New Semi build

TrueNAS General
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1

After the previous motherboard died, I am in search of a new build.

new:
Ryzen 7 PRO 5750GE
ASRock B550M-ITX/ac (to confirm if ecc works)
2× 32GB ECC UDIMM
LSI 9207-8i HBA

reused:
AQN-100 NIC
1× NVMe SSD as pool for apps
5× 5400 RPM HDDs
sf450 died, replaced with sf750

For discussions:

  1. was deciding between this and a CWWK NAS board and be done with it, I would expect this set up to be much more recommended despite costing 2x more?
  2. compared to n100 the power draw would be expected to be much higher, would like to know how the idle power would be expected
2

How do you fit a NIC and a HBA with a mini-ITX motherboard?
Aquantia NIC is not the most recommended, a consumer motherboard is not guaranteed to make most use of ECC, and throwing in a HBA because you’re short by ONE SATA port looks like overkill.

What are the untold requirements?
Use case?
NAS case? (Jonsbo N1/N2?)

3

Thanks for your reply and sorry for missing out the use case. The main use will be for archival of photos and ripped movies to be played back on kodi. Also I have been using it as a steam and gog library for games I play less and do not want to hog my ssd, done thru an iSCSI. I am the primary user, with one less frequent user. I also host a few apps like bittorent and openwebui on it, intend to explore tailscale and nextcloud.

I intend to use the m2 and convert it to pcie x4 for hba card.
My case is lian li q25b, been using for years. Like that it can support mini dtx size but cant find a board which fits.

4

If you’re going with Asrock already, why not an Asrock rack with IPMI? And a CPU instead of APU: I doubt that iGPU is much use. The IPMI takes care of VGA if you ever want monitor and keyboard, though just configuring it via browser and Ethernet is the way.

5

I am unable to get any asrock rack on any platforms in my area. I have scoured and most listing on ebay I can find > USD500. In comparison I can get asrock b550 for less than USD100 brand new.

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6

What model are the HDDs?

If power consumption is a concern, I would consider not using the 10 Gbps NIC. With those HDDs you will likely not saturate it most of the time, if at all.

7

These aren’t fast drives indeed. However I could easily saturate 10g nic due to L1ARC. Thus I would also maximise the RAM as much as I could afford. Also the NIC is SFP+ using very little power (1W+ with DAC?)

8

Is your use case such that you have repeated reads that can be fulfilled from ARC?

What is your use case?

9

Yes, I like that I have been able to load a game almost as fast as on the gaming system’s SSD when I install it on the NAS. I would believe a huge part of the game lies on the cache. This fits well with my use behavior, run a game daily for weeks, then stop playing for some time, and revisit again.

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10

If that involves an iSCS share, you’re short on RAM and five drives is not a good number for mirrors. :roll_eyes: