[HN Gopher] Mini NASes marry NVMe to Intel's efficient chip
___________________________________________________________________
Mini NASes marry NVMe to Intel's efficient chip
Author : ingve
Score : 260 points
Date : 2025-07-04 15:21 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jeffgeerling.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jeffgeerling.com)
| koeng wrote:
| Are there any mini NAS with ECC ram nowadays? I recall that being
| my personal limiting factor
| amluto wrote:
| Yes, but not particularly cheap:
| https://www.asustor.com/en/product?p_id=89
| MarkSweep wrote:
| Asustor has some cheaper options that support ECC. Though not
| as cheap as those in the OP article.
|
| FLASHSTOR 6 Gen2 (FS6806X) $1000 -
| https://www.asustor.com/en/product?p_id=90
|
| LOCKERSTOR 4 Gen3 (AS6804T) $1300 -
| https://www.asustor.com/en/product?p_id=86
| brookst wrote:
| The Aoostar WTR max is pretty beefy, supports 5 nvme and 6 hard
| drives, and up to 128GB of ECC ram. But it's $700 bare bones,
| much more than these devices in the article.
| Takennickname wrote:
| Aoostar WTR series is one change away from being the PERFECT
| home server/nas. Passing the storage controller IOMMU to a VM
| is finicky at best. Still better than the vast majority of
| devices that don't allow it at all. But if they do that, I'm
| in homelab heaven. Unfortunately, the current iteration
| cannot due to a hardware limitation in the AMD chipset
| they're using.
| brookst wrote:
| Good info! Is it the same limitation on WTR pro and max?
| The max is an 8845hsv versus the 5825u in the pro.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| HP Microservers.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| I got myself a gen8, they're quite cheap. They do have ECC
| RAM and take 3.5" hard drives.
|
| At some point though, SSDs will beat hard drives on total
| price (including electricity). I'd like a small and efficient
| ECC option for then.
| Havoc wrote:
| One of the arm ones is yes. Can't for the life of me remember
| which though - sorry - either something in bananapi or
| lattepanda part of universe I think
| qwertox wrote:
| Minisforum N5 Pro Nas has up to 96 GB of ECC RAM
|
| https://www.minisforum.com/pages/n5_pro
|
| https://store.minisforum.com/en-de/products/minisforum-n5-n5...
| no RAM 1.399EUR 16GB RAM 1.459EUR 48GB RAM 1.749EUR
| 96GB RAM 2.119EUR
|
| 96GB DDR5 SO-DIMM costs around 200EUR to 280EUR in Germany.
|
| https://geizhals.de/?cat=ramddr3&xf=15903_DDR5~15903_SO-DIMM...
|
| I wonder if that 128GB kit would work, as the CPU supports up
| to 256GB
|
| https://www.amd.com/en/products/processors/laptop/ryzen-pro/...
|
| I can't force the page to show USD prices.
| wyager wrote:
| Is this "full" ECC, or just the baseline improved ECC that
| all DDR5 has?
|
| Either way, on my most recent NAS build, I didn't bother with
| a server-grade motherboard, figuring that the standard
| consumer DDR5 ECC was probably good enough.
| layer8 wrote:
| The DDR5 on-die ECC doesn't report memory errors back to
| the CPU, which is why you would normally want ECC RAM in
| the first place. Unlike traditional side-band ECC, it also
| doesn't protect the memory transfers between CPU and RAM.
| DDR5 requires the on-die ECC in order to still remain
| reliable in face of its chip density and speed.
| qwertox wrote:
| This is full ECC, the CPU supports it (AMD Pro variant).
|
| DDR5 ECC is not good enough. What if you have faulty RAM
| and ECC is constantly correcting it without you knowing it?
| There's no value in that. You need the OS to be informed so
| that you are aware of it. It also does not protect errors
| which occur between the RAM and the CPU.
|
| This is similar to HDDs using ECC. Without SMART you'd have
| a problem, but part of SMART is that it allows you to get a
| count of ECC-corrected errors so that you can be aware of
| the state of the drive.
|
| True ECC takes the role of SMART in regards of RAM, it's
| just that it only reports that: ECC-corrected errors.
|
| On a NAS, where you likely store important data, true ECC
| does add value.
| cuu508 wrote:
| What are the non-Intel mini NAS options for lower idle power?
|
| I know of FriendlyElec CM3588, are there others?
| Havoc wrote:
| I've been running one of these quad nvme mini-NAS for a while.
| They're a good compromise if you can live with no ECC. With some
| DIY shenanigans they can even run fanless
|
| If you're running on consumer nvmes then mirrored is probably a
| better idea than raidz though. Write amplification can easily
| shred consumer drives.
| turnsout wrote:
| I'm a TrueNAS/FreeNAS user, currently running an ECC system.
| The traditional wisdom is that ECC is a must-have for ZFS. What
| do you think? Is this outdated?
| evanjrowley wrote:
| One way to look at it is ECC has recently become more
| affordable due to In-Band ECC (IBECC) providing ECC-like
| functionality for a lot of newer power efficient Intel CPUs.
|
| https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-IGEN6-IBECC-Driver
|
| Not every new CPU has it, for example, the Intel N95, N97,
| N100, N200, i3-N300, and i3-N305 all have it, but the N150
| doesn't!
|
| It's kind of disappointing that the low power NAS devices
| reviewed here, the only one with support for IBECC had a
| limited BIOS that most likely was missing this option. The
| ODROID H4 series, CWWK NAS products, AOOSTAR, and various
| N100 ITX motherboards all support it.
| stoltzmann wrote:
| That traditional wisdom is wrong. ECC is a must-have for any
| computer. The only reason people think ECC is mandatory for
| ZFS is because it exposes errors due to inherent checksumming
| and most other filesystems don't, even if they suffer from
| the same problems.
| HappMacDonald wrote:
| I'm curious if it would make sense for write caches in RAM
| to just include a CRC32 on every block, to be verified as
| it gets written to disk.
| doubled112 wrote:
| Don't you have to read that data into RAM before you can
| generate the CRC? Which means without ECC it could get
| silently corrupted on the way to the cache?
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Been running without for 15+ on my NAS boxes, built using my
| previous desktop hardware fitted with NAS disks.
|
| They're on 24/ and run monthly scrubs, as well as monthly
| checksum verification of my backup images, and not noticed
| any issues so far.
|
| I had some correctable errors which got fixed when changing
| SATA cable a few times, and some from a disk that after 7
| years of 24/7 developed a small run of bad sectors.
|
| That said, you got ECC so you should be able to monitor
| corrected memory errors.
|
| Matt Ahrens himself (one of the creators of ZFS) had said
| there's nothing particular about ZFS:
|
| _There 's nothing special about ZFS that requires/encourages
| the use of ECC RAM more so than any other filesystem. If you
| use UFS, EXT, NTFS, btrfs, etc without ECC RAM, you are just
| as much at risk as if you used ZFS without ECC RAM. Actually,
| ZFS can mitigate this risk to some degree if you enable the
| unsupported ZFS_DEBUG_MODIFY flag (zfs_flags=0x10). This will
| checksum the data while at rest in memory, and verify it
| before writing to disk, thus reducing the window of
| vulnerability from a memory error._
|
| _I would simply say: if you love your data, use ECC RAM.
| Additionally, use a filesystem that checksums your data, such
| as ZFS._
|
| https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1235679&p=.
| ..
| matja wrote:
| ECC is a must-have if you want to minimize the risk of
| corruption, but that is true for any filesystem.
|
| Sun (and now Oracle) officially recommended using ECC ever
| since it was intended to be an enterprise product running on
| 24/7 servers, where it makes sense that anything that is
| going to be cached in RAM for long periods is protected by
| ECC.
|
| In that sense it was a "must-have", as business-critical
| functions require that guarantee.
|
| Now that you can use ZFS on a number of operating systems, on
| many different architectures, even a Raspberry Pi, the
| business-critical-only use-case is not as prevalent.
|
| ZFS doesn't intrinsically require ECC but it does trust that
| the memory functions correctly which you have the best chance
| of achieving by using ECC.
| Havoc wrote:
| Ultimately comes down to how important the data is to you.
| It's not really a technical question but one of risk
| tolerance
| seltzered_ wrote:
| https://danluu.com/why-ecc/ has an argument for it with an
| update from 2024.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Would be nice to see what those little N100 / N150 (or big
| brother N305 / N350) can do with all that NVMe. Raw throughput is
| pretty whatever but hypothetically if the CPU isn't too gating,
| there's some interesting IOps potential.
|
| Really hoping we see 25/40GbaseT start to show up, so the lower
| market segments like this can do 10Gbit. Hopefully we see some
| embedded Ryzens (or other more PCIe willing contendors) in this
| space, at a value oriented price. But I'm not holding my breath.
| dwood_dev wrote:
| The problem quickly becomes PCIe lanes. The N100/150/305 only
| have 9 PCIe 3.0 lanes. 5Gbe is fine, but to go to 10Gbe you
| need x2.
|
| Until there is something in this class with PCIe 4.0, I think
| we're close to maxing out the IO of these devices.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Not only the lanes, but putting through more than 6 Gbps of
| IO on multiple PCIe devices on the N150 bogs things down.
| It's only a little faster than something like a Raspberry Pi,
| there are a lot of little IO bottlenecks (for high speed,
| that is, it's great for 2.5 Gbps) if you do anything that
| hits CPU.
| dwood_dev wrote:
| The CPU bottleneck would be resolved by the Pentium Gold
| 8505, but it still has the same 9 lanes of PCIe 3.0.
|
| I only came across the existence of this CPU a few months
| ago, it is Nearly the same price class as a N100, but has a
| full Alder Lake P-Core in addition. It is a shame it seems
| to only be available in six port routers, then again, that
| is probably a pretty optimal application for it.
| lostlogin wrote:
| This is what baffles me - 2.5gbps.
|
| I want smaller, cooler, quieter, but isn't the key
| attribute of SSDs their speed? A raid array of SSDs can
| surely achieve vastly better than 2.5gbps.
| p_ing wrote:
| A single SSD can (or at least NVMe can). You have to
| question whether or not you need it -- what are you doing
| that you would go line-speed a large portion of time that
| the time savings are worth it. Or it's just a toy,
| totally cool too.
|
| 4 7200 RPM HDDs in RAID 5 (like WD Red Pro) can saturate
| a 1Gbps link at ~110MBps over SMB 3. But that comes with
| the heat and potential reliability issues of spinning
| disks.
|
| I have seen consumer SSDs, namely Samsung 8xx EVO drives
| have significant latency issues in a RAID config where
| saturating the drives caused 1+ second latency. This was
| on Windows Server 2019 using either a SAS controller or
| JBOD + Storage Spaces. Replacing the drives with used
| Intel drives resolved the issue.
| lostlogin wrote:
| My use is a bit into the cool-toy category. I like having
| VMs where the NAS has the VMs and the backups, and like
| having the server connect to the NAS to access the VMs.
|
| Probably a silly arrangement but I like it.
| jrockway wrote:
| 2.5Gbps is selected for price reasons. Not only is the
| NIC cheap, but so is the networking hardware.
|
| But yeah, if you want fast storage just stick the SSD in
| your workstation, not on a mini PC hanging off your
| 2.5Gbps network.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Even if the throughput isn't high, it sure is nice having
| the instant response time & amazing random access
| performance of a ssd.
|
| 2TB ssd are super cheap. But most systems don't have the
| expandability to add a bunch of them. So I fully get the
| incentive here, being able to add multiple drives. Even
| if you're not reaping additional speed.
| transpute wrote:
| Intel N150 is the first consumer Atom [1] CPU (in 15 years!) to
| include TXT/DRTM for measured system launch with owner-managed
| keys. At every system boot, this can confirm that immutable
| components (anything from BIOS+config to the kernel to immutable
| partitions) have the expected binary hash/tree.
|
| TXT/DRTM can enable AEM (Anti Evil Maid) with Qubes, SystemGuard
| with Windows IoT and hopefully future support from other
| operating systems. It would be a valuable feature addition to
| Proxmox, FreeNAS and OPNsense.
|
| Some (many?) N150 devices from Topton (China) ship without
| Bootguard fused, which _may_ enable coreboot to be ported to
| those platforms. Hopefully ODROID (Korea) will ship N150 devices.
| Then we could have fanless N150 devices with coreboot and DRTM
| for less-insecure [2] routers and storage.
|
| [1] Gracemont (E-core): https://chipsandcheese.com/p/gracemont-
| revenge-of-the-atom-c... | https://youtu.be/agUwkj1qTCs (Intel
| Austin architect, 2021)
|
| [2] _" Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect
| motion"_, 400 comments,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44426726#44427986
| reanimus wrote:
| Where are you seeing devices without Bootguard fused? I'd be
| very curious to get my hands on some of those...
| bee_rider wrote:
| Should a mini-NAS be considered a new type of thing with a new
| design goal? He seems to be describing about a desktop worth of
| storage (6TB), but always available on the network and less power
| consuming than a desktop.
|
| This seems useful. But it seems quite different from his previous
| (80TB) NAS.
|
| What is the idle power draw of an SSD anyway? I guess they
| usually have a volatile ram cache of some sort built in (is that
| right?) so it must not be zero...
| transpute wrote:
| _> Should a mini-NAS be considered a new type of thing with a
| new design goal?_ - Warm storage between
| mobile/tablet and cold NAS - Sidecar server of functions
| disabled on other OSes - Personal context cache for LLMs
| and agents
| layer8 wrote:
| HDD-based NASes are used for all kinds of storage amounts, from
| as low as 4TB to hundreds of TB. The SSD NASes aren't really
| much different in use case, just limited in storage amount by
| available (and affordable) drive capacities, while needing less
| space, being quieter, but having a higher cost per TB.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Should a mini-NAS be considered a new type of thing with a
| new design goal?_
|
| Small/portable low-power SSD-based NASs have been
| commercialized since 2016 or so. Some people call them
| "NASbooks", although I don't think that term ever gained
| critical MAS (little joke there).
|
| Examples: https://www.qnap.com/en/product/tbs-464,
| https://www.qnap.com/en/product/tbs-h574tx,
| https://www.asustor.com/en/product?p_id=80
| privatelypublic wrote:
| With APSD the idle draw of a SSD is in the range of low tens of
| milliwatts.
| jeffbee wrote:
| > less power consuming than a desktop
|
| Not really seeing that in these minis. Either the devices under
| test haven't been optimized for low power, or their Linux
| installs have non-optimal configs for low power. My NUC 12
| draws less than 4W, measured at the wall, when operating
| without an attached display and with Wi-Fi but no wired network
| link. All three of the boxes in the review use at least twice
| as much power at idle.
| amelius wrote:
| What types of distributed/network filesystem are people running
| nowadays on Linux?
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Ceph or MooseFS are the two that I've seen most popular. All
| networked FS have drawbacks, I used to run a lot of Gluster,
| and it certainly added a few grey hairs.
| sekh60 wrote:
| I use Ceph. 5 nodes, 424TiB of raw space so far.
| dwood_dev wrote:
| I love reviews like these. I'm a fan of the N100 series for what
| they are in bringing low power x86 small PCs to a wide variety of
| applications.
|
| One curiosity for @geerlingguy, does the Beelink work over USB-C
| PD? I doubt it, but would like to know for sure.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| That, I did not test. But as it's not listed in specs or shown
| in any of their documentation, I don't think so.
| moondev wrote:
| Looks like it only draws 45w which could allow this to be
| powered over POE++ with a splitter, but it has an integrated
| AC input and PSU - that's impressive regardless considering
| how small it is but not set up for PD or POE
| devwastaken wrote:
| i want a NAS i can puf 4tb nvme's in and a 12tb hdd running
| backup every night. with ability to shove a 50gbps sfp card in it
| so i can truly have a detached storage solution.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Yeah that's what I want too. I don't necessarily need a mirror
| of most data, some I do prefer, but that's small.
|
| I just want a backup (with history) of the data-SSD. The backup
| can be a single drive + perhaps remote storage
| lostlogin wrote:
| Would you really want the backup on a single disk? Or is this
| backing up data that is also versioned on the SSDs?
| lostlogin wrote:
| 10gbps would be a good start. The lack of wifi is mentioned as
| a downside, but do many people want that on a NAS?
| gorkish wrote:
| The lack of highspeed networking on any small system is
| completely and totally insane. I have come to hate 2.5gbps for
| the hard stall it has caused on consumer networking with such a
| passion that it is difficult to convey. You ship a system with
| USB5 on the front and your networking offering is 3.5 _orders
| of magnitude_ slower? What good is the cloud if you have to
| drink it through a straw?
| whatever1 wrote:
| Question regarding these mini pcs: how do you connect them to
| plain old hard drives ? Is thunderbolt / usb these days reliable
| enough to run 24/7 without disconnects like an onboard sata?
| jeffbee wrote:
| I've never heard of these disconnects. The OWC ThunderBay works
| well.
| layer8 wrote:
| For that money it can make more sense to get a UGreen DXP4800
| with built-in N100: https://nas.ugreen.com/products/ugreen-
| nasync-dxp4800-nas-st...
|
| You can install a third-party OS on it.
| jkortufor wrote:
| I have experienced them - I have a B650 AM5 motherboard and
| if I connect a Orico USB HDD enclosure to the fastest USB
| ports, the ones comming directly from the AMD CPU (yes, it's
| a thing now), after 5-10 min the HDD just disappears from the
| system. Doesn't happen on the other USB ports.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Well, AMD makes a good core but there are reasons that
| Intel is preferred by some users in some applications, and
| one of those reasons is that the peripheral devices on
| Intel platforms tend to work.
| monster_truck wrote:
| The last sata controller (onboard or otherwise) that I had with
| known data corruption and connection issues is old enough to
| drive now
| michaelt wrote:
| Would you not simply buy a regular NAS?
|
| Why buy a tiny, m.2 only mini-NAS if your need is better met by
| a vanilla 2-bay NAS?
| projektfu wrote:
| Good question. I imagine for the silence and low power usage
| without needing huge amounts of storage. That said, I own an
| n100 dual 3.5 bay + m.2 mini PC that can function as a NAS or
| as anything and I think it's pretty neat for the price.
| asalahli wrote:
| This sounds exactly like what I'm looking. Care to share
| the brand&model?
| projektfu wrote:
| AOOSTAR R1
| indemnity wrote:
| Noise is definitely an issue.
|
| I have an 8 drive NAS running 7200 RPM drives, which is on
| a wall mounted shelf drilled into the studs.
|
| On the other side of that wall is my home office.
|
| I had to put the NAS on speaker springs [1] to not go crazy
| from the hum :)
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com.au/Nobsound-Aluminum-Isolation-
| Amplif...
| x0x0 wrote:
| power regularly hits 50 cents a kilowatt hour where I live.
| Most of those seem to treat power like its free.
| blargthorwars wrote:
| I've run a massive farm (2 petabytes) of ZFS on FreeBSD servers
| with Zraid over consumer USB for about fifteen years and
| haven't had a problem: directly attaching to the motherboard
| USB ports and using good but boring controllers on the drives
| like the WD Elements series.
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| I have been running usb hdds 24/7 connected to raspberry pi as
| a nas for 10 years without problems
| al_borland wrote:
| I've been thinking about moving from SSDs for my NAS to solid
| state. The drive are so loud, all the time, it's very annoying.
|
| My first experience with these cheap mini PCs was with a Beelink
| and it was very positive and makes me question the longevity of
| the hardware. For a NAS, that's important to me.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| HDD -> SSD I assume For me it's more and random access times
| chime wrote:
| I've been using a QNAP TBS-464 [1] for 4 years now with
| excellent results. I have 4x 4TB NVMe drives and get about 11TB
| usable after RAID. It gets slightly warm but I have it in my
| media cabinet with a UPS, Mikrotik router, PoE switches, and
| ton of other devices. Zero complaints about this setup.
|
| The entire cabinet uses under 1kwh/day, costing me under
| $40/year here, compared to my previous Synology and home-made
| NAS which used 300-500w, costing $300+/year. Sure I paid about
| $1500 in total when I bought the QNAP and the NVMe drives but
| just the electricity savings made the expense worth it, let
| alone the performance, features etc.
|
| 1. https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/tbs-464
| al_borland wrote:
| Thanks, I'll give it a look. I'm running a Synology right
| now. It only has 2 drives, so just swapping those out for
| SSDs would cost as much as a whole 4xNVMe setup, as I have
| 8TB HDDs in there now.
| leptons wrote:
| > moving from SSDs for my NAS to solid state.
|
| SSD = Solid State Drive
|
| So you're moving from solid state to solid state?
| al_borland wrote:
| That should have been HDD. Typo. Seems too late to edit.
| 7e wrote:
| These need remote management capabilities (IPMI) to not be a huge
| PITA.
| yonatan8070 wrote:
| How often do you use IPMI on a server? I have a regular desktop
| running Proxmox, and I haven't had to plug in a monitor since I
| first installed it like 2 years ago
| bongodongobob wrote:
| I haven't even _thought_ about my NAS in years. No idea what
| you 're talking about.
| herf wrote:
| Which SSDs do people rely on? Considering PLP (power loss
| protection), write endurance/DWPD (no QLC), and other bugs that
| affect ZFS especially? It is hard to find options that do these
| things well for <$100/TB, with lower-end datacenter options
| (e.g., Samsung PM9A3) costing maybe double what you see in a lot
| of builds.
| nightfly wrote:
| ZFS isn't more effected by those, your just more likely to
| notice them with ZFS. You'll probably never notice write
| endurance issues on a home NAS
| privatelypublic wrote:
| QLC isn't an issue for consumer NAS- are 'you' seriously going
| to write 160GB/day, every day?
| magicalhippo wrote:
| QLC have quite the write performance cliff though, which
| could be an issue during use or when rebuilding the array.
|
| Just something to be aware of.
| sandreas wrote:
| While it may be tempting to go "mini" and NVMe, for a normal use
| case I think this is hardly cost effective.
|
| You give up so much by using an all in mini device...
|
| No Upgrades, no ECC, harder cooling, less I/O.
|
| I have had a Proxmox Server with a used Fujitsu D3417 and 64gb
| ecc for roughly 5 years now, paid 350 bucks for the whole thing
| and upgraded the storage once from 1tb to 2tb. It draws 12-14W in
| normal day use and has 10 docker containers and 1 windows VM
| running.
|
| So I would prefer a mATX board with ECC, IPMI 4xNVMe and 2.5GB
| over these toy boxes...
|
| However, Jeff's content is awesome like always
| samhclark wrote:
| I think you're right generally, but I wanna call out the ODROID
| H4 models as an exception to a lot of what you said. They are
| mostly upgradable (SODIMM RAM, SATA ports, M.2 2280 slots), and
| it does support in-band ECC which kinda checks the ECC box.
| They've got a Mini-ITX adapter for $15 so it can fit into
| existing cases too.
|
| No IPMI and not very many NVME slots. So I think you're right
| that a good mATX board could be better.
| sandreas wrote:
| Well, if you would like to go mini (with ECC and 2.5G) you
| could take a look at this one:
|
| https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006369887180.html
|
| Not totally upgradable, but at least pretty low cost and
| modern with an optional SATA + NVMe combination for Proxmox.
| Shovel in an enterprise SATA and a consumer 8TB WD SN850x and
| this should work pretty good. Even Optane is supported.
|
| IPMI could be replaced with NanoKVM or JetKVM...
| geek_at wrote:
| Not sure about the odroid but I got myself the nas kit from
| friendly elec. With the largest ram it was about 150 bucks
| and comes with 2,5g ethernet and 4 NVME slots. No fan and
| keeps fairly cool even under load.
|
| Running it with encrypted zfs volumes and even with a 5bay
| 3.5 Inch HDD dock attached via USB
|
| https://wiki.friendlyelec.com/wiki/index.php/CM3588_NAS_Kit
| fnord77 wrote:
| these little boxes are perfect for my home
|
| My use case is a backup server for my macs and cold storage for
| movies.
|
| 6x2Tb drives will give me a 9Tb raid-5 for $809 ($100 each for
| the drives, $209 for the nas).
|
| Very quiet so I can have it in my living room plugged into my
| TV. < 10W power.
|
| I have no room for a big noisy server.
| sandreas wrote:
| While I get your point about size, I'd not use RAID-5 for my
| personal homelab. I'd also say that 6x2TB drives are not the
| optimal solution for low power consumption. You're also
| missing out server quality BIOS, Design/Stability/x64 and
| remote management. However, not bad.
|
| While my Server is quite big compared to a "mini" device,
| it's silent. No CPU Fan only 120mm case fans spinning around
| 500rpm, maybe 900rpm on load - hardly noticable. I've also a
| completely passive backup solution with a Streacom FC5, but I
| don't really trust it for the chipsets, so I also installed a
| low rpm 120mm fan.
|
| How did you fit 6 drives in a "mini" case? Using Asus
| Flashstor or beelink?
| epistasis wrote:
| I'm interested in learning more about your setup. What sort
| of system did you put together for $350? Is it a normal ATX
| case? I really like the idea of running proxmox but I don't
| know how to get something cheap!
| UltraSane wrote:
| Storing backups and movies on NVMe ssds is just a waste of
| money.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| I've had a synology since 2015. Why, besides the drives
| themselves, would most home labs need to upgrade?
|
| I don't really understand the general public, or even most
| usages, requiring upgrade paths beyond get a new device.
|
| By the time the need to upgrade comes, the tech stack is likely
| faster and you're basically just talking about gutting the PC
| and doing everything over again, except maybe power supply.
| sandreas wrote:
| Understandable... Well, the bottleneck for a Proxmox Server
| often is RAM - sometimes CPU cores (to share between VMs).
| This might not be the case for a NAS-only device.
|
| Another upgrade path is to keep the case, fans, cooling
| solution and only switch Mainboard, CPU and RAM.
|
| I'm also not a huge fan of non x64 devices, because they
| still often require jumping through some hoops regarding boot
| order, external device boot or power loss struggle.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > except maybe power supply.
|
| Modern Power MOSFETs are cheaper and more efficient. 10 Years
| ago 80Gold efficiency was a bit expensive and 80Bronze was
| common.
|
| Today, 80Gold is cheap and common and only 80Platinum reaches
| into the exotic level.
| ndiddy wrote:
| Another thing is that unless you have a very specific need for
| SSDs (such as heavily random access focused workloads, very
| tight space constraints, or working in a bumpy environment),
| mechanical hard drives are still way more cost effective for
| storing lots of data than NVMe. You can get a manufacturer
| refurbished 12TB hard drive with a multi-year warranty for
| ~$120, while even an 8TB NVMe drive goes for at least $500. Of
| course for general-purpose internal drives, NVMe is a far
| better experience than a mechanical HDD, but my NAS with 6 hard
| drives in RAIDz2 still gets bottlenecked by my 2.5GBit LAN, not
| the speeds of the drives.
| acranox wrote:
| Don't forget about power. If you're trying to build a low
| power NAS, those hdds idle around 5w each, while the ssd is
| closer to 5mw. Once you've got a few disks, the HDDs can
| account for half the power or more. The cost penalty for 2TB
| or 4TB ssds is still big, but not as bad as at the 8TB level.
| markhahn wrote:
| such power claims are problematic - you're not letting the
| HDs spin down, for instance, and not crediting the fact
| that an SSD may easily dissipate more power than an HD
| under load. (in this thread, the host and network are slow,
| so it's not relevant that SSDs are far faster when active.)
| miladyincontrol wrote:
| Still think its highly underrated to use fs-cache with NASes
| (usually configured with cachefilesd) for some local dynamically
| scaling client-side nvme caching.
|
| Helps a ton with response times with any NAS thats primarily
| spinning rust, especially if dealing with decent amount of small
| files.
| attendant3446 wrote:
| I was recently looking for a mini PC to use as a home server
| with, extendable storage. After comparing different options
| (mostly Intel), I went with the Ryzen 7 5825U (Beelink SER5 Pro)
| instead. It has an M.2 slot for an SSD and I can install a 2.5"
| HDD too. The only downside is that the HDD is limited by height
| to 7 mm (basically 2 TB storage limit), but I have a 4 TB disk
| connected via USB for "cold" storage. After years of using
| different models with Celeron or Intel N CPUs, Ryzen is a beast
| (and TDP is only 15W). In my case, AMD now replaced almost all
| the compute power in my home (with the exception of the
| smartphone) and I don't see many reasons to go back to Intel.
| ozim wrote:
| So Jeff is really decent guy that doesn't keep terabytes of Linux
| ISOs.
| archagon wrote:
| These look compelling, but unfortunately, we know that SSDs are
| not nearly as reliable as spinning rust hard drives when it comes
| to data retention: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-
| components/storage/unpowered...
|
| (I assume M.2 cards are the same, but have not confirmed.)
|
| If this isn't running 24/7, I'm not sure I would trust it with my
| most precious data.
|
| Also, these things are just begging for a 10Gbps Ethernet port,
| since you're going to lose out on a ton of bandwidth over
| 2.5Gbps... though I suppose you could probably use the USB-C port
| for that.
| ac29 wrote:
| Your link is talking about leaving drives unpowered for years.
| That would be a very odd use of a NAS.
| archagon wrote:
| True, but it's still concerning. For example, I have a NAS
| with some long-term archives that I power on maybe once a
| month. Am I going to see SSD data loss from a usage pattern
| like that?
| bhouston wrote:
| I am currently running a 8 4TB NVMe NAS via OpenZFS on TrueNAS
| Linux. It is good but my box is quite large. I made this via a
| standard AMD motherboard with both built-in NVMe slots as well as
| a bunch of expansion PCEi cards. It is very fast.
|
| I was thinking of replacing it with a Asustor FLASHSTOR 12, much
| more compact form factor and it fits up to 12 NVMes. I will miss
| TrueNAS though, but it would be so much smaller.
| moondev wrote:
| You can install truenas Linux on the flashstor12. It has no GPU
| or video out, but I installed a m.2 GPU to attach a HDMI
| monitor
| layer8 wrote:
| You can install TrueNAS on it:
| https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/how-i-installed-truen...
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| I will wait until the have AMD efficient chip for one very simple
| reason: AMD graciously allow ECC on some* cpus.
|
| *well, they allowed on all CPUs, but after zen3 they saw how much
| money intel was making and joined in. now you must get a "PRO"
| cpu, to get ECC support, even on mobile (but good luck finding
| ECC sodimm).
| guerby wrote:
| Related question: does anyone know of an usb-c powerbank that can
| be effectively used as UPS? That is to say is able to be charged
| while maintaining power to load (obviously with rate of charge
| greater by a few watts than load).
|
| Most models I find reuse the most powerful usb-c port as ...
| recharging port so unusable as DC UPS.
|
| Context: my home server is my old https://frame.work motherboard
| running proxmox VE with 64GB RAM and 4 TB NVME, powered by usb-c
| and drawing ... 2 Watt at idle.
| sorenjan wrote:
| Is it possible (and easy) to make a NAS with harddrives for
| storage and an SSD for cache? I don't have any data that I use
| daily or even weekly, so I don't want the drives spinning
| needlessly 24/7, and I think an SSD cache would stop having to
| spin them up most of the time.
|
| For instance, most reads from a media NAS will probably be biased
| towards both newly written files, and sequentially (next
| episode). This is a use case CPU cache usually deals with
| transparently when reading from RAM.
| op00to wrote:
| Yes. You can use dm-cache.
| sorenjan wrote:
| Thanks. I looked it up and it seems that lvmcache uses dm-
| cache and is easier to use, I guess putting that in front of
| some kind of RAID volume could be a good solution.
| QuiEgo wrote:
| https://github.com/trapexit/mergerfs/blob/master/mkdocs/docs...
|
| I do this. One mergerfs mount with an ssd and three hdds made
| to look like one disk. Mergerfs is set to write to the ssd if
| it's not full, and read from the ssd first.
|
| A chron job moves out the oldest files on the ssd once per
| night to the hdds (via a second mergerfs mount without the ssd)
| if the ssd is getting full.
|
| I have a fourth hdd that uses snap raid to protect the ssd and
| other hdds.
| QuiEgo wrote:
| Also, https://github.com/bexem/PlexCache which moves files
| between disks based on their state in a Plex DB
| gorkish wrote:
| NVMe NAS is completely and totally pointless with such crap
| connectivity.
|
| What in the WORLD is preventing these systems from getting at
| least 10gbps interfaces? I have been waiting for years and years
| and years and years and the only thing on the market for small
| systems with good networking is weird stuff that you have to
| email Qotom to order direct from China and _ONE_ system from
| Minisforum.
|
| I'm beginning to think there is some sort of conspiracy to not
| allow anything smaller than a full size ATX desktop to have
| anything faster than 2.5gbps NICs. (10gbps nics that plug into
| NVMe slots are not the solution.)
| QuiEgo wrote:
| Consider the terramaster f8 ssd
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _What in the WORLD is preventing these systems from getting
| at least 10gbps interfaces?_
|
| They definitely exist, two examples with 10 GbE being the QNAP
| TBS-h574TX and the Asustor Flashstor 12 Pro FS6712X.
| 9x39 wrote:
| >What in the WORLD is preventing these systems from getting at
| least 10gbps interfaces?
|
| Price and price. Like another commenter said, there is at least
| one 10Gbe mini NAS out there, but it's several times more
| expensive.
|
| What's the use case for the 10GbE? Is ~200MB/sec not enough?
|
| I think the segment for these units is low price, small size,
| shared connectivity. The kind of thing you tuck away in your
| house invisibly and silently, or throw in a bag to travel with
| if you have a few laptops that need shared storage. People with
| high performance needs probably already have fast nvme local
| storage is probably the thinking.
| PhilipRoman wrote:
| It especially sucks when even low end mini PCs have at least
| multiple 5Gbps USB ports, yet we are stuck with 1Gbps (or 2.5,
| if manufacturer is feeling generous) ethernet. Maybe IP over
| Thunderbolt will finally save us.
| monster_truck wrote:
| These are cute, I'd really like to see the "serious" version.
|
| Something like a Ryzen 7745, 128gb ecc ddr5-5200, no less than
| two 10gbe ports (though unrealistic given the size, if they were
| sfp+ that'd be incredible), drives split across two different
| nvme raid controllers. I don't care how expensive or loud it is
| or how much power it uses, I just want a coffee-cup sized cube
| that can handle the kind of shit you'd typically bring a rack
| along for. It's 2025.
| Palomides wrote:
| the minisforum devices are probably the closest thing to that
|
| unfortunately most people still consider ECC unnecessary, so
| options are slim
| FloatArtifact wrote:
| I think the N100 and N150 suffer the same weakness for this type
| of use case in the context of SSD storage 10gb networking. We
| need a next generation chip that can leverage more PCI lanes with
| roughly the same power efficiency.
|
| I would remove points for a built-in non-modular standardized
| power supply. It's not fixable, and it's not comparable to Apple
| in quality.
| riobard wrote:
| I've been always puzzled by the strange choice of raiding
| multiple small capacity M.2 NVMe in these tiny low-end Intel
| boxes with severely limited PCIe lanes using only one lane per
| SSD.
|
| Why not a single large capacity M.2 SSD using 4 full lanes and
| proper backup with a cheaper , larger capacity and more reliable
| spinning disk?
| tiew9Vii wrote:
| The latest small M.2 NAS's make very good consumer grade,
| small, quiet, power efficient storage you can put in your
| living room, next to the tv for media storage and light network
| attached storage.
|
| It'd be great if you could fully utilise the M.2 speed but they
| are not about that.
|
| Why not a single large M.2? Price.
| riobard wrote:
| Would four 2TB SSD be more or less expensive than one 8TB
| SSD? And also counting power efficiency and RAID complexity?
| careful_ai wrote:
| Geerling never misses. What I admire most is how these setups
| strike a balance: practical for homelabbers, inspiring for
| tinkerers, and grounded enough for pros. The pairing of low-power
| chips with NVMe speed really feels like a sweet spot for edge
| compute or local AI workloads. Feels like the future is homegrown
| again.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-07-04 23:00 UTC)