Help me decide for my first Home Server FreeNAS build

[zis8snbt4p]

Hi all,
This is my first post in this forum and I would like some help with my home server setup.
I will use it as a Dropbox replacement, media server, web server and will test a few other personal services as well for a max of 5 users and just myself most of the time.

I have read the HW recommendation guide and have narrowed down what I want to the items below.

Case: Fractal Design 804
CPU: Intel Core i3-10300T with a backup option of i3-9300T if I can't find which motherboard to pair it with. See below. Also couldn't find what the AMD equivalent of these are (ECC support and low TDP) if anyone can suggest for me to look.
Motherboard: Torn between Supermicro X12SCQ (Only X12 MB with more than 4 SATA III ports), ASRock Rack W480D4U
Supermicro X12SCQ cons: 6 SATA 3 ports vs 8 for ASRock
No IPMI
ASRock Rack W480D4U cons: Even though it is recommended in hardware suggestions, I have read a few threads that are critical of the company
HDD: 5 x 4TB WD Red Plus(They should be CMR) in RaidZ2
SSD for boot: I haven't made a decision yet but will probably mirror the boot drive and use NVMe SSD. (Also probably have ruled out L2ARC and other caching techniques as overkill)
RAM: Haven't decided yet, decision pending on Motherboard (2x16GB)

Main questions:
0. How much value should I put on the brand name? Is ASRock actually inferior?
1. Is ASRock IPMI similar to Supermicro? (It looks like it is the same BMC controller)
2. Supermicro X12 range seems to be a fraction of the X11 one. Is it worth waiting till they release more boards including one that has both IPMI and more SATA ports?
3. How should I calculate the size of the SSD? I know I don't need much but don't know how much is enough.
4. If I require transcoding for a max of 2-3 users, would a GPU help?
5. According to some calculations the wattage is going to be around 200-300 would a 500W PSU suffice?

Cheers

 

[jgreco]

5. According to some calculations the wattage is going to be around 200-300 would a 500W PSU suffice?

Usually "some calculations" are wrong. For a case that's able to handle at least 8 drives, with maybe a GPU, that's easily 750 watts. We have a great Power Supply Sizing guide, and the thing that is different about this than almost any other Internet resource is that it takes drive startup current into consideration, along with proper derating of power supply capacity for factors such as age as well. Remember, the PSU has to be able to support *peak* consumption, not *average*.

 

[zis8snbt4p]

Also just thought of question no. 6:
Is it a good solution to use a SAS controller to expand my SATA 3 ports? Would it affect the latency of the disks on SAS and potentially limit NAS performance?

 

[jgreco]

The limiting factor of the disks are generally the disks. SAS controllers add a bit of latency due to the additional controllers, but you would generally only ever notice this if you were doing an all SSD pool or something like that. Hard disks have barely broken SATA 1.5Gbps speeds.