Crossfader
Cadet
- Joined
- Jan 16, 2023
- Messages
- 5
I am building a new gaming PC, and because of that I am retiring my old gaming PC and a secondary PC I had that will not be needed anymore.
I decided to build a NAS with my secondary PC for two purposes, to store games (Steam Library and a directory with my roms collection) and to run a media server with all my movies, tv shows and music. I decided to go with TrueNAS after watching some videos on youtube about NAS building and the various plug-ins it supports like Plex.
So here are the parts on the Secondary PC:
CPU: Amd r5 3600x 3.8 GHz 6 core / 12 threads
RAM: 32 GB 3200 Mhz
Motherboard: Gigabyte B450a Aorus Pro Wifi
GPU: Gigabyte RX 570
PSU: EVGA 750 watts G3
Case: Corsair Obsidian 750D Airflow Edition Full Tower (bought this specifically for the extra HDD space)
This was a very budget build, mainly for storage, torrenting, watching movies, TV shows, podcasts, youtube. The motherboard has limited pcie lanes, for example, it has 6 x Sata, but in reality it is 4xSata + 2xASata, the ASata shares the same lanes as the NVMe slots, so if you use NVMe, then the ASata can't be used.
I downloaded the FreeNAS Quick Hardware Guide pdf and the 2021 updated version and I had a quick read through certain sections and I have learned a few things, seems that Intel is much preferred over Amd, and I can't go with cheap chinese SATA expansion cards of Amazon so I need a SAS controller card.
So this made me think that maybe my old gaming PC might be the better choice because I think the motherboard might be better in terms of available PCIe lanes, and it has an intel cpu but older.
Gaming PC:
CPU: Intel i5 6600 3.3 Ghz 4 core / 4 threads
RAM: 32 GB 3000 Mhz
Motherboard: Asus Z170-A Rev. 1.03
GPU: MSi RX 6600 XT (This was an update I made a bit over a year ago to replace an old MSI R9 390X and keep the PC going for a while longer).
PSU: EVGA 850 EQ
Case: Corsair Obsidian series 450D Mid Tower
Ok, so the NAS I wish to build will be used as a media server (most likely I will use the Plex plug-in, I'm very new to this), and to store my Steam library and roms library for the emulators I will be running on my new Gaming PC.
My new Gaming PC will be using Linux Mint, the new motherboard will have a 10GbE port, I ordered an Asus router GT-AXE16000 that has 2x10GbE ports to work as middleman between the NAS and my Gaming PC, I bought an Asus 10GbE pcie card for the NAS.
I plan to purchase 10 x 16Tb 512mb cache WD Red Pro, and hope to achieve maybe 2 Gb read/write speeds between my gaming PC and the NAS for newer games, not really concerned for emulators since I have loaded PS3 games on RPCS3 off a HDD and not really noticed any lag despite the forums there recommending running the games of SSDs. I just noticed that games from ~2015 and newer, specially open world games, lag and stutter a lot when running off a HDD with it's read/write speeds of 80-130 Mb/s. SSD's are certainly faster, averaging around 500 Mb/s, but anything above 4 TB is quite a bit of money and new games are very large.
NAS seems the way to go, if I can achieve speeds 4 times of an SSD I should be future proofed for a while, and I will have a lot of space too.
But upon doing research, people recommend the ZFS file system, but from the few searches I could find, ZFS does not seem to cooperate well with Windows based games, so for that reason I plan to go with ext4. Then again, the search results were from a couple of years ago, not sure if ZFS (which I have never used before) and Steam library are more compatible now.
I am going to be using the 750D case for the NAS, I have bought this HDD rack to expand the space HDD Rack , added a fan I had laying around to keep them cool.
I am not sure which motherboard and cpu to use so I would like advice on that.
I am planning to buy a pair of these mini sas cables.
I need advice here, I know I need a pcie sas controller card, but don't know if I should go with the SAS 9211-8I or the SAS 9300-8I, here.
I have read that the controller card needs to be flashed, do any of these cards require that? And does anyone have a link to a guide in doing that step?
Since I plan to use the NAS also as a media server, I was planning on leaving the RX 570 GPU in, I thought the encoding from the GPU would remove some of the
work on the CPU side, most of the stuff I have at the moment is 720p and 1080p, but I do have a 4k TV and would like to get some 4k movies. If the RX 570 is overkill, I do have an MSi 1050Ti sitting on a shelf gathering dust, maybe that would be better?
I will be buying 2x128 SSDs, one for installing TrueNAS and the other for backup. Is that large enough or should I get 2x256Gbs?
Lastly, the PSU I think I will use will be the 750 watts, I think that should be enough?
I hope I was clear enough with how I plan to use the NAS, it will be a personal NAS, if you have questions for me, or need extra information, like more hardware information, don't hesitate to ask.
I decided to build a NAS with my secondary PC for two purposes, to store games (Steam Library and a directory with my roms collection) and to run a media server with all my movies, tv shows and music. I decided to go with TrueNAS after watching some videos on youtube about NAS building and the various plug-ins it supports like Plex.
So here are the parts on the Secondary PC:
CPU: Amd r5 3600x 3.8 GHz 6 core / 12 threads
RAM: 32 GB 3200 Mhz
Motherboard: Gigabyte B450a Aorus Pro Wifi
GPU: Gigabyte RX 570
PSU: EVGA 750 watts G3
Case: Corsair Obsidian 750D Airflow Edition Full Tower (bought this specifically for the extra HDD space)
This was a very budget build, mainly for storage, torrenting, watching movies, TV shows, podcasts, youtube. The motherboard has limited pcie lanes, for example, it has 6 x Sata, but in reality it is 4xSata + 2xASata, the ASata shares the same lanes as the NVMe slots, so if you use NVMe, then the ASata can't be used.
I downloaded the FreeNAS Quick Hardware Guide pdf and the 2021 updated version and I had a quick read through certain sections and I have learned a few things, seems that Intel is much preferred over Amd, and I can't go with cheap chinese SATA expansion cards of Amazon so I need a SAS controller card.
So this made me think that maybe my old gaming PC might be the better choice because I think the motherboard might be better in terms of available PCIe lanes, and it has an intel cpu but older.
Gaming PC:
CPU: Intel i5 6600 3.3 Ghz 4 core / 4 threads
RAM: 32 GB 3000 Mhz
Motherboard: Asus Z170-A Rev. 1.03
GPU: MSi RX 6600 XT (This was an update I made a bit over a year ago to replace an old MSI R9 390X and keep the PC going for a while longer).
PSU: EVGA 850 EQ
Case: Corsair Obsidian series 450D Mid Tower
Ok, so the NAS I wish to build will be used as a media server (most likely I will use the Plex plug-in, I'm very new to this), and to store my Steam library and roms library for the emulators I will be running on my new Gaming PC.
My new Gaming PC will be using Linux Mint, the new motherboard will have a 10GbE port, I ordered an Asus router GT-AXE16000 that has 2x10GbE ports to work as middleman between the NAS and my Gaming PC, I bought an Asus 10GbE pcie card for the NAS.
I plan to purchase 10 x 16Tb 512mb cache WD Red Pro, and hope to achieve maybe 2 Gb read/write speeds between my gaming PC and the NAS for newer games, not really concerned for emulators since I have loaded PS3 games on RPCS3 off a HDD and not really noticed any lag despite the forums there recommending running the games of SSDs. I just noticed that games from ~2015 and newer, specially open world games, lag and stutter a lot when running off a HDD with it's read/write speeds of 80-130 Mb/s. SSD's are certainly faster, averaging around 500 Mb/s, but anything above 4 TB is quite a bit of money and new games are very large.
NAS seems the way to go, if I can achieve speeds 4 times of an SSD I should be future proofed for a while, and I will have a lot of space too.
But upon doing research, people recommend the ZFS file system, but from the few searches I could find, ZFS does not seem to cooperate well with Windows based games, so for that reason I plan to go with ext4. Then again, the search results were from a couple of years ago, not sure if ZFS (which I have never used before) and Steam library are more compatible now.
I am going to be using the 750D case for the NAS, I have bought this HDD rack to expand the space HDD Rack , added a fan I had laying around to keep them cool.
I am not sure which motherboard and cpu to use so I would like advice on that.
I am planning to buy a pair of these mini sas cables.
I need advice here, I know I need a pcie sas controller card, but don't know if I should go with the SAS 9211-8I or the SAS 9300-8I, here.
I have read that the controller card needs to be flashed, do any of these cards require that? And does anyone have a link to a guide in doing that step?
Since I plan to use the NAS also as a media server, I was planning on leaving the RX 570 GPU in, I thought the encoding from the GPU would remove some of the
work on the CPU side, most of the stuff I have at the moment is 720p and 1080p, but I do have a 4k TV and would like to get some 4k movies. If the RX 570 is overkill, I do have an MSi 1050Ti sitting on a shelf gathering dust, maybe that would be better?
I will be buying 2x128 SSDs, one for installing TrueNAS and the other for backup. Is that large enough or should I get 2x256Gbs?
Lastly, the PSU I think I will use will be the 750 watts, I think that should be enough?
I hope I was clear enough with how I plan to use the NAS, it will be a personal NAS, if you have questions for me, or need extra information, like more hardware information, don't hesitate to ask.