Hello community, I am new here. I just recently bought a Synology DS1522+ NAS along with 3 x 14TB Seagate Exos HDD. I'll be getting this gear next week and playing around setting it up.
But I've been considering not using the DS1522+ and go with TrueNAS instead. One of the big reasons is I can choose the hardware I want and use non-Synology branded ram, nvme, hdd's etc..
I've spent several days doing google seraches and reading many posts on this forum.
I've been considering the Dell R720XD but realize it is a power hog and noisy, and takes up a lot of space -- I don't have a rack here yet either but homelab stuff sounds fun / interesting. (Another reason I'd prefer TrueNAS over Synology).
I came across the Dell Precision Tower 7820 with the Xeon Silver 4114 CPU for as little as $300 on ebay. Amazing price for what it can do. It has 4 hot swap HDD trays on the front. And you can put a PCIE card in it to allow for 4 x NVME ssd's as well. (That expansion card is only $65 or so.)
It has so many expansion slots! I can put some nice NIC's in it whether it be say a 4 channel one gigiabit or a single/dual channel 10 gb/s. I can even through in a very GPU on the cheap.
Seems like it'd be a great Plex Media Server with TrueNAS no? The TDP on the CPU is 85W as well which is pretty power efficient I guess. (It only comes with one CPU and that's probably all I'd use to keep power usage down.)
Seems as though this machine would be great for virtual machines and containers as well. Seems like it could do it all really.
Tempted to buy it now but figured I'd ask here first to see if anyone had any comments about this machine for TrueNAS. Seems like a great value. The machine was made in 2018 and is DDR4 and supports NVME... more power efficient as well. Seems like a better solution for me compared to the R720XD. Also, I don't think I'd need more than 4 x HDD for my ZFS raid. There are 6 sata ports so I guess I could add two more in if needed.
The ability to have 4 (or even 8) NVME (via 75w pcie card slots) is really nice, and would allow me to build a fairly large and fast NVME ZFS array using affordable 4TB NVME ssd.
My workstation is Mac Mini M2 Pro (but considering selling it and buying a used Mac Studio M1 Max for the 10gb ethernet along with twice the ram).
Another reason I am not fond of the DS1522+ is the AMD processor in it has no built in GPU, so it wouldn't be a great Plex Server at all. Currently I am running Plex Server on my Mac Mini M2 Pro with external 8TB USB HDD. The Mac does perform well as a plex server with local usb hdd. I wonder how it'd perform with a SMB share instead, b/c I'd need to still use the Mac for the plex server with the synology. But with the Dell 7820 I could use it for the Plex server as well as truenas with ease.
I do have like 3 spare 2TB HDD laying around I could use with the Dell if I bought it to learn TrueNAS while I use the 3 x 14TB HDD in the Synology. I guess it'd be good to learn them both then decide much later. Fortunately I got the DS1522+ used for like $550 so I could use it for a while and get all my money back later on. Btw, it's crazy how affordable 14TB Exos HDD are now; I bought 3 for $115 a piece!
But I've been considering not using the DS1522+ and go with TrueNAS instead. One of the big reasons is I can choose the hardware I want and use non-Synology branded ram, nvme, hdd's etc..
I've spent several days doing google seraches and reading many posts on this forum.
I've been considering the Dell R720XD but realize it is a power hog and noisy, and takes up a lot of space -- I don't have a rack here yet either but homelab stuff sounds fun / interesting. (Another reason I'd prefer TrueNAS over Synology).
I came across the Dell Precision Tower 7820 with the Xeon Silver 4114 CPU for as little as $300 on ebay. Amazing price for what it can do. It has 4 hot swap HDD trays on the front. And you can put a PCIE card in it to allow for 4 x NVME ssd's as well. (That expansion card is only $65 or so.)
It has so many expansion slots! I can put some nice NIC's in it whether it be say a 4 channel one gigiabit or a single/dual channel 10 gb/s. I can even through in a very GPU on the cheap.
Seems like it'd be a great Plex Media Server with TrueNAS no? The TDP on the CPU is 85W as well which is pretty power efficient I guess. (It only comes with one CPU and that's probably all I'd use to keep power usage down.)
Seems as though this machine would be great for virtual machines and containers as well. Seems like it could do it all really.
Tempted to buy it now but figured I'd ask here first to see if anyone had any comments about this machine for TrueNAS. Seems like a great value. The machine was made in 2018 and is DDR4 and supports NVME... more power efficient as well. Seems like a better solution for me compared to the R720XD. Also, I don't think I'd need more than 4 x HDD for my ZFS raid. There are 6 sata ports so I guess I could add two more in if needed.
The ability to have 4 (or even 8) NVME (via 75w pcie card slots) is really nice, and would allow me to build a fairly large and fast NVME ZFS array using affordable 4TB NVME ssd.
My workstation is Mac Mini M2 Pro (but considering selling it and buying a used Mac Studio M1 Max for the 10gb ethernet along with twice the ram).
Another reason I am not fond of the DS1522+ is the AMD processor in it has no built in GPU, so it wouldn't be a great Plex Server at all. Currently I am running Plex Server on my Mac Mini M2 Pro with external 8TB USB HDD. The Mac does perform well as a plex server with local usb hdd. I wonder how it'd perform with a SMB share instead, b/c I'd need to still use the Mac for the plex server with the synology. But with the Dell 7820 I could use it for the Plex server as well as truenas with ease.
I do have like 3 spare 2TB HDD laying around I could use with the Dell if I bought it to learn TrueNAS while I use the 3 x 14TB HDD in the Synology. I guess it'd be good to learn them both then decide much later. Fortunately I got the DS1522+ used for like $550 so I could use it for a while and get all my money back later on. Btw, it's crazy how affordable 14TB Exos HDD are now; I bought 3 for $115 a piece!
