Just yesterday I finished building & setting up my first NAS. Went with Gigabyte B550i Aorus Pro paired with Ryzen 7 PRO 4750G, 2x 32 gb ECC, 4x Exos 18X and SN850X, built in Node 304. I think it's quite well balanced home NAS for 2.5 Gbit network.
I just finished up my nas upgrade with an Minisforum BD770i. The AMD Ryzen 7 7745HX (8c/16t) is a beast. In Unraid system idle it uses only 23w since it's a mobile chip. I used an m.2 nvme to 6x sata adapter and it works like a charm. Since Plex natively supports amd igpu's this mobo is a champ at transcoding. I highly recommend this motherboard.
@KO-gs8je yeah I ditched the m.2 cooler because I had to install an m.2 nvme to 6x sata adapter. In the other nvme slot sits a Samsung 970 and those dont get that hot. The case (fractal design 304) with 4 noctua fans provide more than enough cooling. I can imagine that you would need to use the provided nmve cooler if you are installing a blazing fast pcie 5.0 x4 nvme
Thank you for the pick. I love it, gonna get one for my aging Intel 6th gen. Only thing missing is the 10G network. The PCI slot will be filled with my HBA,
Does Plex support your iGPU?? Are you able to transcode videos normally? Are you on Linux or Windows? Sorry but I've been researching this for a while and haven't found any sources saying that Plex works with AMD.
If you haven't a problem with second hand things. I have picked up an i5 8500t with an Asus z390 ATX mobo with Asus hyper M.2 card, 64GB ddr 4 2666, ATX Gold powersupply all in an old case with lots of 3.5 and 2.5 inch bays. Still have a lot of PCIE and Sata ports free for the future. Power draw
@@jonathankeay3411don't know if I'm allowed to share direct links to the asus site. If you search in google for 'Compatibility of PCIE bifurcation between Hyper M.2 series Cards and Add-On Graphic Cards' you will find the right link. Most A tier chipsets from Intel and AMD motherboards will support atleast 2 nvme's by the Hyper m.2 card. Hope that answers your question.
why is everyone so obsessed about ITX mobos? they lack PCIe and SATA connectivity, RAM expansion, space for bigger (silent) cpu cooler, if I weren't using my X99-S desktop workstation as main PC, I'd simply make it a NAS build, since also the case (Fractal Define R5) supports 8 HDD bays already...
Yep, it's great for SFF builds but it's SFF for a reason, and you pay a premium just for that. IMO, mATX is the sweet spot for features, price and form factor.
I built an mATX system last month in a Fractal Node 804 for less than US $500, excluding drives and SFP+ DAC. It's extremely liberating once you start considering options larger than ITX. The motherboard is a Supermicro X11SSM-F, I put in a Xeon E3-1240V6, and the price includes 64GB of ECC memory and an Intel 10G SFP+ NIC. The mATX board allows me to use SAS drives by adding an LSI 2308 HBA, costs $20 and is completely optional since it has 8 on-board SATA3 ports. Even now, I still have PCIe slots to spare for whatever reason, such as adding PCIe SSDs.
There is new one which look nice for all ssd diy alternative on ali. 6 Bay NAS Motherboard, i5-12450H 8505 Max, 6 x NVMe, 6 x SATA3.0, 1 x PCIEx4, Mini ITX, 4 x Intel i226-V, 2.5G, Firewall Router, 2 x DDR5 Motherboard
The n305 board sharing the pcie late between the m.2 and the 3.0x1 slot was the reason the went with the n100 green board. Those lanes are not shared. Of course, after I ordered it, About a month ago Topton released a new version of the n305 board that does not share this lane.
@@nascompares mostly just wanted to let you know about the new version of these boards as they don’t have the shared pcie lane issue that you mentioned in the video. I can always upgrade to the n305 version and put the n100 to use in other ways.
If you're willing to look at MicroATX boards, and I would due to the availability of the relatively inexpensive Fractal Node 804 case (mATX, 10 3.5" bays), you open up a world of possibilities. For instance the ASRock B550M Steel Legend, with 2.5GBe, 6xSATA, and 2xfull length M.2 slots (and 1x short M.2 slot for a Wi-Fi card). If all you want is mirrored flash storage, get 2 M.2 drives, and one 2.5" SATA to boot from, and get a small/cheap case like the Fractal Core 1000 (#notspon).
That's not a question I know how to answer. Power consumption will depend not only on your component choice, but which features of the motherboard you use, how you have software/firmware configured, and your use case/usage patterns. Even if I did know all that, the only way I know how to determine power consumption is to measure. @@M4XD4B0ZZ
I went with a G ryzen and a b550m VC from msi-only new part- board has 2xnvme pcie3x4-this cuz the G ryzen-, 8 EIGHT sata ports by the way sata and nvme can all work at same time, a couple pcie slots for any future whatevers. Now for my use case, 1G lan is more than enough, Id say but still have them pcie slots justin! 6x hdds now and an os ssd, no cache drive, dont think ill need it, at least not now, and i read that most ssds will have not a good time being cache, since their lifetime is on the amount written. Wanted to get one of them X99 setups though, but this was quicker and less power, all on an old PC case with hdd mounting spaces with a couple extra fans thrown in there
I am running an epyc 9124. One box that can do everything simultaneously. I don't need fast networking because it is all local. Workstation, gaming PC, NAS, all in one box, simultaneously.
Love this. I just did a very very similar build and board selection process. Ultimately I went with a lower power board for just NAS use with a few Docker containers on an N100 build. It’s built out for good until I need a newer, bigger system, and I won’t look back at it to wonder if it could be better because I have no more lanes to support anything else hahahaha 😅 so working within the itx form factor with these sorts of sff builds is an art form in itself. For me power consumption was the main thing along with total storage availability. 2.5g Ethernet was gravy because this isn’t a performant NAS, but a backup one. I plan on also building a near line storage NAS for video editing. I think people fall into the trap of making their hardware a jack of all trades but a master of nothing. Use the N100s for what they are good at, low power and non mission critical applications.
Another interesting summary. Have you verified the sata throughout on the N305 board, or Indeed the N100 version? Someone recently did some heavy testing on the BKHD green N100 version and oddly the sata controller was tied in at pcie2x1 speeds. Which is a bit mad since the cpu is pci3x9. Any thoughts?
I think as soon as you review an item the aliexpress stores use this as an opportunity to start increasing prices. Sometimes they just up their shipping costs to give the illusion of a cheaper product. 🤔 Or am I just being cynical.
I see your point, but if that was true, then it's catch 22 as to how people can learn about the products on the grape vine... damned if you do and damned if you don't!
i gotta say as ive started to move towards handling other peoples data professionally all of a sudden the two features i look for first are ecc memory and bios support. even if it means buying something older, it helps me sleep better. that said, yea ok youre right to focus where you do in this shootout, you make good points
Been going down this rabbit hole for a bit. Some thoughts: 1) the i9 mb seems similar to the minisforum ms-01 solution. However minisforum includes 2 spf+ 10g and 2 2.5 g Ethernet ports, as well as 2 usb4. Plus, besides the 3 nvme slots, there is the option of adapting one of the nvme slots to u.2. This unit, especially with the cheaper i5 version is a complete nas flash storage with the option to add a decent gpu. Also, with the usb4/TB ports you can use the DAS solutions to really build up an array. I’m particularly looking at the Terramaster D5 Hybrid which is 2 hd/ssd sata drives plus 3 nvme slots. In the past I’ve built a 16 tb nvme das using the OWC 4ms and got about 1200-1800 MB/s transfers between the OWC and my Mac mini. 2) the Xeon mb option is reflected in the tons of e-waste towers from HP (z440 to z840) and Dell. These are interesting because of the 2 16x pcie slots, 1 8x pcie slots 1 4x slots. The slots are full length and full height. The many/cheap 4x nvme to pci cards which require bifurcation like HP does makes for an easy flash nas and the also cheap dual 10gb Ethernet pci cards makes for fast transfers. Again, these server/workstation towers often come with an nvidia card, such as a quadro. The only downside is the power requirements. Which is hilarious! Thanks for the video!
While I see the appeal of MOBO+CPU options, I think the lack of serviceability makes them simply not worth it. I recently bought a 4650G because of the ECC support and okay CPU performance (and because it was dirt cheap, $110). Just slot it into any AM4 Gigabyte/ASUS board and UDIMM ECC is fully supported for a total of $200 MOBO+CPU. Still thinking about if I should do an ITX build with Jonsbo N1 or an ATX building with a Define R7.
Great channel! Found you through while researching about m.2 adapers for my usecase. Looking to build a nas with i5 7400 to have a jellyfin on it, it should be quite power efficient with right psu too
I have an idea for building a Gen 4 TrueNAS. Biostar b550m MX/E, already indicates it supports bifurcation and its good price where im at. Bifurcation cause i plan to use a 4x nvme adapter. My old Ryzen 3600. Relatively power efficient, at first i had the idea for an Epyc build, but that idles close to 100W. ECC unbuffered memory can also be used here. Also have a RX6400 when i need to use a gpu, as this will be a TrueNAS machine i probably wont need a gpu much. I will probably buy two 40gbe mellinox connect x3 and some DAS cables. Would need to think of something for an efficient small psu, i like sfx ones, but most of them have bad efficency at low wattage.
It's NOT a new board and you will need VGA out or a gfx card to interface through bios first time with your chosen OS (except UnRAID). Definitely factor these things in
i highly recommend a used Server with a Xeon 26xx, 26xxv2, or 26xxv3. Can pick them up with CPU + Ram for 80 to 150 bucks, and some come with 10G Lan and more SAS/SATA then one needs.
so you are suggesting spending an extra $130 or over on this side of the pond 250€ each year, plus another $40 or 75€ each year on that 10g switch... So 325€ each year on those space heaters? No thank you, I'd much rather pay 60€ each year all included. (Yes real hardware has it's place, I have a full rack.. a TrueNAS backup, a failover PVE, a PBS.. but those are things I power on over my extremely efficient always on consumer grade main PVE or my extremely efficient Unraid, which altogether doesn't cost me a 100 Euro a year)
@@zazelskycrest2525yes he's completely disregarding power usage, they are glorified space heaters or good devices if you don't want to keep them powered on.
@@comahrn I wonder what you are running to spend 325€ a year on your Server. And i wonder what 10G switch you are using for that power consumption. Also just because a Server or a PC has a 10G Lan doesn't mean you have to use it.And when i löook at my 8Port 1G Switches and then at some 8 Port 10G switches... not really a difference in power consumption. And for servers: You don't have to buy a Server with the bigest bestes and fastest cores.
@@germanmosca the fans alone are like 5W each in professional servers.. 10g switches are starting at 20W which is on the extremely low end. Stop lying to yourself and check what the servers are actually using. You are just giving bad advice with suggesting space heaters for servers. I'm not even implying that they are not still very useable, but only if you don't have to pay for them running. And 10g is also very power inefficient, that's just affect.. fing google it.
I have a Rosewill RSV-L4500U NAS chassis. It's a proper case with room to grow with 15 drive bays. I don't understand why you pretend here that there's nothing out there that will take a bunch of drives and still support ATX boards. It's not like the chassis is incredibly expensive either.
That X99 mobo is a little risky. Did some digging since I was interested in it. In April 2024 BKHD (manufacturer) released BIOS R014, which is shipped as a default with new purchases. It somewhat fixed ECC memory support (wasn't working with earlier R009 revision of BIOS) but there were many configuration options cut from BIOS - people report that this includes, but is not limited to Intel VT-d and power configuration. I don't know if Intel VT-d is enabled by default or not in the new BIOS, but for me this system was suppose to be NAS and a homelab machine for Proxmox. It is also not an mITX motherboard - it is larger and manufacturer states that it is a CeB format, so it won't fit in cases that have no spare room over mITX tray. Mobo with CPU (no drives etc.) idles at around 45-50W jumping to 140-150W with CPU fully stressed. MiniPCI-E slot shares its lanes with one of the NICs. At least with old R009 BIOS bifurcation worked perfectly and someone tested ASUS 4*m.2 card and all of the drives were seen in BIOS and were bootable, as the PCI-Ex16 slot was set to 4x4x4x4. VRM and chipset radiators run hot, where VRMs' radiator was around 65-70C with downdraft cooler on the CPU. Chipset radiator was around 55C. So be sure to add some airflow if you plan a build with this mobo/CPU combo.
I've been favouring m-atx, something like the Erying i5-13420h, because with two slots, you can hopefully add a IT mode SAS card as well as a dual 10gb NIC, but then I'd go for a larger case with more bays
I don't know if the x16 slot supports bi-furication because with that and an NVME to PCI-E adapter you could support more NVME storage without losing the 10Gbe and SAS mass storage
I am seeing/hearing stuff from hardware haven on the Zimacube board rev.2 and the PCI switch controller. Might need to make a dedicated vid on this one
Since ECC is one of the most important things in a NAS if you value data integrity (which most NAS builders do), maybe you could bring out more prominently which ones support ECC and which ones don't? And for a list of "best NAS CPU+mobos for NAS" there's very little ECC support among the suggested alternatives.
Tbh I totally see your point. But this video is about pre-bundled CPU and Memory combos. Finding ECC ready/supportive ones tends to lead towards much older Xeon bundles that seemingly have a whiff of "pre-owned" and "pulled from ex server" about them. That said, ECC has been raised numerous times in this comments section, so I think I NEED to make an ECC dedicated version of this vid, yeah
@@nascompares You need to go Team Red if you want to use ECC memory for non-server grade stuff. Intel pretty much only supports ECC memory on their xeon processors. They don't really advertise it, but my 3900x supports ECC, including on the motherboard i'm using. They only support unbuffered ECC memory, and it's largely dependent on the motherboard you're using. AMD doesn't really advertise ECC memory, but they do support it.
Totally not related but I'd be curious on how that N305 board would fare as a TV box? I'm still looking for the perfect replacement for my nvidia shield, but it's just too damn good compared to the alternatives, yet it's so old and lacking development
For real DIY nas You will need at last 2 PCIe elecrrically x8. One is for network card ( 25/40/100 GB/s ) and one for hard drive controller ( LSI / Hap/ Dell? ). More PCIe lanes with bifurcation should be recomended as well. Problem is that user grade motherboards got only 1 PCIe x16 and some X4 or more often X1 slots.
@@sunnycloudy1337 I believe that problem is solved with a bios update, my idea was converting the bottom m.2 slots for 6 slot SATA adapters, making a perfect nas.
@@sunnycloudy1337 keep in mind that there are 2 types of m.2 to sata adapters. Theres m.2 sata to sata and m.2 nvme to sata. The m.2 sata to sata doesnt work in an m.2 nvme slot.
I stay away from n series (n100,n305) chips. They don’t support hyperthreading (all “E” cores), don’t have good single core performance, and only provide 9 lanes of pcie gen 3. Makes it very difficult to build a NAS with SATA, NVME, and 10 gig networking without something getting starved for pcie lanes
All true, but these are also comments that have been leveled towards the N5105/N6005 topton board (and all true too). And the topton (although now lower in price) was originally bang on the same price around this length of time as the N300/305 builds are. This is an all-rounder price Vs value Vs power choice of CPU+Mobo combo. THAT SAID, yeah, there are some funny things going on with the controllers on that config throttling the littling hell of of PCIe (thank you hardware haven - brilliant ZimaCube PCIe teardown). And as an NVMe focused system, yeah, it's gonna get limited all to hell (at least ATM). For an NVMe build, I would definitely recommend the Erying 12/13th gen combos fo'sho!
Topton has released 1165g7 lineup with much more pcie lanes, (but 2nd nvme is 3.0x2, they don't say that) however I suspect that 4 NICS on this board are connected to one controller giving total bandwidth around 4Gb/s for 4 2.5gbs nics
While Synology seems to be taking forever to upgrade to gen 12 processors, I am more and more looking with interest the Supermicro SuperWorkstation 531A-IL for a solid unRAiD build. What do you think?
Is there any sense in getting the 13900H? Will all that power be utilized? Why not just go and buy the 12800H, even though there is a performance drop of 25,000 passmark vs. 29,400 passmark. The number of PCI-E lanes is the same - 28. Also, DDR4 is cheaper than DDR5.
N100-N305 MB+CPU are crap. If you Seriously need more and faster PCIE lanes, or if you need more than 16 GB ADRESSABLE, not just recognized RAM. (By the way only single chanel) this combo is not the best. I Strongly recommand the combo MB + CPU from CWWK => AMD-7840HS/8845HS/7940HS - 9 SATA/8-BAY/9-BAY NAS - USB4 - 4 NETWORK 2.5G - PCIE X16 ITX MOTHERBOARD: I dont put links, i don't why, but my comments won't show up. Soo i try without link.
Could someone please let me know if there's some manual available for the i3-N305 board? In particular, I'd like to know the specifications of the CPU fan (type (fixed or variable RPM), size, voltage). Thank you.
Do you know where can I buy a a 4x 3.5" tray with integrated sata backplane to build my own case around? Something not to expensive but functional. Buying one of these retal nases to break it apart is expensive and kinda stupid :D
And here I sit trying to decide whether to build a NAS using a mini ITX mobo or get my Cisco UCS C240 M4 with 12 10TB SAS drives running. The Cisco is kind of big and noisy though and a bit of a power hog. It has two 1200W power supplies. Lol
The N-series of Intel chips, especially not of the 8-core variant, are pretty weak, so if you plan to use them with dockerised apps, not so good... Intel's i* H-series and now Ultras are the way to go for efficiency and because they have iGPUs with well supported hardware accelerated transcoding for the media serving use-cases - some apps/platforms may require extra cost for supporting Nvidia or AMD encoders - they make good basis for such builds. Newer gen may also be seated in TB3/TB4 enabled board, so device extension is quite possible... However, one could venture experiments with Epyc Siena. Why? Most boards for Siena come with 2 or 4 NICs, 2 of which often are RJ45 ports, with the other 2 for SFP28, so up to 52Gbps trunked output... enough to feed a quadruple of 10Gbps clients. Of course, those optical ports need connecting to a good switch. MikroTik has one with 16 SFP28 ports, if I recall correctly. SFP28 ports and transceivers can work at 10Gbps speed, basically being supported in SFP+ cages... Then, those Siena boards can be paired with Siena chips... starting from an 8 core 16 thread units you can scale now or in the future, depending on workloads, up to 64 core 128 thread design of Zen 4c chips, granted running at the efficiency oriented part of the bell curve. Add to that DDR5 RDIMMs support and 6 to 8 slots of those, and you can start small, then bump your platform as needed or as promos happen... Same for the storage and extensions... MCIO or slimSAS ports on boards are great for cable routing, after all most boards support splitting of signals into 4x or 8x SATA or SAS devices. Still, with a couple of MCIOs, you can easily use one or two split to cover spinning rust devices and still have some for bifurcation for NVMe U.2 drives to get better speed out of the NAS. Why is that a great thing? If you ever wanted to do a SATA SSD NAS, you'd be looking into 4TB+ models. Currently, at those capacities, SATA devices cost roughly the same as many cheaper enterprise PCIe3 or PCIe4, often around $20 of difference... for max throughput and iops nearly 5 times higher than the average SATA units... Once those U.2/U.3 drives drop in prices for high capacities, they may become defacto first choice even for homelab and NAS uses. Then, having a board that can easily already support those devices would be great and far easier to sell the idea to your spouses, so the wife-approval factor may be a benefit here as well. So building NAS on your own you need to differentiate between those with minimal usage scenarios needing something as efficient as possible and those willing to have a platform they can expand in the future per the needs or promos...
What's so heavy on a NAS that you can't run with an N100? I feel like so many comments are overestimating the amount of computing power needed for a NAS or homelab use.
@v0ldy54 for sheer NAS duty, perhaps N100 could suffice. Once you add media server with transcoding so as to serve content to a bigger list of clients, and add a (comic/audio)book server to the mix, it's going to get to a crawl. Add torrenting and get a few big files to be checked for consistency, and you might need slightly more compute power. Then, consider moving some of you ripping/transcoding duties to the always-on appliance, and you definitely want more horse power under the heat spreader. And in many home use-cases, you're going to end up with a lot of file/content serving and preparation duties moved to those machines. Finally, consider adding some photo library packages with those AI driven object recognition and cataloguing, and both CPU and GPU may be heavily loaded. Sure, you could offload compute intensive duties to other machines and leave NAS just with storage providing duties. But that also means having multiple devices, and that might not get your significant other's approval...
@@marcin_karwinski honestly, how often are you ever streaming multiple transcoded feeds, especially when for example on Jellyfinn you can use external players on mobile devices like MPV etc? Comics and audiobooks aren't heavy tasks, and neither is torrenting, I my trash WD NAS can easily handle that. AI stuff might be troublestom, especially if you have to scan the whole library for the first time, but that's true for pretty much every other CPU out there that hasn't a built in dedicated chip, if one is conerned about that kind of performance just get a dedicated GPU or accelerator. That said, the N100 is still way more powerful than most of Synology's home targeted range of products, I just can't see it ever struggling in a domestic scenario.
@v0ldy54 on a daily basis? Typically, I have a minimum of 3 clients from across my family needing concurrent transcodes, overall about 5-6 concurrent streams most of the day... that's besides the VMs and containers running for other "file" duties. We're often binge group remote watching stuff, but since we are also having different tastes at times, different content may be served, just using the same storage appliance. Add storage synchronisation/replication/backups at times within Kubernetes, and precious clock cycles can get lost... Torrents or file serving may not be as hard as expected until you have other compute heavy tasks running at the same time when large file checksumming takes place. Or you use NAS storage at higher speeds exposing flash devices to local clients as major storage devices of a few nodes and "workstations." You can slow any machine to a crawl momentarily but ultimately also repetitively. Unless you have a fast storage array and you have enough compute power to spare to not choke it. Sure, if you had QAT, accelerators for AI processing, transcoders, etc. a slower CPU may work, though once you do transcodes of both audio and video, and subs, with conversions from picture format to text in preprocessing pipelines. But that introduces extra cost, may require specific hardware and a case/space to actually hold these, and certainly an N100 chip won't be found on a solution exposing enough I/O to utilise those accelerators successfully.
Another great video! Thanks! Is it possible to build an efficient PC on one of these motherboards in which the raid array will be managed like a NAS and will have most of its functions? I don't have typical network needs because I work alone on video editing, but I care about data security. I was thinking about a PC with two NVMe drives and a 4-6 HDD array.
I bought the Aoostar R7 on the back of your review so would be interested to see what you do with it. So far mine is running Unraid and I am seeing some interesting behaviour. Works, mostly :)
What about this new board from CWWK? (can't seem to add the link) It is AMD based with no intel transcoding support but it has alot more power (dedicated GPU)compared to the N305, more storage connectivity upto 9 sata ports, ECC memory support with the 7940HS CPU and even an pcie slot for future 10gb upgrade. Will this board be the endgame for DIY builders or am I missing something?
Greetings and thank you for the video! I enjoy your channel. Looking forward to your video on NAS with ECC memory. I bought a *used* Lenovo P520 that included 128gb ecc memory and a 2135 XEON for $300 US. The internals are fantastic. The power - ouch - it has a 900 Watt power supply. I bought 6 *used* 10TB HDD and 2 1TB NVMe drives. I've installed TrueNAS Scale just to play around with it (I'm an old pro on building PCs but a newbie on building NAS and VMs). Wish me luck...and any feedback would be greatly appreciated!
Sorry, I went through but I didn't see one with 6+ SATA, 10GigE in a single port, and a pair of NVME sockets. Is that an unrealistic spec to be looking for? I don't mind which form factor the motherboard has.
Supermicro x11ssm-f has 8 Sata, 2 pcie 3.0x8 slots, 2 pcie 3.0x4 slots. One of the x8 slots can be bifurcated to x4/x4 for both your nvme. Meaning you could add a pcie 10gbe nic 2 nvme and still have 2 pcie slots available. It's a 6/7th Gen board, but for the xeon line up. It's also compatible with i3 7100. Edit: I forgot to add it's micro ATX.
I'm new to this stuff, what kind of case would you guys use for say 4, 6 or even 10 drives? I like that inserted mobo with 2016 cpu, my drives aren't that new but i'd love to rock 2.5gbit
Hey, I have been really struggling to find a NAS to upgrade to. I want to run mostly 4k HDR HEVC content. I play it mostly on my LG G1. And I don't understand HEVC thing, some of that content doesn't run when I play it on the TV off my Plex Server ( currently using a Synology 216+). I have watched quite a few videos but I still can't make an educated purchase. Can point me to a product? I really want good performance in a small box. A small pc sounds like a good choice but I kind of prefer a NAS, somethign that runs at home 24/7.
That's basically the entire point of these small PCs is to run 24/7. The main reason to do this is to run a dedicated NAS OS, such as TrueNAS or Unraid. You wouldn't be running windows on such a machine. That would be a terrible idea. Such a machine would likely fix your problem, especially if you pair it up with a GPU for video transcoding. While plex can run on your synology, doesn't mean it's able to transcode. Plex could run on a raspberry pi, but I certainly wouldn't recommend it as a plex server. Alternatively, you could just buy a TV box that can support these video formats, and run plex that way. I remember hating Plex on the PS4 because of the way the PS4 worked. It basically needed transcoding for everything, which placed a huge load on my old server. My current server could handle multiple PS4s with ease, but it's still annoying. I think it only supported certain formats. I could be wrong but I think it only supported MP4.
I have the Amazon version of the M305 but my data get corrupted. Memory and drives are good. Bought two of these motherboards and got the same issue. Not sure what bios option to change to fix this. Any ideas?
The problem is these boards are not built to last. I have an alderlake n305 mini itx diy router like these and it just stopped working. It never reached temps above 80 degrees Fahrenheit and ram and name test fine outside of motherboard. Dealing with topton customer service has been an ordeal the past two months trying to RMA.
I think it's gonna be a plain-jane no graphics build. So yeah, you are right, you will prob have to use an ancient VGA monitor (has that output) at least to navigate bios, bits spare gpu to get in with hdmi. Good point
@@nascompares what I meant is whenever it requires a discrete GPU to even bootup, there are still some (even server) mobos that will refuse to boot without GPU, if they don't have stuff like ipmi.
@@tommybronze3451 There's a ast2400 chip directly adjacent to the VGA port. I'm still uncertain though. If that allows a "boring" VGA connection, then I'll buy it.. and try to put 8 more nvme drives in the pcie x16? That's the most exciting mobo i have a seen in a while
You should do this video on board from Tiawan, for those of us who do not want everything in our home to be from mainland. Which would also include not buying from AliExpress as a major method.
They do care about Synology, but Synology have changed alot of their hardware release strategy and the usual buzz peaks are being lost, because of this new equilibrium. Normally we would see a pile of rackmount/business hardware released in Q1 (Jan-March) and Q2 would see home more disk station tier releases - neither of which seem to be on the cards (barring a small #). That is hurting the usual conversation about them. But also, the whole HDD stuff did seem to cool alot of buyers off .
@@nascompares maybe last part is the reason, why synology turning more and more to enterprise. It is sad how we can have so much new options (10, 25, 40 GbE, thunderolt/usb4 das and networking, flash and m2, iGPU transcodding e.t.c.) to feel NAS of integrated storage. And yet no one trying to use it. Even if internal slots in cases reduced to de-facto 2 slots and even games streaming is seamless as never before
Hi guys! I would really like your help on building my first NAS. I just want my nas to do my own streaming service like Plex or other like it. And i would like to stream it in 4k. What do you recommend i get for this?
@@ysj8256 I truly appreciate your respond to my inquiry. Thank you! In my excitement, I followed whatever NASCompares built in this video. It was more than $599, that’s for sure😅 But is it okay if my RAM is just 32gb 3200mhz instead of 64gb?
@@raymacrohon1137 2666mhz or 3200mhz doesnt have much differencec, but there would be a significat difference b/w 32gb and 64gb, however 32 is good enough for a home server or personal nas.
@@ysj8256 yes it’s pretty much going to be a home nas server but i will be thinking about your suggestion to go up to 64 for the ram. Thanks again man.🙏
Anyone up for a challenge? Mini-ITX, Intel, >=11th Gen Intel CPU with 2x Media Engines, IPMI, IOMMU, 5x SATA, 1x NVMe, 1x PCIe x16, 1x >= GigLAN, 1x Monitor-Port, >=2x USB, (ECC support) Any experience with these NVMe to SATA adapters?
I would say MS-01 fill all the cases except it's not mini-itx so you will need either an external enclosure for the drives (JBOD enclosure, with like SFF8644) or keep the cover off. The MS-01 also as a pretty high idle power due to the 10G and sub-optimized bios. Also, if you're ready to trade a few organs, the Asrockind IMB-X1231 fit all these requirements but start at around 1K$ and require DDR4 ECC SO-DIMM. There are also boards from gigaipc but I don't know this brand.
@@mryo-yobzh9485 I already have a Lian-Li Q25 (5-bay), AsRR E3C226D2I, E3-1271v3 and lots of small int. and ext. drives. Would like to keep the case, swap the board and start with new larger drives. And would still like to keep all my organs 😀 . The AsRR X1231 only seems to have 4x SATA, but lots of m2 ports. Does anyone have experience with the adapters mentioned?
@@mcmormus There is an adapter M2X4-SATA-4P that split one of the M.2 into 4 sata without requiring a convertion IC (native sata via the m.2 traces). Also, I'm looking into the IMB-X1314 at ~400$ for my own use, it's a bummer your case doesn't fit mAtx.
The nas is going in the closet. The case just needed to hold hard drives. So shape of the case doesn't matter too much. Look for lots of hard drive bays.
And YOU SIR, are the hero that FINALLY NOTICED. I mean it when I say, YOU made my Saturday bud! watching the first 7,000-8000 people watch this and no one commented on this, man alive! Thanks man
I would say that a SuperMicro X14QEH+ mainboard with 4 Intel Xeon Scalable 5th gen Platinum 8593Q processors. This way you have 17 MCIO PCIe 5.0 x8 connectors and room for 24 NVMe PCIe 5.0 SSD’s at full speed. +2 NVMe PCI 3.0 x4 ports for slower speeds. That Mobo will certainly fully saturate 400GBps networks. It’s a cheap ass solution for if you want to replace a NetApp MetroCluster. Especially when compared to the best NAS/SAN solution in the world, the FAS9500. I don’t get why you would call consumer goods, the best motherboard CPU/Combo’s while there are so much better Enterprise solutions. with your solutions it is even hard to saturate a normal 10/40 GBps connection. As soon as more then 40 users connect to your storage solutions, you will run into bottlenecks.
Thank you for your recommendation. Already working on a follow up to this with ECC builds (as it's a common request here in the comments) and I'll definitely look into your build call
@@ernestoditerribile in that case, i dont think this should be recommended for NAS build, maybe it is better to suggest as home lab or SOHO server? Just my 2 cent but i might be wrong
Yes, useless list of garbage that doesn't support ECC. Why would I want a NAS that can't prevent silent corruption? I'd have to be scrubbing 24/7. Pure insanity!
@@nascompares ODECC doesn't help much, and might even make things worse as it can be used to increase the chip yield, allowing manufacturers to use less reliable memory chips. It doesn't even report errors to the kernel. Also, I do get bit errors from time to time on my existing NAS, and so far my ECC has been able to correct all of them. And if it at some point doesn't then zfs will know what block has an error and can use a parity block to compensate.
Exactly what doesn't have at least a significant portion of the components that are made by the Chinese? Do you make the same distinctions with your iPhone?
Just yesterday I finished building & setting up my first NAS. Went with Gigabyte B550i Aorus Pro paired with Ryzen 7 PRO 4750G, 2x 32 gb ECC, 4x Exos 18X and SN850X, built in Node 304. I think it's quite well balanced home NAS for 2.5 Gbit network.
Great choice of components honestly, I'm looking at building something very similar at the moment.
@@PandaMoniumHUN Go for it, I can say only good things about the motherboard and the case.
wha power consumption you got?
@@ML-hf6ii 40-45 Watts at no load but disks and fans spinning.
Cool, I used my old asus prime b350 plus with a R7 pro 4750GE and the build is in a Fractal Define R6 its so silent with 6 x WD 8TB.
I just finished up my nas upgrade with an Minisforum BD770i. The AMD Ryzen 7 7745HX (8c/16t) is a beast. In Unraid system idle it uses only 23w since it's a mobile chip. I used an m.2 nvme to 6x sata adapter and it works like a charm. Since Plex natively supports amd igpu's this mobo is a champ at transcoding. I highly recommend this motherboard.
Did you just ditch m2 fan entirely when you added your sata adapter or replace it with something for the single m2?
@KO-gs8je yeah I ditched the m.2 cooler because I had to install an m.2 nvme to 6x sata adapter. In the other nvme slot sits a Samsung 970 and those dont get that hot. The case (fractal design 304) with 4 noctua fans provide more than enough cooling. I can imagine that you would need to use the provided nmve cooler if you are installing a blazing fast pcie 5.0 x4 nvme
Thank you for the pick. I love it, gonna get one for my aging Intel 6th gen. Only thing missing is the 10G network. The PCI slot will be filled with my HBA,
@@KO-gs8je Glad you asked that question. That is the exact concern I had.
Does Plex support your iGPU??
Are you able to transcode videos normally?
Are you on Linux or Windows?
Sorry but I've been researching this for a while and haven't found any sources saying that Plex works with AMD.
If you haven't a problem with second hand things. I have picked up an i5 8500t with an Asus z390 ATX mobo with Asus hyper M.2 card, 64GB ddr 4 2666, ATX Gold powersupply all in an old case with lots of 3.5 and 2.5 inch bays. Still have a lot of PCIE and Sata ports free for the future. Power draw
That sounds great - where did you pick that up from, what specific motherboard is it, I am guessing it supports the Asus Hyper M.3 card
@@jonathankeay3411don't know if I'm allowed to share direct links to the asus site. If you search in google for 'Compatibility of PCIE bifurcation between Hyper M.2 series Cards and Add-On Graphic Cards' you will find the right link. Most A tier chipsets from Intel and AMD motherboards will support atleast 2 nvme's by the Hyper m.2 card. Hope that answers your question.
why is everyone so obsessed about ITX mobos?
they lack PCIe and SATA connectivity, RAM expansion, space for bigger (silent) cpu cooler,
if I weren't using my X99-S desktop workstation as main PC, I'd simply make it a NAS build, since also the case (Fractal Define R5) supports 8 HDD bays already...
Yep, it's great for SFF builds but it's SFF for a reason, and you pay a premium just for that. IMO, mATX is the sweet spot for features, price and form factor.
I think because of power usage factor and the size factor
I built an mATX system last month in a Fractal Node 804 for less than US $500, excluding drives and SFP+ DAC. It's extremely liberating once you start considering options larger than ITX. The motherboard is a Supermicro X11SSM-F, I put in a Xeon E3-1240V6, and the price includes 64GB of ECC memory and an Intel 10G SFP+ NIC.
The mATX board allows me to use SAS drives by adding an LSI 2308 HBA, costs $20 and is completely optional since it has 8 on-board SATA3 ports. Even now, I still have PCIe slots to spare for whatever reason, such as adding PCIe SSDs.
@@Postman00that board looks sexy but is too power hungry in my opinion.
Power consumption for me. More features on ATX mean wasted idle power.
You are the God of NAS out there. Thank you for your content.
I appreciate your work so much!
Thansk for the kind vibes bud!
Gosh I’ve been looking for weeks now for that N305. It’s a purple unicorn!
There is new one which look nice for all ssd diy alternative on ali. 6 Bay NAS Motherboard, i5-12450H 8505 Max, 6 x NVMe, 6 x SATA3.0, 1 x PCIEx4, Mini ITX, 4 x Intel i226-V, 2.5G, Firewall Router, 2 x DDR5 Motherboard
The n305 board sharing the pcie late between the m.2 and the 3.0x1 slot was the reason the went with the n100 green board. Those lanes are not shared. Of course, after I ordered it, About a month ago Topton released a new version of the n305 board that does not share this lane.
Ouch! Sorry to hear that bud
@@nascompares mostly just wanted to let you know about the new version of these boards as they don’t have the shared pcie lane issue that you mentioned in the video.
I can always upgrade to the n305 version and put the n100 to use in other ways.
@@davidwestra8181 How can I tell if this is the new version of the board where they don't have the shared pcie lane. link?
If you're willing to look at MicroATX boards, and I would due to the availability of the relatively inexpensive Fractal Node 804 case (mATX, 10 3.5" bays), you open up a world of possibilities. For instance the ASRock B550M Steel Legend, with 2.5GBe, 6xSATA, and 2xfull length M.2 slots (and 1x short M.2 slot for a Wi-Fi card). If all you want is mirrored flash storage, get 2 M.2 drives, and one 2.5" SATA to boot from, and get a small/cheap case like the Fractal Core 1000 (#notspon).
Isn't the power consumption much higher than the other options?
That's not a question I know how to answer. Power consumption will depend not only on your component choice, but which features of the motherboard you use, how you have software/firmware configured, and your use case/usage patterns. Even if I did know all that, the only way I know how to determine power consumption is to measure. @@M4XD4B0ZZ
I went with a G ryzen and a b550m VC from msi-only new part- board has 2xnvme pcie3x4-this cuz the G ryzen-, 8 EIGHT sata ports by the way sata and nvme can all work at same time, a couple pcie slots for any future whatevers. Now for my use case, 1G lan is more than enough, Id say but still have them pcie slots justin! 6x hdds now and an os ssd, no cache drive, dont think ill need it, at least not now, and i read that most ssds will have not a good time being cache, since their lifetime is on the amount written. Wanted to get one of them X99 setups though, but this was quicker and less power, all on an old PC case with hdd mounting spaces with a couple extra fans thrown in there
For Just a NAS I would get a motherboard with an intel N100 intergrated and add SATA ports over m.1/PCI-e or just a regular NAS
I am running an epyc 9124. One box that can do everything simultaneously. I don't need fast networking because it is all local. Workstation, gaming PC, NAS, all in one box, simultaneously.
Amazing video, I've watched it a few times now.
Love this. I just did a very very similar build and board selection process. Ultimately I went with a lower power board for just NAS use with a few Docker containers on an N100 build. It’s built out for good until I need a newer, bigger system, and I won’t look back at it to wonder if it could be better because I have no more lanes to support anything else hahahaha 😅 so working within the itx form factor with these sorts of sff builds is an art form in itself. For me power consumption was the main thing along with total storage availability. 2.5g Ethernet was gravy because this isn’t a performant NAS, but a backup one. I plan on also building a near line storage NAS for video editing. I think people fall into the trap of making their hardware a jack of all trades but a master of nothing. Use the N100s for what they are good at, low power and non mission critical applications.
Another interesting summary.
Have you verified the sata throughout on the N305 board, or Indeed the N100 version? Someone recently did some heavy testing on the BKHD green N100 version and oddly the sata controller was tied in at pcie2x1 speeds. Which is a bit mad since the cpu is pci3x9. Any thoughts?
I think as soon as you review an item the aliexpress stores use this as an opportunity to start increasing prices. Sometimes they just up their shipping costs to give the illusion of a cheaper product. 🤔 Or am I just being cynical.
I see your point, but if that was true, then it's catch 22 as to how people can learn about the products on the grape vine... damned if you do and damned if you don't!
Supermicro x11ssm-f is micro ATX, has 8 Sata, 2 pcie 3.0x8 and 2 pcie 3.0x4. It's like $140 on eBay.
i gotta say as ive started to move towards handling other peoples data professionally all of a sudden the two features i look for first are ecc memory and bios support. even if it means buying something older, it helps me sleep better.
that said, yea ok youre right to focus where you do in this shootout, you make good points
If you are going for a N305 in 2024, then I suggest you get a 8505 instead, a bit more money and Watt, much more powerful and 20 PCIE lanes.
Which model exactly is that 8505? Thank you.
@@facoptimum Intel Pentium Gold 8505?
@@Bytional Ok you meant the CPU. I thought it was the model name of a motherboard. Have you paired that CPU with a motherboard already in a build? :)
@@facoptimum It's like N100, comes with a motherboard, mostly ITX or nano size.
I wonder if anyone's tried building a NAS from a used Framework mainboard. Might be worth considering for a future video.
Would be nice to get a video on matx board options too :)
Been going down this rabbit hole for a bit. Some thoughts:
1) the i9 mb seems similar to the minisforum ms-01 solution. However minisforum includes 2 spf+ 10g and 2 2.5 g Ethernet ports, as well as 2 usb4. Plus, besides the 3 nvme slots, there is the option of adapting one of the nvme slots to u.2. This unit, especially with the cheaper i5 version is a complete nas flash storage with the option to add a decent gpu. Also, with the usb4/TB ports you can use the DAS solutions to really build up an array. I’m particularly looking at the Terramaster D5 Hybrid which is 2 hd/ssd sata drives plus 3 nvme slots. In the past I’ve built a 16 tb nvme das using the OWC 4ms and got about 1200-1800 MB/s transfers between the OWC and my Mac mini.
2) the Xeon mb option is reflected in the tons of e-waste towers from HP (z440 to z840) and Dell. These are interesting because of the 2 16x pcie slots, 1 8x pcie slots 1 4x slots. The slots are full length and full height. The many/cheap 4x nvme to pci cards which require bifurcation like HP does makes for an easy flash nas and the also cheap dual 10gb Ethernet pci cards makes for fast transfers. Again, these server/workstation towers often come with an nvidia card, such as a quadro. The only downside is the power requirements. Which is hilarious!
Thanks for the video!
my bro gets a used Xeon with Cpu, ram, power supply and quaro for under $100. Cant complain about power req at this price
There have been numerous complaints about the N305 combo MD, - mostly unexplained crashes and instability.any comment ?
While I see the appeal of MOBO+CPU options, I think the lack of serviceability makes them simply not worth it. I recently bought a 4650G because of the ECC support and okay CPU performance (and because it was dirt cheap, $110). Just slot it into any AM4 Gigabyte/ASUS board and UDIMM ECC is fully supported for a total of $200 MOBO+CPU. Still thinking about if I should do an ITX build with Jonsbo N1 or an ATX building with a Define R7.
Great channel! Found you through while researching about m.2 adapers for my usecase. Looking to build a nas with i5 7400 to have a jellyfin on it, it should be quite power efficient with right psu too
I have an idea for building a Gen 4 TrueNAS.
Biostar b550m MX/E, already indicates it supports bifurcation and its good price where im at. Bifurcation cause i plan to use a 4x nvme adapter.
My old Ryzen 3600. Relatively power efficient, at first i had the idea for an Epyc build, but that idles close to 100W.
ECC unbuffered memory can also be used here.
Also have a RX6400 when i need to use a gpu, as this will be a TrueNAS machine i probably wont need a gpu much.
I will probably buy two 40gbe mellinox connect x3 and some DAS cables.
Would need to think of something for an efficient small psu, i like sfx ones, but most of them have bad efficency at low wattage.
I’ve been hesitating clicking the buy now on that e612 Xeon board with the 2.5g ports
Lmao I mean c612
It's NOT a new board and you will need VGA out or a gfx card to interface through bios first time with your chosen OS (except UnRAID). Definitely factor these things in
6x 2.5 ports is a lot for me :D Any Updates on this one?
i highly recommend a used Server with a Xeon 26xx, 26xxv2, or 26xxv3. Can pick them up with CPU + Ram for 80 to 150 bucks, and some come with 10G Lan and more SAS/SATA then one needs.
Just curious, a lot of people told me dont pick that old of hw due to power usage. Is this is not the case with the old server?
so you are suggesting spending an extra $130 or over on this side of the pond 250€ each year, plus another $40 or 75€ each year on that 10g switch... So 325€ each year on those space heaters?
No thank you, I'd much rather pay 60€ each year all included.
(Yes real hardware has it's place, I have a full rack.. a TrueNAS backup, a failover PVE, a PBS.. but those are things I power on over my extremely efficient always on consumer grade main PVE or my extremely efficient Unraid, which altogether doesn't cost me a 100 Euro a year)
@@zazelskycrest2525yes he's completely disregarding power usage, they are glorified space heaters or good devices if you don't want to keep them powered on.
@@comahrn I wonder what you are running to spend 325€ a year on your Server. And i wonder what 10G switch you are using for that power consumption.
Also just because a Server or a PC has a 10G Lan doesn't mean you have to use it.And when i löook at my 8Port 1G Switches and then at some 8 Port 10G switches... not really a difference in power consumption.
And for servers: You don't have to buy a Server with the bigest bestes and fastest cores.
@@germanmosca the fans alone are like 5W each in professional servers..
10g switches are starting at 20W which is on the extremely low end. Stop lying to yourself and check what the servers are actually using.
You are just giving bad advice with suggesting space heaters for servers. I'm not even implying that they are not still very useable, but only if you don't have to pay for them running.
And 10g is also very power inefficient, that's just affect.. fing google it.
I have a Rosewill RSV-L4500U NAS chassis.
It's a proper case with room to grow with 15 drive bays. I don't understand why you pretend here that there's nothing out there that will take a bunch of drives and still support ATX boards. It's not like the chassis is incredibly expensive either.
That XEON board is very interesting. The rest seems overpriced.So unless you actually need ITX for your build.
That X99 mobo is a little risky. Did some digging since I was interested in it. In April 2024 BKHD (manufacturer) released BIOS R014, which is shipped as a default with new purchases. It somewhat fixed ECC memory support (wasn't working with earlier R009 revision of BIOS) but there were many configuration options cut from BIOS - people report that this includes, but is not limited to Intel VT-d and power configuration. I don't know if Intel VT-d is enabled by default or not in the new BIOS, but for me this system was suppose to be NAS and a homelab machine for Proxmox. It is also not an mITX motherboard - it is larger and manufacturer states that it is a CeB format, so it won't fit in cases that have no spare room over mITX tray.
Mobo with CPU (no drives etc.) idles at around 45-50W jumping to 140-150W with CPU fully stressed. MiniPCI-E slot shares its lanes with one of the NICs. At least with old R009 BIOS bifurcation worked perfectly and someone tested ASUS 4*m.2 card and all of the drives were seen in BIOS and were bootable, as the PCI-Ex16 slot was set to 4x4x4x4. VRM and chipset radiators run hot, where VRMs' radiator was around 65-70C with downdraft cooler on the CPU. Chipset radiator was around 55C. So be sure to add some airflow if you plan a build with this mobo/CPU combo.
I've been favouring m-atx, something like the Erying i5-13420h, because with two slots, you can hopefully add a IT mode SAS card as well as a dual 10gb NIC, but then I'd go for a larger case with more bays
I don't know if the x16 slot supports bi-furication because with that and an NVME to PCI-E adapter you could support more NVME storage without losing the 10Gbe and SAS mass storage
They say on Reddit that the sata controller on that n305 board from JMicron is bad, particularly doesn't allow CPU to reach some higher C-states
I am seeing/hearing stuff from hardware haven on the Zimacube board rev.2 and the PCI switch controller. Might need to make a dedicated vid on this one
Lower states you mean.
Since ECC is one of the most important things in a NAS if you value data integrity (which most NAS builders do), maybe you could bring out more prominently which ones support ECC and which ones don't?
And for a list of "best NAS CPU+mobos for NAS" there's very little ECC support among the suggested alternatives.
Tbh I totally see your point. But this video is about pre-bundled CPU and Memory combos. Finding ECC ready/supportive ones tends to lead towards much older Xeon bundles that seemingly have a whiff of "pre-owned" and "pulled from ex server" about them. That said, ECC has been raised numerous times in this comments section, so I think I NEED to make an ECC dedicated version of this vid, yeah
@@nascompares You need to go Team Red if you want to use ECC memory for non-server grade stuff. Intel pretty much only supports ECC memory on their xeon processors. They don't really advertise it, but my 3900x supports ECC, including on the motherboard i'm using. They only support unbuffered ECC memory, and it's largely dependent on the motherboard you're using. AMD doesn't really advertise ECC memory, but they do support it.
Totally not related but I'd be curious on how that N305 board would fare as a TV box?
I'm still looking for the perfect replacement for my nvidia shield, but it's just too damn good compared to the alternatives, yet it's so old and lacking development
nice how you reviewd different solutions
For real DIY nas You will need at last 2 PCIe elecrrically x8. One is for network card ( 25/40/100 GB/s ) and one for hard drive controller ( LSI / Hap/ Dell? ). More PCIe lanes with bifurcation should be recomended as well. Problem is that user grade motherboards got only 1 PCIe x16 and some X4 or more often X1 slots.
Minisforum AR900i would be a perfect candidate here
Thanks for the recommendation. Already working on a follow up to this vid re: ECC and Pro combos on a budget
multiple reviews say PCIe HBA cards dont work and neither do those m.2 nvme sata adapters... rendering the minisforum board useless for NAS afaik
OUCH!!! Thanks for the heads up mate
@@sunnycloudy1337 I believe that problem is solved with a bios update, my idea was converting the bottom m.2 slots for 6 slot SATA adapters, making a perfect nas.
@@sunnycloudy1337 keep in mind that there are 2 types of m.2 to sata adapters. Theres m.2 sata to sata and m.2 nvme to sata. The m.2 sata to sata doesnt work in an m.2 nvme slot.
Got my old B360 and i5 8400 for media and storage amd updated my lan. Never had any video glitch.
I stay away from n series (n100,n305) chips. They don’t support hyperthreading (all “E” cores), don’t have good single core performance, and only provide 9 lanes of pcie gen 3. Makes it very difficult to build a NAS with SATA, NVME, and 10 gig networking without something getting starved for pcie lanes
Also sata controller is not particularly praised by Nas community
All true, but these are also comments that have been leveled towards the N5105/N6005 topton board (and all true too). And the topton (although now lower in price) was originally bang on the same price around this length of time as the N300/305 builds are. This is an all-rounder price Vs value Vs power choice of CPU+Mobo combo. THAT SAID, yeah, there are some funny things going on with the controllers on that config throttling the littling hell of of PCIe (thank you hardware haven - brilliant ZimaCube PCIe teardown). And as an NVMe focused system, yeah, it's gonna get limited all to hell (at least ATM). For an NVMe build, I would definitely recommend the Erying 12/13th gen combos fo'sho!
The e cores from the 12th/13th/14th gen are as fast as the Cores from my Xeon E5 2640 V4 homeserver cpu. I dont think thats to bad for a nas.
I really don't think you understand what they are for. Alone the call for 10g.. you don't get a
Topton has released 1165g7 lineup with much more pcie lanes, (but 2nd nvme is 3.0x2, they don't say that) however I suspect that 4 NICS on this board are connected to one controller giving total bandwidth around 4Gb/s for 4 2.5gbs nics
Great video! thank you!
any changes since the release?
Sadly the N-305 MoBo is sold out everywhere on Aliexpress. Tried buying one last week and the order got cancelled yesterday. 😢
Ouch. Sorry man
While Synology seems to be taking forever to upgrade to gen 12 processors, I am more and more looking with interest the Supermicro SuperWorkstation 531A-IL for a solid unRAiD build. What do you think?
Is there any sense in getting the 13900H? Will all that power be utilized? Why not just go and buy the 12800H, even though there is a performance drop of 25,000 passmark vs. 29,400 passmark. The number of PCI-E lanes is the same - 28. Also, DDR4 is cheaper than DDR5.
All valid points. But also, there are some VM users who are going to carve up that CPU into pieces that will use that extra 'umpf'
N100-N305 MB+CPU are crap. If you Seriously need more and faster PCIE lanes, or if you need more than 16 GB ADRESSABLE, not just recognized RAM. (By the way only single chanel) this combo is not the best.
I Strongly recommand the combo MB + CPU from CWWK => AMD-7840HS/8845HS/7940HS - 9 SATA/8-BAY/9-BAY NAS - USB4 - 4 NETWORK 2.5G - PCIE X16 ITX MOTHERBOARD:
I dont put links, i don't why, but my comments won't show up. Soo i try without link.
bro compare 6w tdp proc with 54w
Could someone please let me know if there's some manual available for the i3-N305 board? In particular, I'd like to know the specifications of the CPU fan (type (fixed or variable RPM), size, voltage). Thank you.
I just bought a beelink s12 with n100 and installed aan nvme 4tb and sata 4tb ssd run plex and jellyfin on it
Do you know where can I buy a a 4x 3.5" tray with integrated sata backplane to build my own case around?
Something not to expensive but functional.
Buying one of these retal nases to break it apart is expensive and kinda stupid :D
And here I sit trying to decide whether to build a NAS using a mini ITX mobo or get my Cisco UCS C240 M4 with 12 10TB SAS drives running. The Cisco is kind of big and noisy though and a bit of a power hog. It has two 1200W power supplies. Lol
@5:44 Ok, that sound is trippy
It's a very well known intro to an absolute BANGER of a tune...
@@nascompares Die Roboter ?
The N-series of Intel chips, especially not of the 8-core variant, are pretty weak, so if you plan to use them with dockerised apps, not so good... Intel's i* H-series and now Ultras are the way to go for efficiency and because they have iGPUs with well supported hardware accelerated transcoding for the media serving use-cases - some apps/platforms may require extra cost for supporting Nvidia or AMD encoders - they make good basis for such builds. Newer gen may also be seated in TB3/TB4 enabled board, so device extension is quite possible...
However, one could venture experiments with Epyc Siena. Why? Most boards for Siena come with 2 or 4 NICs, 2 of which often are RJ45 ports, with the other 2 for SFP28, so up to 52Gbps trunked output... enough to feed a quadruple of 10Gbps clients. Of course, those optical ports need connecting to a good switch. MikroTik has one with 16 SFP28 ports, if I recall correctly. SFP28 ports and transceivers can work at 10Gbps speed, basically being supported in SFP+ cages... Then, those Siena boards can be paired with Siena chips... starting from an 8 core 16 thread units you can scale now or in the future, depending on workloads, up to 64 core 128 thread design of Zen 4c chips, granted running at the efficiency oriented part of the bell curve. Add to that DDR5 RDIMMs support and 6 to 8 slots of those, and you can start small, then bump your platform as needed or as promos happen... Same for the storage and extensions... MCIO or slimSAS ports on boards are great for cable routing, after all most boards support splitting of signals into 4x or 8x SATA or SAS devices. Still, with a couple of MCIOs, you can easily use one or two split to cover spinning rust devices and still have some for bifurcation for NVMe U.2 drives to get better speed out of the NAS. Why is that a great thing? If you ever wanted to do a SATA SSD NAS, you'd be looking into 4TB+ models. Currently, at those capacities, SATA devices cost roughly the same as many cheaper enterprise PCIe3 or PCIe4, often around $20 of difference... for max throughput and iops nearly 5 times higher than the average SATA units... Once those U.2/U.3 drives drop in prices for high capacities, they may become defacto first choice even for homelab and NAS uses. Then, having a board that can easily already support those devices would be great and far easier to sell the idea to your spouses, so the wife-approval factor may be a benefit here as well.
So building NAS on your own you need to differentiate between those with minimal usage scenarios needing something as efficient as possible and those willing to have a platform they can expand in the future per the needs or promos...
What's so heavy on a NAS that you can't run with an N100? I feel like so many comments are overestimating the amount of computing power needed for a NAS or homelab use.
@v0ldy54 for sheer NAS duty, perhaps N100 could suffice. Once you add media server with transcoding so as to serve content to a bigger list of clients, and add a (comic/audio)book server to the mix, it's going to get to a crawl. Add torrenting and get a few big files to be checked for consistency, and you might need slightly more compute power. Then, consider moving some of you ripping/transcoding duties to the always-on appliance, and you definitely want more horse power under the heat spreader. And in many home use-cases, you're going to end up with a lot of file/content serving and preparation duties moved to those machines. Finally, consider adding some photo library packages with those AI driven object recognition and cataloguing, and both CPU and GPU may be heavily loaded. Sure, you could offload compute intensive duties to other machines and leave NAS just with storage providing duties. But that also means having multiple devices, and that might not get your significant other's approval...
@@marcin_karwinski honestly, how often are you ever streaming multiple transcoded feeds, especially when for example on Jellyfinn you can use external players on mobile devices like MPV etc?
Comics and audiobooks aren't heavy tasks, and neither is torrenting, I my trash WD NAS can easily handle that.
AI stuff might be troublestom, especially if you have to scan the whole library for the first time, but that's true for pretty much every other CPU out there that hasn't a built in dedicated chip, if one is conerned about that kind of performance just get a dedicated GPU or accelerator.
That said, the N100 is still way more powerful than most of Synology's home targeted range of products, I just can't see it ever struggling in a domestic scenario.
@v0ldy54 on a daily basis? Typically, I have a minimum of 3 clients from across my family needing concurrent transcodes, overall about 5-6 concurrent streams most of the day... that's besides the VMs and containers running for other "file" duties. We're often binge group remote watching stuff, but since we are also having different tastes at times, different content may be served, just using the same storage appliance. Add storage synchronisation/replication/backups at times within Kubernetes, and precious clock cycles can get lost...
Torrents or file serving may not be as hard as expected until you have other compute heavy tasks running at the same time when large file checksumming takes place. Or you use NAS storage at higher speeds exposing flash devices to local clients as major storage devices of a few nodes and "workstations." You can slow any machine to a crawl momentarily but ultimately also repetitively. Unless you have a fast storage array and you have enough compute power to spare to not choke it.
Sure, if you had QAT, accelerators for AI processing, transcoders, etc. a slower CPU may work, though once you do transcodes of both audio and video, and subs, with conversions from picture format to text in preprocessing pipelines. But that introduces extra cost, may require specific hardware and a case/space to actually hold these, and certainly an N100 chip won't be found on a solution exposing enough I/O to utilise those accelerators successfully.
Another great video! Thanks!
Is it possible to build an efficient PC on one of these motherboards in which the raid array will be managed like a NAS and will have most of its functions? I don't have typical network needs because I work alone on video editing, but I care about data security. I was thinking about a PC with two NVMe drives and a 4-6 HDD array.
Power consumpion on Erying? 🤯
The 13900HK is arriving here soon, so I'll try and let you know man
The The X99 Motherboard + XEON + RAM Kit is not an ITX standard size, is is a little bigger. You can non fit this board in a Jonsbo N3 case.
Has anyone purchased the X99 Mobo with the six ethernet ports? And if so how well does it work as a NAS setup?
I bought the Aoostar R7 on the back of your review so would be interested to see what you do with it. So far mine is running Unraid and I am seeing some interesting behaviour. Works, mostly :)
What about this new board from CWWK? (can't seem to add the link)
It is AMD based with no intel transcoding support but it has alot more power (dedicated GPU)compared to the N305, more storage connectivity upto 9 sata ports, ECC memory support with the 7940HS CPU and even an pcie slot for future 10gb upgrade. Will this board be the endgame for DIY builders or am I missing something?
Does CWWK AMD-7840HS support WON (Wake-on-LAN)??
Greetings and thank you for the video! I enjoy your channel.
Looking forward to your video on NAS with ECC memory. I bought a *used* Lenovo P520 that included 128gb ecc memory and a 2135 XEON for $300 US. The internals are fantastic. The power - ouch - it has a 900 Watt power supply. I bought 6 *used* 10TB HDD and 2 1TB NVMe drives. I've installed TrueNAS Scale just to play around with it (I'm an old pro on building PCs but a newbie on building NAS and VMs). Wish me luck...and any feedback would be greatly appreciated!
Share the idle watt once you have set it up
Sorry, I went through but I didn't see one with 6+ SATA, 10GigE in a single port, and a pair of NVME sockets. Is that an unrealistic spec to be looking for? I don't mind which form factor the motherboard has.
Supermicro x11ssm-f has 8 Sata, 2 pcie 3.0x8 slots, 2 pcie 3.0x4 slots. One of the x8 slots can be bifurcated to x4/x4 for both your nvme. Meaning you could add a pcie 10gbe nic 2 nvme and still have 2 pcie slots available. It's a 6/7th Gen board, but for the xeon line up. It's also compatible with i3 7100.
Edit: I forgot to add it's micro ATX.
@@sethperry6616 Thank you. I'll add to my planning-a-nas document.
Hey, do you have any more links to the X99 Xeon MoBo Combo? Seems that combo is MIA now.
n305 are not available on Ali :(
If you are looking to sell your old Erying i would buy it off you :)
*Hugs board tightly* Nice try...
I'm new to this stuff, what kind of case would you guys use for say 4, 6 or even 10 drives? I like that inserted mobo with 2016 cpu, my drives aren't that new but i'd love to rock 2.5gbit
Hello. Which pc case is compatible with the first CPU combo?
I have 11500 what mobo do you recomment? atm I'm using some really cheap Asus but it seams like its not really working out for nas/homeserver usage.
Hey, I have been really struggling to find a NAS to upgrade to. I want to run mostly 4k HDR HEVC content. I play it mostly on my LG G1. And I don't understand HEVC thing, some of that content doesn't run when I play it on the TV off my Plex Server ( currently using a Synology 216+). I have watched quite a few videos but I still can't make an educated purchase.
Can point me to a product? I really want good performance in a small box. A small pc sounds like a good choice but I kind of prefer a NAS, somethign that runs at home 24/7.
That's basically the entire point of these small PCs is to run 24/7. The main reason to do this is to run a dedicated NAS OS, such as TrueNAS or Unraid. You wouldn't be running windows on such a machine. That would be a terrible idea. Such a machine would likely fix your problem, especially if you pair it up with a GPU for video transcoding. While plex can run on your synology, doesn't mean it's able to transcode. Plex could run on a raspberry pi, but I certainly wouldn't recommend it as a plex server.
Alternatively, you could just buy a TV box that can support these video formats, and run plex that way. I remember hating Plex on the PS4 because of the way the PS4 worked. It basically needed transcoding for everything, which placed a huge load on my old server. My current server could handle multiple PS4s with ease, but it's still annoying. I think it only supported certain formats. I could be wrong but I think it only supported MP4.
Does intel 13th and 14th gen has problems?
I have the Amazon version of the M305 but my data get corrupted. Memory and drives are good. Bought two of these motherboards and got the same issue. Not sure what bios option to change to fix this. Any ideas?
The problem is these boards are not built to last. I have an alderlake n305 mini itx diy router like these and it just stopped working. It never reached temps above 80 degrees Fahrenheit and ram and name test fine outside of motherboard. Dealing with topton customer service has been an ordeal the past two months trying to RMA.
Hasn't seen/heard much on this prior to the vid, but will hit the books like Buffy and look into it
How many ram are recommend, 2x8 GB oder 2x16 GB?
Does the n305 i3 MB supports ECC RAM?
the mobo you've shown with xeon - biggest question is whenever it requires gpu to boot up ...
I think it's gonna be a plain-jane no graphics build. So yeah, you are right, you will prob have to use an ancient VGA monitor (has that output) at least to navigate bios, bits spare gpu to get in with hdmi. Good point
@@nascompares what I meant is whenever it requires a discrete GPU to even bootup, there are still some (even server) mobos that will refuse to boot without GPU, if they don't have stuff like ipmi.
@@tommybronze3451 There's a ast2400 chip directly adjacent to the VGA port. I'm still uncertain though. If that allows a "boring" VGA connection, then I'll buy it.. and try to put 8 more nvme drives in the pcie x16?
That's the most exciting mobo i have a seen in a while
Looking at the ERYING i9 13900HK, can anyone confirm if both NIC work in TrueNAS?
I thought that's was gonna be actual CPUs and Mobos. Not these no name brands
You should do this video on board from Tiawan, for those of us who do not want everything in our home to be from mainland. Which would also include not buying from AliExpress as a major method.
i had a fealing, that no one car in nas community about synology anymore. does you feel the same?
They do care about Synology, but Synology have changed alot of their hardware release strategy and the usual buzz peaks are being lost, because of this new equilibrium. Normally we would see a pile of rackmount/business hardware released in Q1 (Jan-March) and Q2 would see home more disk station tier releases - neither of which seem to be on the cards (barring a small #). That is hurting the usual conversation about them. But also, the whole HDD stuff did seem to cool alot of buyers off .
@@nascompares maybe last part is the reason, why synology turning more and more to enterprise.
It is sad how we can have so much new options (10, 25, 40 GbE, thunderolt/usb4 das and networking, flash and m2, iGPU transcodding e.t.c.) to feel NAS of integrated storage. And yet no one trying to use it. Even if internal slots in cases reduced to de-facto 2 slots and even games streaming is seamless as never before
Hi guys! I would really like your help on building my first NAS. I just want my nas to do my own streaming service like Plex or other like it. And i would like to stream it in 4k. What do you recommend i get for this?
Go for a good cpu like i5 12600k and mobo combo and opt for ram transcoding you could go for 64gb or ddr4 2666
You wouldn’t need a gpu
@@ysj8256 I truly appreciate your respond to my inquiry. Thank you! In my excitement, I followed whatever NASCompares built in this video. It was more than $599, that’s for sure😅
But is it okay if my RAM is just 32gb 3200mhz instead of 64gb?
@@raymacrohon1137 2666mhz or 3200mhz doesnt have much differencec, but there would be a significat difference b/w 32gb and 64gb, however 32 is good enough for a home server or personal nas.
@@ysj8256 yes it’s pretty much going to be a home nas server but i will be thinking about your suggestion to go up to 64 for the ram. Thanks again man.🙏
How about the M.2s does size matter? Do I have to put like 2 or 4tb? I only have Crucial gen4 1tb
Anyone up for a challenge?
Mini-ITX, Intel, >=11th Gen Intel CPU with 2x Media Engines, IPMI, IOMMU, 5x SATA, 1x NVMe, 1x PCIe x16, 1x >= GigLAN, 1x Monitor-Port, >=2x USB, (ECC support)
Any experience with these NVMe to SATA adapters?
I would say MS-01 fill all the cases except it's not mini-itx so you will need either an external enclosure for the drives (JBOD enclosure, with like SFF8644) or keep the cover off.
The MS-01 also as a pretty high idle power due to the 10G and sub-optimized bios.
Also, if you're ready to trade a few organs, the Asrockind IMB-X1231 fit all these requirements but start at around 1K$ and require DDR4 ECC SO-DIMM.
There are also boards from gigaipc but I don't know this brand.
@@mryo-yobzh9485 I already have a Lian-Li Q25 (5-bay), AsRR E3C226D2I, E3-1271v3 and lots of small int. and ext. drives. Would like to keep the case, swap the board and start with new larger drives.
And would still like to keep all my organs 😀 .
The AsRR X1231 only seems to have 4x SATA, but lots of m2 ports. Does anyone have experience with the adapters mentioned?
@@mcmormus There is an adapter M2X4-SATA-4P that split one of the M.2 into 4 sata without requiring a convertion IC (native sata via the m.2 traces).
Also, I'm looking into the IMB-X1314 at ~400$ for my own use, it's a bummer your case doesn't fit mAtx.
Shoulda said in the title it's Intel-only. Even then it pissed me off very highly.
The nas is going in the closet. The case just needed to hold hard drives. So shape of the case doesn't matter too much. Look for lots of hard drive bays.
Kraftwerk...thank you
And YOU SIR, are the hero that FINALLY NOTICED. I mean it when I say, YOU made my Saturday bud! watching the first 7,000-8000 people watch this and no one commented on this, man alive! Thanks man
No problem, I very rarely comment, but respect where it's due.
I was getting a vintage Doctor Who vibe from the title/chapter pages audio, thanks for the artist.
x99? Not really power efficient.
I would say that a SuperMicro X14QEH+ mainboard with 4 Intel Xeon Scalable 5th gen Platinum 8593Q processors. This way you have 17 MCIO PCIe 5.0 x8 connectors and room for 24 NVMe PCIe 5.0 SSD’s at full speed. +2 NVMe PCI 3.0 x4 ports for slower speeds. That Mobo will certainly fully saturate 400GBps networks. It’s a cheap ass solution for if you want to replace a NetApp MetroCluster. Especially when compared to the best NAS/SAN solution in the world, the FAS9500.
I don’t get why you would call consumer goods, the best motherboard CPU/Combo’s while there are so much better Enterprise solutions.
with your solutions it is even hard to saturate a normal 10/40 GBps connection. As soon as more then 40 users connect to your storage solutions, you will run into bottlenecks.
do we have the idle power number?
@@zazelskycrest2525 don’t expect it to be energy efficient. But beastly in transfer and data crunching rates.
Thank you for your recommendation. Already working on a follow up to this with ECC builds (as it's a common request here in the comments) and I'll definitely look into your build call
@@ernestoditerribile in that case, i dont think this should be recommended for NAS build, maybe it is better to suggest as home lab or SOHO server?
Just my 2 cent but i might be wrong
@@zazelskycrest2525 it’s mostly used in Enterprise environments with more than 1000 users simultaneously.
N305 IS NOT AVAILABLE!!!
What OS are we going to run on this?
That's your call. UnRAID, trueNAS..maybe that one that's been cooked up with LTT financial backing
@@nascompares TempleOS. :)
ECC please with this cheaper CPUs...
Yes, useless list of garbage that doesn't support ECC. Why would I want a NAS that can't prevent silent corruption? I'd have to be scrubbing 24/7. Pure insanity!
Yikes @Marcus3d. Some users are happy with DDR 5 OD ECC. Plus, want to run it for Plex. But yes, the ECC version of this will come...
@@nascompares ODECC doesn't help much, and might even make things worse as it can be used to increase the chip yield, allowing manufacturers to use less reliable memory chips. It doesn't even report errors to the kernel.
Also, I do get bit errors from time to time on my existing NAS, and so far my ECC has been able to correct all of them. And if it at some point doesn't then zfs will know what block has an error and can use a parity block to compensate.
Everything without ECC memory is useless as a NAS
Ali Express?, goodbye.
Why? Do British! Techtubers talk like? This. Now?
I'm not...entirely sure. I think, perhaps, it's a parlance thing. Wouldn't you say?
First!
Can’t recommend Terra master made by the chinese
Is there a Terra not made by "the chinese"? Or why the precision?
Exactly what doesn't have at least a significant portion of the components that are made by the Chinese? Do you make the same distinctions with your iPhone?