just starting to be interested in FreeNAS/build question

[BrutalMethodS]

sorry for a noob question (also my English)
at first I want to build an itx PC and buy Synology NAS.
but then I found out about FreeNAS
and it really cool then I think do not need that commercial NAS anymore.
the problem is I have already bought some of the hardware and I'm not sure it will work
my objective is to use PC as NAS
and still game on it? is it possible?
-already bought hardwares-
CPU - Ryzen 5 2400G
Mobo - Asrock B350 gaming K4 itx (only 4 SATA ports)
Ram - Adata 8*2 (16GB)
SSD - Samsung M.2 NVME 250 GB
HDD - 5 * 4TB WD Purple (i know it not for nas)
Case - not yet please advice
PSU - not yet please advice

thanks in advance.




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[southerner]

Question, Your mother board has 4 sata III ports but you listed qty. 5 WD purple drives. Where are you expecting to connect the fifth drive?

Are you trying to run a VM to "game"on this machine? if so, your processes will suffer with 16GB of memory.

Also, your motherboard has wifi built on it, do not expect that to work with NAS. check out the FreeNAS user guide

 

[BrutalMethodS]

thank you. this clears me up a lot.
so I better separate NAS and pc gaming.
I better buy new parts for FreeNAS build.

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[southerner]

No problem, depending on your budget for NAS machine look for a motherboard/processor combo that supports more memory if you plan on utilizing VM. When you start a VM the recourses that are allocated to the VM are not available to your NAS machine.

I am not an AMD guy so I cannot reccomend a motherboard / processor combo.

 

[Chris Moore]

my objective is to use PC as Nas
and still game on it? is it possible?

No. You can't have a PC and a NAS at the same time on the same hardware using FreeNAS.
Trying to play a game on a virtualized instance introduces more latency than is acceptable to most gamers and (unless this changed while I wasn't looking) you can't pass a video card through to the virtual machine using the hypervisor on FreeNAS.
That means you would need some other hypervisor, like ESXi, and virtualize both FreeNAS and the gaming computer.
That means you need to look at ESXi compatible hardware in addition the the hardware compatibility with FreeNAS.

 

[joeinaz]

Some thoughts:
1. A gaming motherboard rarely supports ECC memory which is preferred for a "serious" FreeNAS solution.
2. Unless you are playing card games, even with all of the advanced video parameters invoked through VMware tools, performance will be a fraction of the video card.
3. A good gaming system usually uses quite a bit of power in the video card. You might be limited in the number of disks you can use.

Virtualization is not a good technology for serious video gaming. This sort of leave two options, one possibility is to use the system use a dual boot configuration and either Game or FreeNAS. In this configuration, you can create a "casual" FreeNAS system that is booted and run when needed. The other option build a separate small FreeNAS system. You will need a case that can hold least 5 disks, a disk controller that will allow for more than 4 disks and a good size (500+ watts) power supply.

 

[LTCM]

Everyone is assuming he would virtualize the gaming box....

Game on bare metal. Run freenas in a vm. Buy a $40 hba and pass it to freenas along with 8gigs of ram and the hdds. Leave the gaming computer on all the time. Could sell the ram you have and buy ecc adata if you wanted.