Mini-ITX Frankenstein: 4 core, 6 SAS disks, 10Gbps, USB SSD boot

[manifest3r]

Hey Everyone,

I was in the market for a Synology/QNAP 4-bay NAS, but I stumbled upon this the A2SDI-4C-HLN4F motherboard for $61 shipped and now I am all in to build a TrueNAS Core server. My main goal is to have a stable and reliable system that I can update regularly without any issues. I am currently holding ~1TB of archival data on my Proxmox server and my long-term goal is to offload it to my NAS.

Here are my current build specs:

Part	Model	Price
Motherboard	A2SDI-4C-HLN4F ITX	61.63
CPU	Intel Atom C3558	0
RAM	16GB ECC RAM	0
PSU	Enhance Electronics ENP-7025B 250W 80 Plus Bronze Power Supply	28.62
SSD for TrueNAS OS	Lexar NS100 128GB 2.5” SATA III Internal SSD, Solid State Drive, Up To 520MB/s Read (LNS100-128RBNA)	10
USB to SSD	SATA to USB 3.0 Adapter Cable, SNANSHI USB 3.0 to SATA III Adapter Cable with UASP SATA to USB Converter for 2.5" Hard Drives Disk HDD and Solid State Drives SSD(Power Adapter is not Include)	5.99
Case	UNAS NSC-810	218.17
Hard Drive	HGST 4TB SAS SATA X 6 8	170
SAS Controller	LSI-9220-8i m1015 in IT Mode	20
SAS Cables	See above
M.2 to PCIe x16 expansion	ADT-Link PCI-E 3.0 Riser Card 32G/BPS M.2 NGFF NVMe to PCIe X16 Extension Cable SATA Power Cable Support M.2 PCIE X4 Full Speed Channel for BTC Mining M2 2230 2242 2260 2280 (F43SF 15CM)	17.99
10Gbps NIC	2x Intel X520? (not including SFP+ cable)	17/ea
SFP+ Cable w/ port - 1meter (3.3ft)	Twinax-Passive-Compatible-SFP-H10GB-CU0-3M-Ubiquiti	15.99

The OS will be booted via USB SSD. I'm not 100% sure if this next step will work - as the A2SDI-4C-HLN4F only supports a "Total combined PCIe lanes and SATA ports is up to 8." My plan is to add a SAS HBA, which will take up 2 PCIe lanes - leaving me with 6 available SATA ports. From my research I've read that the m.2 PCIe lane is independent so I am planning on using that for the m.2 to PCIe adapter for a 10Gbps NIC (I am aware I won't get full bandwidth but anything faster than 1Gbps is fine).

It is a bit frankensteinish - especially in UNAS NSC-810 case (810A was OOS), but I think I'll give it a go. I don't plan on holding any VMs on this server as I have my Proxmox server for Kubernetes and general virtualization. Although this NAS is mainly for archival data, I am going to actively link an Immich container to it for a Google Photos replacement, which is why I am going with a 10Gbps NIC.

Questions...

1. Is a 10Gbps SFP+ NIC the best way to connect to my Proxmox server? I have connected via Fibre Channel iSCSI target in the past back when FreeNAS was a thing.
2. Do I need a cache?
3. Trying to keep TDP low - would sticking with SATA drives be a better alternative considering HBAs use a constant ~10W? It'll also free up a couple SATA ports.

EDIT: For anyone stumbling on this thread, you can have up to 16 drives on this motherboard. 8 from the on-board SATA AND 8 more from a PCIe HBA. Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/unRAID/comments/h0pxak/a2sdi4chln4f_raidhba_card_question/

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Why the SAS HBA?

The A2SDI-4C-HLN4F comes with 8 SATA ports already, just connect SATA disks and use the onboard M.2 for a boot device. If you pick M.2 SATA for that, you can connect up to 7 SATA drives. If you pick M.2 NVMe, you can use all 8 SATA ports.

You can then use a proper 10G network adapter.

 

[manifest3r]

Why the SAS HBA?

The A2SDI-4C-HLN4F comes with 8 SATA ports already, just connect your disks and use the onboard M.2 for a boot device. If you pick M.2 SATA for that, you can connect up to 7 SATA drives. If you pick M.2 NVMe, you can use all 8 SATA ports.

You can then use a proper 10G network adapter.

The used SAS disk market is a bit cheaper, so I am saving a bit on cost,but granted it's not a huge amount of savings. I also figured if I ever want to utilize a SAS expander, it would make things a bit easier. I hadn't considered an NVMe drive. I have a spare - I will give it a shot before ordering the drives.

My other concern I forgot to bring up. Would going with a SAS HBA limit the speeds for my disks since the PCIe port is only x4?

 

[manifest3r]

So I decided to go with SATA after all. I'm running FreeNAS on my NVMe drive and it's working great, but I will be replacing it with the USB SSD drive and use the NVMe drive as a dedicated disk for plugins since TrueNAS doesn't allow plugin installs on the boot pool. I ordered 9x4TB disks, going to follow this script that was inspired by the Stress Test thread around here: https://github.com/Spearfoot/disk-burnin-and-testing. Might automate it a bit more with Ansible.

 

[manifest3r]

Case is here. Drives are here. SAS cables are here. Plugged everything in. PSU cable is too short. For anyone with a UNAS NSC-810, don’t buy the Enhance ENP-7025B. I was also short a Molex cable.

Waiting for a FSP270 60LE to get here in a couple days.

 

[manifest3r]

Just a final update to this build - it's complete. I've added 10GbE and the Atom CPU definitely bottlenecks performance so I really only get a little over 2GbE, but that's fine since my pool's throughput is ~400MB/s in a 3x2 mirror. The FSP270 60LE PSU unfortunately was a dud, so I sent it back and ordered the SilverStone SST-FX350-G 350 W PSU which was a bit hard to wire up, but I was able to squeeze it in. Also upgraded to 32GB ECC RAM. Below is the final buildout - definitely went overbudget, but I did it for the blinky lights!

Also, after testing all 9 disks, 3 had bad blocks/SMART errors so I returned them as I am still in the warranty window. I was left with 6 disks which was perfect (just need to order a spare or two).

Motherboard	A2SDI-4C-HLN4F ITX	61.63
CPU	Intel Atom C3558	0
RAM	32GB 2x SK HYNIX 16GB PC4-2133P ECC Registered 1.2V DDR4 RDIMM HMA42GR7MFR4N-TF	26
PSU	SilverStone SST-FX350-G 350 W	100
SSD for TrueNAS OS	Lexar NS100 128GB 2.5” SATA III Internal SSD, Solid State Drive, Up To 520MB/s Read (LNS100-128RBNA)	10
USB to SSD	SATA to USB 3.0 Adapter Cable, SNANSHI USB 3.0 to SATA III Adapter Cable with UASP SATA to USB Converter for 2.5" Hard Drives Disk HDD and Solid State Drives SSD(Power Adapter is not Include)	5.99
Case	UNAS NSC-810	218.17
Hard Drive	HGST 4TB SATA X 6	113
10Gbps NIC for NAS	INTEL X540-T2	33.92
HP dl380p g8 10Gbps PCIe card	561FLR-T	12.72
Total		581.43