zovc
Cadet
- Joined
- Mar 21, 2017
- Messages
- 6
Hey!
So, I've been considering building a NAS for a while now... and I keep putting it off. I need to stop putting it off and the first step to doing that is actually figuring out what I should be spending my money on! A few ideas I had been formulating seem to go against the grain of you folks' hardware suggestions, so it's definitely worth seeing how far off-base I am with my plan.
First, I was considering getting a chassis like this one. The iStarUSA S-917, there's also the S-919 but I couldn't find it on Amazon or Newegg. Basically, they are Mini-ITX or Micro-ATX cases that have a lot of 5.25" external drive bays. I was planning on fitting them with cost-effective hot-swap bays to yield as many drive bays as I could. I never really sat down and crunched the numbers, but I'm pretty sure that's the best/only way to cram 8+ 3.5" drives into a Mini-ITX or Micro-ATX form factor.
For the motherboard, I was considering consumer-grade components. I was under the impression that it's the best value but the guide seemed to argue otherwise. For about $200, can I end up with a Mini-ITX or Micro-ATX motherboard (and processor and cooler) that's adequate for a home server?
Regarding my use-case, it'll normally be only myself accessing stuff from the server. I plan on storing every game I can get my hands on and rip, and I'm most interested in later generations that have good emulators (like PS2, Gamecube, and Wii) so that theoretically can take up a lot of space. I'm confident my network can send me information faster than optical discs can, so that's not anything I'm worried about. I'd also like to use the NAS for networked game storage for Steam. Also the bit of media here-and-there. Some of my other friends are setting up home servers and it's possible we pool storage for backups and do some file sharing, but I'm pretty sure my personal connection would bottleneck that (4Mb/s up) more than nearly any hardware possibly could.
I'm hoping to start with at least ~9TB of storage, but would like to be able to have as much as ~12-18GB before growing out of this NAS. Having a small section of ~3TB or so for game storage would be nice, and I'm considering starting to record 1080p @ 60fps, which I understand can eat up storage pretty quickly. A lot of my data doesn't need serious redundancy and performance is generally preferred over 'security.' Having something like 2-4TB of 'more secure' storage would probably be more than enough, where I could store images for my desktops and anything I ended up deciding was crucial to hold onto.
The most intense workloads I can think of would be:
So...
So, I've been considering building a NAS for a while now... and I keep putting it off. I need to stop putting it off and the first step to doing that is actually figuring out what I should be spending my money on! A few ideas I had been formulating seem to go against the grain of you folks' hardware suggestions, so it's definitely worth seeing how far off-base I am with my plan.
First, I was considering getting a chassis like this one. The iStarUSA S-917, there's also the S-919 but I couldn't find it on Amazon or Newegg. Basically, they are Mini-ITX or Micro-ATX cases that have a lot of 5.25" external drive bays. I was planning on fitting them with cost-effective hot-swap bays to yield as many drive bays as I could. I never really sat down and crunched the numbers, but I'm pretty sure that's the best/only way to cram 8+ 3.5" drives into a Mini-ITX or Micro-ATX form factor.
For the motherboard, I was considering consumer-grade components. I was under the impression that it's the best value but the guide seemed to argue otherwise. For about $200, can I end up with a Mini-ITX or Micro-ATX motherboard (and processor and cooler) that's adequate for a home server?
Regarding my use-case, it'll normally be only myself accessing stuff from the server. I plan on storing every game I can get my hands on and rip, and I'm most interested in later generations that have good emulators (like PS2, Gamecube, and Wii) so that theoretically can take up a lot of space. I'm confident my network can send me information faster than optical discs can, so that's not anything I'm worried about. I'd also like to use the NAS for networked game storage for Steam. Also the bit of media here-and-there. Some of my other friends are setting up home servers and it's possible we pool storage for backups and do some file sharing, but I'm pretty sure my personal connection would bottleneck that (4Mb/s up) more than nearly any hardware possibly could.
I'm hoping to start with at least ~9TB of storage, but would like to be able to have as much as ~12-18GB before growing out of this NAS. Having a small section of ~3TB or so for game storage would be nice, and I'm considering starting to record 1080p @ 60fps, which I understand can eat up storage pretty quickly. A lot of my data doesn't need serious redundancy and performance is generally preferred over 'security.' Having something like 2-4TB of 'more secure' storage would probably be more than enough, where I could store images for my desktops and anything I ended up deciding was crucial to hold onto.
The most intense workloads I can think of would be:
- Myself and a friend each playing the same game off of the NAS.
- Myself and ~3 friends each playing game off the NAS. (Rather unlikely, could store the game on at least my own computers.)
- My friends with their own servers/networks accessing information from the NAS.
- Myself and a friend playing media (audio or video) from the NAS.
So...
- Should I just be looking at server grade hardware? (The chassis, the motherboard, the CPU, the cooler?)
- Are server power supplies preferable to 'desktop' power supplies?
- Does ECC seem to matter for this use-case?
- Any help estimating a rough budget for this system?