I’m new to the world of TrueNAS and I’m about to make the final switch from an old Synology to TrueNAS.
I want to build a mini server dedicated solely to TrueNAS, which, in addition to managing the NAS, will also host several Docker containers. Most of them will be lightweight, but some will require more resources, such as Jellyfin, Immich (with Machine Learning), and Jenkins (which I’ll use only occasionally).
I’m considering purchasing an Intel N100 or N150 CPU. I’ve read several posts about the N100, and it seems to be a good choice for my needs. However, since the N150 was released recently, I’m tempted to go for it, but I haven’t found much information about it.
Has anyone here had experience with the N150, or can anyone give me some advice on which one would be the better choice?
Neither one supports ECC RAM and only a maximum of 16GB RAM for what it does support, based on the Intel CPU website.
With that said, I can see there are some being sold with 32GB RAM (and seen a claim to 128GB, yea sure). Be careful what you buy and test the crap out of it once you get it. Run Prime95 and MemTest86 on it, ensure it is solid and stable.
thank you very much, unfortunately I don’t know about hardware at all. I would like to make a reliable machine obviously and that consumes little, price let’s say it’s not a problem, I need something that will last me over time, this doesn’t mean of course that I would get a 600$/euro motherboard for a nas
If you have alternatives of course they are welcome
The motherboards these CPU come attached to are typically quite limited in terms of connectivity. Since there are only 9 PCIe lanes, you will find that there will usually be compromises in terms of SATA or NIC bandwidth. I don’t think they make good NASes.
The more I try to do something useful and quiet of my N1, the less I think of Jonsbo N cases…
But micro-ATX is good, it gives a lot of choice. So you’d be looking for a motherboard with 6-8 SATA ports.
How does this translate into hardware requirements?
Yes and no! There is a silver lining for these CPUs and ECC functionality, but still needs some verification. I’d post links but I’m not allowed to as a new forum user.
Intel Alder Lake N CPUs like the N100 supports In-Band Error Correction Control (IBECC) and I use it on my Trigkey K-N100 mini PCs running Debian 12.
Linux supports the N100’s IBECC on kernel version 6.8 and newer.
Not much info is available on IBECC and it isn’t advertised by most brands using the N100, so all you have to go on is the fact that it’s an Alder Lake N CPU and hope the feature is enabled or the option is present in the BIOS. I know my Trigkey system has it and so does the Beelink EQ12, iKoolCore R2, LattePanda Mu, and ODROID H4.
I’ve been trying to verify this for the Intel Twin Lake N series like the N150. I purchased the GMKtec NucBox G9 with the N150 and the option was missing in the BIOS. Logs from at least one other N150 owner show it might actually be enabled on some systems like one from Acemagic.
Unfortunately most people don’t reply when I ask them to check their BIOS for an obscure setting (“In-Bans ECC Support” under Chipset > System Agent (SA) Configuration > Memory Configuration) so I can’t really confirm if this is available for any N150 systems.
If I understand Intel’s “In-Band Error Correction”, you take a performance hit. How much for NAS functionality I don’t know. But each memory read requires reading both the data block and different ECC block. Then a compare is done. Writes could be worse, because a Read, Modify and Write may need to be done on the ECC block.
The next thing is the this IBECC takes up memory for the ECC blocks. Running with the minimal 8GBs could be problematic if adding any Apps or VMs, (on top of the overhead for IBECC).
In my opinion, this is quite suitable for embedded uses, where you can calculate the required application performance. And if IBECC does not have too much overhead, you can enable it.
However, IBECC for a NAS, especially TrueNAS, may not work well. Or not work at all. There is no published statement that IBECC is supported by TrueNAS. And even if it works today, there is no guarantee that it will continue to be supported by later releases of TrueNAS.
