find for “somewhat bearable” price and then work out a suitable motherboard that. (Second-hand DDR4 RDIMM maybe?)
This is my plan but still that’s not seeming easy to execute. Thank you for your other humerous comments. They made me smile.
My IRL job is in financial services/investing. I have invested but I’m diversified so only a small portion of my portfolio got a lift from AI.
Thank you. I’ve been thinking about this approach as well. Unfortunately when it comes to used hardware, it feels like the wild west to someone like me.
From what I can tell, I’ll be fine with a A2SDi-4C-HLN4F, even though it is no comparison to the new component package I’ve identified. It looks like I see the motherboard for $349 used on eBay, which feels high. Also on eBay Micron 16GB 2Rx4 PC4-2133P-R PC4-17000 DDR4 2133 MHz ECC RDIMM Server Memory RAM is <$90 each. That’s a huge savings over the new RAM costs.
Dell Precision 5820 seems like it’ll be more of a ready to go solution but there are many options to choose from which is confusing for someone like me. My understanding is a configuration with Xeon W-2100 Series would suffice but W-2200 could be better. I could add a GPU if one isn’t already installed. 950w power supplies are not uncommon. The 4 FlexBay modules seem nice assuming they come with the needed trays and cables. Some even come with SSDs which I suspect would be good for the boot drives. If I go this route, it’s just finding the confidence that I get the right specs, it works as advertised and I get a fair price.
A 5s search finds that Newegg sells the board for $922 in what appears to be your geographic area. If you only need a file server over 1 GbE, a used board for $349 looks like a perfect opportunity to me.
For faster networking, you’d need to go for a A2SDi-H. Embedded boards require to think ahead and get the right match.
If you only need four drives, and physical size is not a consideration, then a used workstation with enough room for the drives may well be the cheapest solution.
Then, if an Atom C3000 would do, a Xeon W-2000 is massive overkill—not to mention that it idles at about thrice the power of a C3000 under maximal load.
For what?
If you this road, pick the cheapest. A “light-the-platform” Xeon W-2104 is (more than) enough.
I kept searching for used systems and then I came across a “New in Box” system on r/homelabsales which seemed to be a nice starting point. It is a Supermicro SuperChassis Desktop SC732 with X10DRi-T, Dual Xeon 2640V4 with SNK-P0050AP4 Coolers and a 865W Platinum Level Power Supply. It had plenty of space for all my drives and it is supposedly Whisper-Quiet (<21dB). I was able to add a AOC.SLG3-2M2 Dual NVMe M.2 SSD PCIe Add-on Card and a P620 quadro for a bit more.
RAM was still expensive and with the Dual CPUs I went for 128GB and found Hynix 16GB 2400T (UH) 2Rx8.
I found a decent price on 3 Intel DC S3710 Series 400GB High Endurance drives which I’ll use for mirrored boot drives and a NVR Pool to handle the constant 24/7 video writes of Zoneminder. I’m on the lookout for a good price for used 2x 1TB NVMe SSDs (Samsung 990 Pro, WD Black, or similar) which I’ll use for VMs. My four 12TB WD Red Plus WD120EFGX will be my data pool.
Considering this machine is much more powerful than I was originally planning for, I’ll retire more standalone computers and run Plex (home use with minimal transcoding), Zoneminder (Four cameras), immich, Openhab, PiHole, SABNnzbd, sonarr, radarr and an on-demand Windows VM. Hopefully turning off other machine will help offset the power draw of this TrueNAS scale system.
I feel like I’m entering the home stretch. Hopefully I didn’t make any mistakes other than spend more $$$ than I was originally budgeting.
Updating just in case others are trying to build something similar or in case someone has advice.
Main system New old Stock: $460 shipped Still one for sale
Supermicro SuperChassis Desktop SC732 with X10DRi-T
X10DRi-T Dual Xeon 2640V4
Dual SNK-P0050AP4 Coolers
DVD Read/Write Optical Drive
865W Platinum Level Certified High-Efficiency Power Supply
1x Rear 12cm (1850 RPM) PWM Fan
2x 5.25" External HDD Drive Bays & 4x 3.5" Internal HDD Drive Bays
Add-ons: $119 shipped with main system
AOC.SLG3-2M2
P620 quadro with a DP dongle
Pool Drives: New $800 shipped new previous price alert
Four 12TB WD Red Plus WD120EFGX
RAM and VM Drives: Used $670 shipped from wanted post in r/homelabsales
8 matching Micron MTA18ASF2G72PDZ-3G2R1UL 16GB DDR4 ECC Registered DIMM (RDIMM) 3200 MHz (PC4-25600 or PC4-3200) 2Rx8 (Dual Rank x8)
2x SN850 1TB M.2 2280 NVMe SSD (97% and <15k hours) for VMs
Boot Drives: used $35 shipped ebay (bought 4x for $70 to upgrade existing boot from USB)
2 x Dell Innodisk 0T4M4 SATADOM-ML 3SE Series 64GB w/4-Pin Con SSD (2x$35)
NVR Drive: Used $68 shipped from New Town Spares
Intel DC S3710 Series 400GB MLC SATA 6Gbps High Endurance 2.5-inch Internal SSDs (health status of 85% and have 0 bad sectors)
Other stuff
ICY DOCK 4 x 2.5" HDD / SSD Bracket Mount Kit Adapter for 5.25” Drive Bay - FLEX-FIT Quattro MB344SP $30 shipped Newegg
Various SATA data and Power Cables $22 shipped Monoprice
I actually got three of the SSDs. Originally I was going to mirror two for boot drives and then I found the SATADOMS for super cheap. I’m now planning on re-purposing the extra drives to an apps pool. This system is way overkill compared to what I “needed” but I’m super happy with the “brand new” Supermicro case, motherboard, power supply and coolers paired with Intel CPUS all installed. I’m hoping that I’ll grow into this system.
If I did it over again I would probably skip the ICYDock and take more time looking for the Supermicro 4x 2.5” cage. I’d also get shorter SATA data cables. I was instructed to get 24” but I would have been fine with much shorter.
