BUILD Basic NAS: CPU, Mobo, Power Consumption Opinions

[GreyKatana]

Hi guys, I'm building my first NAS and would appreciate your counsel.
Main goal is file storage and I have not that many files anyway. I barely have any music or videos, just basically family pictures and some documents accumulated through the years. I might start looking at Plex also, but that would be mostly to rip some of our DVDs and stream them instead of fetching the disc and putting it in the player.

Keeping the cost down of the NAS and the power consumption low are also goals as long as still having quality components allow it.

Here's the kind of hardware I had in mind:
CPU-Motherboard Combo: SuperMicro A1SAM-2550F
or
CPU: Pentium G3450
Motherboard: SuperMicro X10SLL-F-O or X10SLM-F-O

+ (in both cases)
RAM: 1x8GB Corsair ECC 1.35v RAM (precise model number depending on motherboard)
OS Drive: 3.5" Seagate 500GB (but heard that FreeNAS is actually more at home on a USB stick) ALREADY PURCHASED
Storage Drives: 2x WD Red 1TB in Raid Mirror ALREADY PURCHASED
PSU: Recycled from an old machine cheapo Orion (?!) 400W PSU with 20+4 mainboard connector and 3 SATA power connectors ALREADY PURCHASED of course.
Case: Deep Cool Tesseract. Well ventilated, 4 x 3.5" bays + 3 x 2.5" bays. Cheap in the multiple meanings of the word but it's perfect at 30$! ALREADY PURCHASED

--

So you see, pretty modest in comparison to most of what you guys are building, but the storage capacity will fit me just fine to start with. Additional drives can always be purchased later.

So originally I was about to purchase the A1SAM-2550F. In general I heard good things about Avoton, I really like the power consumption, it has AESNI and I like the 4 Intel NICs as I could recycle that board in 3-5 years as a really really neat router. However, I've seen around this place and the Plex forums that its transcoding and scaling capabilities are subpar in single-threaded scenarios (VC-1).

The Pentium is not a Xeon of course, but its daddy the G3220 has a really good rep around here. And all in all, both mobos plus CPU come down to around the same price.

The main thing that's stopping me from going the Pentium way is the power consumption. The Avoton as a TDP of 14W and the Pentium of 53W. But as the Intel ARK tells us, TDP is an average consumption under an Intel-defined high complexity workload. I want the machine to stay constantly ON, meaning it'll idle most of the time. Sadly I don't have idle consumption figures for both processors. If the Pentium idles at 15W and the Avoton at 6W, well I don't mind the 9W difference.

Also, from what I can gather, apart from the fancy menus and all; Plex's main use is for transcoding and scaling up or down your video stream. If my videos are already in a format my receiver will understand, would exposing the file through a standard CIFS share do the job?

Any advice is welcomed and appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[BigDave]

1. RAM: 1x8GB Corsair ECC 1.35v RAM (precise model number depending on motherboard)
2. OS Drive: 3.5" Seagate 500GB (but heard that FreeNAS is actually more at home on a USB stick) ALREADY PURCHASED
3. PSU: Recycled from an old machine cheapo Orion (?!) 400W PSU with 20+4 mainboard connector and 3 SATA power connectors ALREADY PURCHASED of course.

1.) 16GB would be better with transcoding and plex (8GB is BARE minimum)
2.) Hard drive for boot device is waste of power and you worry about consumption...
3.) BAD, BAD, BAD idea, you can cut some corners, but NOT ON THIS! Quality PSU is uber important!!!

 

[GreyKatana]

OK thanks for the feedback, especially on the PSU.
But explain to me, apart from the unit dying an early death, what are the risks?
Higher risks of it sending more voltage than needed?

In any case will go for Corsair CX Series CX430M 80 Bronze, is that okay?

 

[DJ9]

The recommended brand around here is SeaSonic, like the G-450.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00918MQ8G/?tag=ozlp-20

 

[Bidule0hm]

Killing other components, especially the drives.

Corsair CX are ok for desktop PCs but I'd not put one in a server. And if you care about consumption then chose a PSU that is at least 80+ Gold. For example I recommend a SeaSonic G-350 or G-450 (power choice depends on how many drives you'll put in the server) ;)

 

[Starpulkka]

Should consider freenas supported UPS , so it can safely automatically shutdown.

Heres some power measurements from my supermicro x10 g3200 4hdd 16GBECC
ALL POWER SAVINGS ARE OFF, so these are up measurements.
uusi supermicro kone4
supermikro g3200
lepotila 11-13w
kone käynnistys 75w
70w normi tila
scrub 83w
kirjoitus 74w
so IPMI on uses 13€ on a year and on normal operation 70w costs only 72€ on a year on my house.

 

[JDCynical]

The recommended brand around here is SeaSonic, like the G-450.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00918MQ8G/?tag=ozlp-20

Like @Bidule0hm mentioned, they tend to eat parts, be vastly overrated, severely cut corners on the sections needed for clean power delivery, and so on.

Check these for examples:

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story&reid=71
and
https://www.google.com/search?q=jonnyguru+death+of+a+gutless+wonder

 

[GreyKatana]

OK I found the SeaSonic SSR-360GP (G360) available here but it is a tad bit more expensive than I would have liked (especially since I thought that I would have 0$ to invest in that category). Looks like a really nice 360W 80 Gold unit though.

Any opinions on the Rosewill ARC-450 or the SeaSonic SS-350SFE? Or you I just fork more for the G360?

 

[BigDave]

Rosewill ARC-450

37amps (+12v) 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified (82%, Up to 87%) $45 plus shipping ($8) $53

Or you I just fork more for the G360

30amps (+12v) 80 PLUS GOLD Certified (86.7%, Up to 89%) $76 free shipping
Diff is $23 you'll save that in the first two years on the elec. bill :p
AND, I won't even mention the Seasonic's 5 yr. warranty

 

[GreyKatana]

Thanks BigDave. I don't exactly get those prices here but I'll keep that in mind.

Should consider freenas supported UPS , so it can safely automatically shutdown.

Is there high risks of filesystem corruption when FreeNAS shutdown from a power outage?

 

[Ericloewe]

Corsair CX is the bare minimum I'd put in a server. I'd certainly try to use Seasonic G-Series, at least, though. Corsair RMx or RMi is broadly comparable to the G-Series, but the latter has a better reputation.

 

[Starpulkka]

Is there high risks of filesystem corruption when FreeNAS shutdown from a power outage?

That's a question of a year. Risk is not 100% and it is not 0%. But im thinkin maby wd red drives dont lie on write, so there should not be "writehole on metadata" when powerloss occurs. But that is what only worker on WD knows.

But what i do know is that wd red drives are PICKY on POWER. (i have proved this on myself even, on home) But you already are lookin on seasonic PSU ones, but remember even using seasonic psu things can fail on power side. But your start is already better with good guality psu. Adding a proper UPS should make things even more better.

(Also i dont understand mirror, you put pictures there, once you lose one hdd you instantly lose zfs ability to repair files. I would imagine that its not fun to watch zfs tells you this and this files just have tiny bit corruption so i put those files on dev null. What i do understand is money, i know you start on small and then some years later you can put more hdds and raidz2)
So you realize what you are building and what are risks on using mirror =)

 

[GreyKatana]

(Also i dont understand mirror, you put pictures there, once you lose one hdd you instantly lose zfs ability to repair files. I would imagine that its not fun to watch zfs tells you this and this files just have tiny bit corruption so i put those files on dev null.

This may be caused by me not being a 100% at ease with ZFS lingo. I guess I want two mirrored vdevs. If one drive dies, I don't instantly looses all the data.
I'll add a script that emails me when a drive dies and shutdown the server. Then I can replace the drive, "resilver?" and move on.
I wanted to do this as one layer of my backup solution. I know mirroring drives isn't a backup. Really important files will be backed-up to Tarsnap. But at least I don't have to start from scratch if one of the drives dies.

And you're right about the money part. If I could afford it now, I'd go with 4 bigger drives in RAID-Z2.

 

[danb35]

Also i dont understand mirror, you put pictures there, once you lose one hdd you instantly lose zfs ability to repair files

Well, yes. For this to be a problem requires that (1) one disk completely fail, and (2) the second disk encounter an error, (3) causing data corruption, (4) at exactly the same time. Can it happen? Sure. What are the odds? Not too high. If it does happen, the result is that ZFS still serves up the data, and logs a checksum error. Of course, the same problem is present in any single-parity system (like RAID5/RAIDZ1).

@GreyKatana, if you set up email notifications properly in FreeNAS, it will notify you when a disk fails. More importantly (or at least as importantly), it will notify you when a disk is giving early signs of failure. You can then take whatever action you deem necessary at that time. It won't automatically shut down the system (though I'm sure that could be scripted as well), but you'll know when there's a problem.

 

[Starpulkka]

@GreyKatana
As i earlier tryed to say, but it seems that im lackin english words, but its good to know what mirror is and how much parity it offers versus some raidz2 setup. There is already one case in forum this week where unlucky person maby have a bad hdd and he is replacing a wrong drive (a healty one) from a mirror. =(

So don't get scared for using mirror, but learn how to use it and what options it gives, and then you learn more by using freenas by starting small, its great that you are considering invest proper hardware and maby many safely family pictures intact years later you put more hdds to it.

As for @danb35 sayed, setup email notifications, that is a golden advice.


As for that UPS thing, looks like no one recommends it so i dont recomment that also then =)

I noticed your thread so i was thinkin give those my power consumption wattages, i thouth it might help.
There are more power consumption data too if you use search in this forum.

 

[GreyKatana]

Thanks Starpulkka for the advice.

OK I ordered the SeaSonic G-360. You guys are costing me more than I thought. But that's great because I joined the forum specifically to get those kind of advices.

So, about the CPU/Mobo. Will I be happy with the A1SAM-2550F or should I go X10 + Pentium 3450?

 

[Ericloewe]

X10 is more flexible, if you want to do more computationally-intensive stuff in the future. C2550 is a bit less power hungry, but less expandable - still powerful enough for basic NAS use.

 

[GreyKatana]

OK so here's where I'm at.

CPU: Pentium G3450
Motherboard: SuperMicro X10SLL-F
RAM: 1x8GB Crucial ECC 1.35v RAM (CT4485012)
OS Drive: Sandisk Cruzer Fit 16GB
Storage Drives: 2x WD Red 1TB in Raid Mirror ALREADY PURCHASED
PSU: SeaSonic G-360 80 Gold PURCHASED
Case: Deep Cool Tesseract ALREADY PURCHASED

Anything I should know? Heard the X10SLL-F (without the +) can be picky on the RAM. But the SLL+ board is 40$ more and I'm already really stretching my budget to its limit. Think I saw some thread of people successfully using that board with some Crucial memory.

Also any good reason to wait for Skylake? The Pentium G4400 can be had for barely more than the G3450, but I guess I'd get rip a new one (in my wallet) for the motherboard and the DDR4 memory.

 

[Ericloewe]

Think I saw some thread of people successfully using that board with some Crucial memory.

Right. Nobody's complained about it, so they should work.

Also any good reason to wait for Skylake?

Not really, if you're okay with 32GB of RAM as a maximum.

 

[GreyKatana]

So here's the final part list, everthing is either already received or on order.
This was way more than I wanted to spend on a server and I'll probably have buyer's remorse for the next year but it'll probably offer me many good years of service.

CPU: Pentium G3450
Motherboard: SuperMicro X10SLM+-F (the X10SLL wasn't in stock anymore)
RAM: 1x8GB Crucial ECC 1.35v RAM
Boot Device: 2x Sandisk Ultra Fit 32GB
Storage Drives: 2x WD Red 1TB in mirrored vdev
PSU: SeaSonic G-360 80 Gold
Case: Fractal Design Define R4 (The Tesseract was just too cheaply made in the end and I got a good deal on the R4).

So in the end, yeah it is low capacity, but it is all quality components.