TrueNAS Rack Mounted Build Planning

Thinking about building a new unit, looking at the following components

https://www.silverstonetek.com/en/product/info/computer-chassis/RM41-H08/

Will add 1x nvme for boot, 2x nvme for cache

I already have the HDDs, a 650W new PSU, Crucial Pro 32GB DDR4 3200, Dual NIC intel i915 card, and a Quadro P2000.

Are there any gotchas with Silverstone hardware? Does TrueNAS support the 5 bay hotswap enclosure? Any other comments or advice. I would also like to pick up an HBA to expand the amount of disks i can support, as well as eventually buying a second 5bay hot swap unit (silverstone has them for ~$120)

Adding L2ARC starts at having 64GB of RAM, if that’s what you mean by cache. L2ARC takes up space in RAM that would otherwise be used for regular ARC before that point. It’s better to add RAM first and watch the ARC stats to see if you even need it. The larger the L2ARC device, the more RAM required.

I don’t know if I would go with that processor nor motherboard. The processor is one with performance cores and efficient cores. Not sure if it works okay for the application of a server.

ZFS Primer explains cache issues. See Hardware docs section for TrueNAS on other choices.

https://www.truenas.com/docs/references/zfsprimer/

Not much sounds good about this build, really. The motherboard’s loaded with features you can’t use but are still paying for (like audio and WiFi), though the onboard Intel NIC is a point in its favor. The hot-swap bays appear to be straight SATA interfaces and thus should be OK–maybe not great, but at least OK.

There’s a reason Supermicro is really the standard here for rack-mount gear.

I wouldn’t consider extra features i might not use to be a negative here, especially as a bundle.

I did look at Supermicro chassis, but don’t like the configs and cant do what i would want without stepping up a huge amount in price. Needing room for a full size slot for a gpu card is a must.

This guys build uses the same case iirc

It can be a tight fit with ATX boards and I couldn’t quickly figure out the size of that board.

His latest posts refer to other cases which would’ve been better.

Meanwhile, I would go with a board with ECC memory and IPMI.

But the bundle price seems impressive.

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Depending on your use case, you can get cheap supermicro mobo/ram/xeon bundles off of ebay.

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I have a feeling im just gonna end up buying a 1U or larger used supermicro blade, ive seen some 4 to 12 bay units for under $400 with not super old hardware in them (like 2016-2017 vintage)