3D NAS Case & New setup

[DeanNotDin]

Hello!

I have been using FreeNAS for about 4 years now, and running it on an old PC that I had.
Nothing special, but it works fine with 12gb of RAM and 3x4TB WD Red configured to a big pool.
I also stuck a 128gb SanDisk SSD for caching, since I use it as an home media server and I thought it would improve streaming speed. Doesn't seem like that helped though.

So my plan is to print a custom 3D case out of PLA (temp shouldn't be an issue since it's resilient to about 180° before melting) and make it as small as possible in order to support current disk amount.

My power usage at the moment doesn't exceed 180W at maximum usage, so I thought of using this tiny PS.
There's also a 300W version that i'm thinking about.

The problematic component is the MotherBoard and this is where I need your help!
I need a small board, with 4 SATA ports (1 for future proofing), 2 USB ports (1 for flash drive running freenas, the second one for a redundancy flash drive that would be swapped with a keyboard when needed) with the option to control a fan (noctua 14cm fan on top and on bottom to create massive airflow).
Best case scinario is to find a second hand motherboard with preinstalled RAM and CPU (/w ECC).

Share your findings!
Tips and advices will be taken with a smile

 

[kdragon75]

so I thought of using this tiny PS.

Thats cute and will cause nothing but problems. Get a proper 400-500 watt PSU that's 80+ certified and of decent quality.

I also stuck a 128gb SanDisk SSD for caching, since I use it as an home media server and I thought it would improve streaming speed. Doesn't seem like that helped though.

Yeah, L2ARC caching requires technical planning and tuning to make it useful. Even properly tuned, it would do nothing for SLOWLY streaming a media file. Think about it. if you have a 100GB 4k movie that's 1hr long that's an average of 28MB/sec. I think your drives are probably a bit faster than that. Also those are kind of extreme numbers.

I need a small board, with 4 SATA ports (1 for future proofing)

You cant just add one drive without striping it and then if that disk has an issue the whole pool is lost. If all drives are striped, same thing but the odds of failure are multiplied by the number of drives. If you have 3 drives in a stripe, your three times more likely to have a drive fail causing your entire pool to be lost.

2 USB ports (1 for flash drive running freenas, the second one for a redundancy flash drive that would be swapped with a keyboard when needed)

Would you do this with your hard drives? Nope. Don't do it with your boot drives either. plugging and unplugging a flash drive will cause the drive to be resilvered slowing the system and adding unnecessary wear to already unreliable drives. this is just asking for problems.

As for selecting a motherboard/CPU, we don't know what you have of if its fast enough for you. We also don't have a budget. You will need to fill in some of the blanks here.

 

[Chris Moore]

I also stuck a 128gb SanDisk SSD for caching, since I use it as an home media server and I thought it would improve streaming speed. Doesn't seem like that helped though.

It would not. Which you would have known if you would have come here and done some reading or asked a question. That drive has either been doing nothing or possibly even slowing things down all this time.

So my plan is to print a custom 3D case out of PLA (temp shouldn't be an issue since it's resilient to about 180° before melting) and make it as small as possible in order to support current disk amount.

That is just crazy. Airflow is what keeps your drives cool. Make the case small and it restricts the airflow. The only way to compensate is with high speed fans. Have you ever heard a 1U or 2U server running? There is a reason those fans run so fast. Airflow for cooling.

Share your findings!

I find that this is a foolish idea.