Proposed NAS/Server build

Simon Lono · 4. April 2018

I’ve run media servers before but it was years ago.After they died, I relied on WD TV Live boxes with hard drives attached to play movies/shows.But the WD box has become slow and kinda obsolete since it won’t play new codex’s.

Along the way I bought wifi speakers and started using my main desktop as a Sonos music server. Then my drive in that unit failed so now I have to rebuild/upgrade that unit.And on it goes.

I’m fed up with all of that and now I want to consolidate all my movies and music to one OMV/Sonos server running Windows 10 and Storage Spaces with parity.One feature I’m very keen on is hot swappable drives because I don’t want to crack open the machine in case of drive failure (happens to me too frequently).

After checking the off-the-shelf NAS’s, I found them under-powered and too expensive for what they offer.And I figure if I’m going to build a new unit, I might as well give it enough horsepower to do the occasional video editing I do.

So I decided to build my own.

But it’s been a long while since I did a build.A set of new, fresh and experienced eyes on my proposed solution would set my mind at ease before I start buying parts.Any advice and input would be appreciated.

I’ve been researching and using PCPartPicker and this is what I’ve come up with:

PCPartPicker part list: https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/WzHMZR

CPU: Intel - Core i7-8700K 3.7GHz 6-Core Processor($463.50 @ shopRBC)

CPU Cooler: Scythe - BIG Shuriken 2 Rev. B 45.5 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler

Motherboard: ASRock - Z370M-ITX/ac Mini ITX LGA1151 Motherboard($195.99 @ Newegg Canada)

Memory: Crucial - 16GB (1 x 16GB) DDR4-2133 Memory($194.23 @ Mike's Computer Shop)

Storage: Samsung - 860 Evo 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive($189.50 @ Vuugo)

Storage: Western Digital - Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive($154.00 @ Mike's Computer Shop)

Other: NORCO ITX-S8 Black Black Mini-ITX Form Computer Storage Case($249.99 @ Newegg Canada)

Total: $1909.21

gderf · 4. April 2018

Some comments.

For a mostly NAS system, the CPU/motherboard is a bit much. There are server type boards that have more SATA ports for less money. How much CPU do you really need? OMV has no desktop type GUI, so the video/keyboard/mouse/audio interfaces are more or less useless. I don't have numbers to back this statement up, but many, if not most OMV users run headless. Also OMV does not run on Windows.

The choice of a 500GB SSD for the OMV system drive is really excessive. You can easily run OMV on a 16GB SSD (I do and with a lot of room to spare). To get any meaningful use of the rest of that 500GB you are going to have to do a non-standard OMV install from the outset. The money saved might be better spent on something else, such as an addin card for more SATA ports - your chosen board has only six.

You can save $100 on the case without losing functionality with a Silverstone DS380B which has eight hot swap 3.5in drive bays plus four more internal 2.5in bays. Also research your case choice as to the drive interfaces on the backplane. I read somewhere they are SAS, not SATA and I don't know how that plays with your MB/ drive choices.

Your HD choice is OK, but you might go for fewer but larger drives, say two 8TB units. This could save you some money but more importantly it saves you two SATA ports for future growth before you would have to get an addin card to go past six SATA ports.

Good luck with your build.

subzero79 · 5. April 2018

For that money in the motherboard i would buy an entry level server motherboard that at least has IPMI or vPro (if you're keeping the cpu). Asrock has itx server motherboards, also supermicro.

TheLostSwede · 5. April 2018

So let me get this right, you're building a Windows PC that will also be your OMV NAS?
I'm not sure if you've noticed, but OMV runs on Linux, not Windows.
So are you somehow planning on running OMV as a VM ontop of Windows? Or dual boot?

Although I'm using a 6700K myself, I didn't pay for it, but I'm curious as to why you're getting an overclockable CPU for your NAS?
I've underclocked my 6700K from 4 to 3GHz to make it run cooler and quieter.
Obviously for video editing, it makes somewhat sense.

Also, modern PCs work better with dual channel memory, so why a single memory module?

If you're going to use this system for video editing, I'd highly recommend a graphics card, as the Intel integrated graphics isn't great for video editing. It might help for encoding and transcoding, but not with the actual editing. You also end up losing a chunk of RAM to the IGP and if you don't use two sticks of RAM, the IGP will run at half pace.

I think you need to have a bit of a re-think, as you can't run Windows and OMV on the same system at the same time, unless one or the other is in a VM and that's less than ideal in both your use cases.

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