[HN Gopher] Build Your Own Minisforum N5 Inspired Mini NAS
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Build Your Own Minisforum N5 Inspired Mini NAS
Author : LorenDB
Score : 111 points
Date : 2025-07-30 17:14 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (jackharvest.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (jackharvest.com)
| ggm wrote:
| The m.2 to sata adapter. Does this serialise the disk io or does
| it use multiple lanes of the pci bus?
|
| I mean, pricewise and avoiding usb, it's a nice build. I have
| something not a million miles off using a zimablade and a pci
| card doing sata, with an ali express sata disk box and an atx
| psu. Even got 12v off the atx to power the zimablade via DCin
| Havoc wrote:
| Most of them seem to be X2 gen3, so decent fit for a N100 build
| that is gen3 anyway.
|
| Seen some reports of people running into heat issues with them
| though if they run them full. So they end up using 3 out of 5
| slots etc.
| wtallis wrote:
| > Does this serialise the disk io or does it use multiple lanes
| of the pci bus?
|
| That's not how PCIe lanes work. Regardless of how many PCIe
| lanes are used to connect the CPU to the HBA, only one packet
| will be traversing that link at a time (striped across the
| lanes), but that imposes no direct constraints on what the
| _other_ side of the HBA is doing with its several SATA links
| simultaneously. With 16Gb /s of PCIe bandwidth, that HBA should
| have no trouble keeping more than one 6Gb/s SATA link busy.
| ggm wrote:
| Thanks for the cluestick hit. This implies storage on the HBA
| or SSD to buffer data being committed, to exploit faster bus
| speed than write speed to media.
| poemxo wrote:
| The black-and-white pic just to show the brown color of the
| Noctua fan is taking me out
|
| To add something useful, this is very cool but I wish it came in
| JBOD form so I could run it off a Mac Mini instead, and the
| pricing listed in TFA seems like an idealistic lower limit.
| zevon wrote:
| I'm of the "my NAS/home server is an old Laptop and a bunch of
| more or less random drives in a box" persuasion, but this is
| great work and great documentation! :)
| styanax wrote:
| The solution works really well though - a reliable, name-brand
| SSD (sic) in an old $100 Dell Latitude as the workhorse. The
| Latitudes allow changing the charging profile in BIOS to
| "always plugged in" amongst the other power friendly things
| (disable TurboBoost, etc.). Built in UPS, keyboard, monitor,
| wifi/eth; portable, quiet and with the right tuning (disabling
| a lot of modules in GRUB or module blacklists) runs most of the
| time without kicking the fan on. I run 2, one doing all the
| work and another backing it up. I run with only a partition
| encrypted (requires manual unlock after boot, my choice) so
| that I can remote login after boot to mount that, never have to
| actually open the laptop unless, say, wifi goes south. Laptop
| dies (they never do), just pull the SSD and slap in another one
| it's Linux it'll boot.
| zevon wrote:
| I agree, especially about the integrated USP and peripherals.
|
| In my case, I currently use a Macbook Air M1 (my personal one
| which I currently don't need as a laptop). Absolute overkill
| and in some aspects annoying - only two USB-C ports for
| example - but it was available and it's fanless and doesn't
| need much power.
| transpute wrote:
| What storage enclosure (Thunderbolt?) and network
| filesystem do you use?
|
| When there's a MacOS security update and the Macbook
| reboots, do NAS functions work before a local user has
| logged in?
| zevon wrote:
| Just a random powered USB-C Hub with a few external
| drives on one port and a Thunderbolt SSD I had from an
| old project on the other. For now, I just use the SMB
| server built into MacOS because I've not gotten around to
| installing Asahi on it.
|
| I think I turned auto update off on this machine but if
| it reboots, you would have to login first. Doesn't bother
| me, though. I don't have any uptime requirements.
| noelwelsh wrote:
| I need to get a NAS, and this just gave me a whole new rabbit-
| hole to go down. The other builds on their site e.g. (archive.org
| link because the WP site is struggling)
| https://web.archive.org/web/20250505085226/https://jackharve...
| are also very interesting.
|
| I should probably just hook something up with, say, the old Mac
| Mini I have lying around, but it's fun to consider the options.
| diggan wrote:
| > I'll end up releasing the raw shapr3D files after a month or
| two of debut online; I like to make sure I work out any earth
| shattering issues there may be prior to dumping the source for
| everyone to poke freely
|
| To take a look at the 3D files for the chassi was literally the
| reason I open the blog post, sadly they haven't been published
| yet!
|
| In the meantime, what are people's favorite 3D printed
| desktop/NAS chassis? I'm currently sitting and sketching one
| myself and looking for inspiration :)
| sgc wrote:
| There is a makerworld link at the bottom of the page:
|
| https://makerworld.com/en/models/1644686-n5-mini-a-3d-printe...
| milkshakes wrote:
| isn't it not a great idea to put magnets right next to
| magnetic hard drives?
| pama wrote:
| Why so much power for a simple NAS? Wouldnt a Pi5 be sufficient?
| greggsy wrote:
| Pi's are a pain when it comes to power, storage and expansion.
|
| They're hardly competitive on price compared to an old nuc too.
| Even a new N100 with ram and ssd can be purchased heaper than a
| barebones Pi 5.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Plex/jellyfin, torrents, immich, other server stuff.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| Pi's lack IO so they have quite poor performance for a lot of
| drives. They also aren't really very competitive price wise
| compared to low end AMD64 machines that have considerably more
| computation and IO capabilities at this low end price point.
| What Pi's are good at is very low power consumption and being
| small, once you add 4 hard drives small and low power don't
| matter much anymore and you wont take up much more power and
| space moving to MITX.
|
| ARM64 does limit what software you can run as well as does the
| anaemic GPU hardware. They are good for other things and very
| small servers (like PIHoles) but once multiple drives are
| involved they aren't the right solution anymore.
| pama wrote:
| Thanks.
| t-3 wrote:
| It would be possible with a Pi or any other ARM or RISCV board,
| but most of those don't have NVMe or SATA and have very limited
| bandwidth to the USB ports, PCIe, or ethernet. If you don't
| need high performance that can be perfectly usable, but it will
| run into bottlenecks if you push beyond basic use.
| rusk wrote:
| Having built a NAS the actual build is only half the story.
| There's a hole heap of nonsense you have to go through to tune
| the software. I ended up bailing and just buying a NAS. Just too
| many ticks and glitches.
|
| There are good all-in-one software solutions for all this stuff
| (unraid comes to mind) and I really feel this kind of article is
| unfinished without going into that kind of thing.
| ls612 wrote:
| I thought TrueNAS was mostly plug and play for standard use
| cases nowadays?
| rusk wrote:
| Yes TrueNAS is supposed to be good too.
| choonway wrote:
| it's already obsolete.
|
| for USD699 (no ram and no storage) you can get this
|
| 6 SATA, 5 NVME drives, OCUlink and much more.
|
| https://aoostar.com/products/aoostar-wtr-max-amd-r7-pro-8845...
| Havoc wrote:
| Guessing you just read the first sentence? The build the
| article is about is a 200 DIY, not the N5 mentioned in the
| intro.
| servercobra wrote:
| $200 + board/CPU, the $699 Aoostar includes board/CPU.
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| The intention is to get one of those ~$100 N100 minipcs for
| the guts. Still coming in under budget vs the commercial
| option.
|
| All that being said, there are more affordable NAS cases
| that would eliminate the labor. This is both an art piece
| and a because-I-can kind of venture.
| jonhohle wrote:
| Thanks for posting this, it looks like an amazing value. I need
| to rebuild my home server/nas soon and finding removal sled
| backplane is hard enough by itself. I'd prefer a 1U layout, but
| this is pretty good.
| superkuh wrote:
| Or: don't build a NAS at all and just put the hard drives in the
| machine you intend to use. This has many advantages including:
| price, performance, reliability, not having to run an entire
| second computer (just leave the computer on and sharing files if
| other computers on your LAN also use the files), intuitive and
| natural file management using non-proprietary software, simple
| drive formats that are easily recoverable with simple/normal
| tools if there is a problem, no silly tuning stuff because the
| files are already there.
|
| NAS do make sense in some contexts. But over the last decade
| they've become something people do just to do because it's hip.
| It usually makes much more sense just to put your storage drives
| in the computer you'll use them in.
| ranger207 wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people setting up NASes
| didn't have a desktop to put drives into. Lots of people are
| only using laptops or phones nowadays
| superkuh wrote:
| That's true. But those aren't the people thinking about
| setting up NASes. Or at least not in my tech support
| experience. Those people will just have giant fragile
| octopuses of external USB drives.
|
| But it is a problem that most people don't have capable
| computers anymore. :\
| sgc wrote:
| Your comment makes much more sense if you also want to have a
| desktop,and only in some network configurations. It's most
| likely the minority use case, but worth considering if it might
| fit.
|
| A lot of people just use laptops and tablets / phones with
| limited storage expansion space at home, and want a dedicated
| device for a firewall/router anyways (no worries about reboots
| or other interruptions due to personal work on that computer,
| etc).
|
| One more powerful computer to use as both NAS and firewall (and
| for various shared services...) makes a lot of sense much of
| the time - hence the popularity of proxmox.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I don't understand this. I use a laptop that I don't want to
| carry many files on, and that I often bring with me when I
| leave the house. I have NAS at home to hold my data and run
| services, including CI. It seems perfectly fine, even
| wonderful. I use mdadm and cryptsetup, which are non-
| proprietary pieces of software that set up simple, documented
| drive formats that are easily recoverable with simple/normal
| tools if there is a problem.
|
| I have no idea how having a NAS would make somebody hip. Very
| strange disco. Everybody should have one.
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