Will an Atom C3338 suffice for a home 2 people no VMs no jail build?

[bytesontheroad]

Hello,

I'm building a NAS for my family. It has to be cheap, silent and small (I know I can't have it all). I don't need any kind of jail or VM since I already have a computing node for this and if, for example, I ever wanted Plex I'd just expose a NFS share to the computing node. The build only needs to contain files and serve them to my LAN via NFS and SMB.

Considering that I already have the 4x4TB disks I need and that I don't plan to expand it for some years I decided not to go for socketed CPUs. I encountered the Intel Atom C3338 on the SuperMicro A2SDI-2C-HLN4F and it seems a reasonable price for where I live (around 335 bucks all included) and, above all, consumes nothing.
What kind of build could it be? Will it work?

MB+CPU: SuperMicro A2SDI-2C-HLN4F
RAM: Crucial CT32G4RFD4266 32 GB RDIMM ECC ( I could expand later this way)
Disks: 4x 4TB WD40EFRX
Case: Fractal Design Node 304 or Fractal Design Node 804 or Supermicro CSE-721TQ-250B
PSU: if SM then it's already there but if its one of the Nodes? I don't know

 

[Yorick]

For file serve that’s perfectly fine.

The seasonic modular PSUs are well liked for building in a node. Allow 25-30w of startup draw per disk for the disks, plus whatever the system itself needs.

You say “for the family” - so family photos and the like? Will the FreeNAS back up to something else, or are the photos gone when FreeNAS goes?
What I’m getting at: raidz1 gives you a little more space, but increases the risk of total data loss while your are rebuilding the pool when a single drive dies; raidz2 is more resilient to resilver, at the cost of reducing your available storage.

 

[bytesontheroad]

I need file sharing and that's it. It could also be movies, ISOs, documents and so on but they are going to be accessed through SMB and NFS so still counts as file share. What I didn't say it is that I used a Synology dual drive for 6 years until now and I had a mirror of 1TB storage. Now I finished the space but also the Synology itself is EOL.

The FreeNAS is going to be the first place where stuff is going. The backups are up until now an offline drive. In the future (2-4 years at least) this build could become the backup and another build would substitute it as the primary storage.

I already planned to go for Z2 for more security, knowingly that I will only have 8TB in total available.

P.S. I read about deduplication. How could it be affected by a slow CPU? Will I need it for my use case?

 

[Yorick]

Don't dedupe. More on why here: https://www.ixsystems.com/blog/freenas-worst-practices/

 

[bytesontheroad]

Ok, I read that. Compression, not deduplication. I'm going to search for when deduplication could be the right choice (obviously other scenarios, not mine).

What about the case? SuperMicro one is the one could be found in iXsystems and already has the PSU. The Node is well known but I need to go for a PSU. You said Seasonic modular. Considering 250W is the SuperMicro PSU, would 350W be enough or the SuperMicro is kind of optimized and I need to take something else into account?

 

[Yorick]

To answer your PSU sizing question, read https://www.ixsystems.com/community/resources/proper-power-supply-sizing-guidance.39/

 

[bytesontheroad]

Oh, thank you. Now I know more about the PSU but I can't decide if I want to go for any of the two Case+PSU options I have (or, better, I think I have). :p

I suppose that the G-360 it's more than enough. I cannot find it anywhere. The PSU from Seasonic that I could find and gets closer to the G-360 is the Platinum 400 Fanless 400W 80+ Platinum. It seems nice and it shouldn't be bad the fact that it starts the fan only after a certain power/temperature.


The SM one is a safe choice since they sell the two components together as SYS-5029A-2TN4. My reseller sells for like 60 bucks more than the two parts sold separately and I don't get why. I think it's the cabling and the prebuild they do to check everything but I don't want to spend that much on something I actually enjoy doing on my own.

Moreover, if I want to go bigger some day (I really like the SilverStone SST-CS381 even if it's more than 300 bucks, it wants Flex ATX instead of full ATX PSU and there is no PSU included with that price) with the Node 304 I could recycle it for some other purpose not counting that it supports 6 disks instead of 4. BTW I don't really need hot swap trays, it's a home build and I can afford some minutes or even hours of downtime.