Considering building a PC-NAS, is this an over-kill?

  • Absolutely. Your upload bandwidth is going to be the main bottleneck. You need to check whether you can actually upload an HD stream.

    Do you have any rule of thumb for this? Let's say a file size is 2GB and the duration of the movie is 2hrs then I should have a bandwith capable of uploading at least 2GB in 2hrs? Isn't there any compression that occurs? Or is it really the full filse size that needs to go through my bandwidth?


    Thanks

  • That being said, I was looking on newegg for 4GB modules (planing to use 2 x 4GB) and NONE had ECC capacity.

    In case your final decision calls for it, Newegg DOES sell 4GB ECC, its just not in the same place as the rest of the memory. Assuming you are on the US site, Select Networking > Server Components > Server Memory. There's both UDIMMS and RDIMMS in 4GB, both DDR3 and DDR4. I have no idea why they "hide" it in "Networking"


    As @flmaxey notes above, AMD AM3+ is still an affordable option if you need ECC. Even though its on it way out, the AM3+ platform has well established support for ECC and there's a sizable userbase out there in the home server/NAS community. I used a similar setup to the one @flmaxey mentioned above for several years with FreeNAS, before switching to OMV. The Asus M5A78L (and newer M5A97) were well known and popular boards in the FreeNAS community for people who couldn't afford, or didn't want to pay for, server grade parts.


    The drawback to any AMD option is efficiency, as most AM3+ and AM4 CPUs aren't low power draw, although there are exceptions. For my two AMD based NAS, I used AMD Opteron 3300 series CPUs. These were lower power server CPUs designed for builders to pair with off the shelf consumer motherboards to create low cost web server farms. The idea didn't catch on, but the CPUs are still available (mostly used). These are essentially AMD FX "piledriver" processors like the FX-8320 @flmaxey mentions above, but running at a slower clock. Both my AMD based servers with ECC had quad core Opteron 3320EE CPUs, which were 25 watt parts. AMD made 6 and 8 core parts as well, the fastest of which had a 65 watt TDP. They didn't perform as well as a gaming computer, but they did their jobs as servers quite well.

  • In case your final decision calls for it, Newegg DOES sell 4GB ECC, its just not in the same place as the rest of the memory. Assuming you are on the US site, Select Networking > Server Components > Server Memory. There's both UDIMMS and RDIMMS in 4GB, both DDR3 and DDR4. I have no idea why they "hide" it in "Networking"
    As @flmaxey notes above, AMD AM3+ is still an affordable option if you need ECC. Even though its on it way out, the AM3+ platform has well established support for ECC and there's a sizable userbase out there in the home server/NAS community. I used a similar setup to the one @flmaxey mentioned above for several years with FreeNAS, before switching to OMV. The Asus M5A78L (and newer M5A97) were well known and popular boards in the FreeNAS community for people who couldn't afford, or didn't want to pay for, server grade parts.


    The drawback to any AMD option is efficiency, as most AM3+ and AM4 CPUs aren't low power draw, although there are exceptions. For my two AMD based NAS, I used AMD Opteron 3300 series CPUs. These were lower power server CPUs designed for builders to pair with off the shelf consumer motherboards to create low cost web server farms. The idea didn't catch on, but the CPUs are still available (mostly used). These are essentially AMD FX "piledriver" processors like the FX-8320 @flmaxey mentions above, but running at a slower clock. Both my AMD based servers with ECC had quad core Opteron 3320EE CPUs, which were 25 watt parts. AMD made 6 and 8 core parts as well, the fastest of which had a 65 watt TDP. They didn't perform as well as a gaming computer, but they did their jobs as servers quite well.

    Thank you for the detailed answer.
    I have put the project on hiatus for few days and should re-visit it soon.
    Why the heck would newegg "hide" the ECC RAMs there? Anw, glad you pointed it out!


    Is there a way to know how power hungry a cpu will be? Is looking at TDP a good indicator?

  • Is there a way to know how power hungry a cpu will be? Is looking at TDP a good indicator?

    TDP is technically an indicator of thermal energy loading rather than electrical, but its still good for relative comparisons. For example, a processor rated at 65 Watts won't necessarily draw 65 Watts of energy, even at full load, but it will draw more energy under load than one rated at 20 Watts for example.


    At idle however, which is where a lot of home NAS sit for significant amounts of time, TDP isn't such a good indicator. For example, many generations of Intel Core processors included "Low", "Medium" and "High" power processors in their line-up. So, for a given family of Core i3 for example, there could be 35 Watt processors along with 65 Watt ones. Both would idle at about the same power draw, and the TDP only came into play when they were under significant load because the 65 watt one would "top out" at a much higher speed.


    Google is your friend in this, as many sites like to test new processors for "real world" power draw. Searching the processor name and 'power draw" or "power test" will usually get you some results. Even on this site, members often post consumption numbers when they post about their NAS builds.

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