Building NAS - Motherboard requirements

[Nathan Samson]

Hi

I've built my first homelab NAS based on a INTEL Nuc I had lying around + Icybox Disk enclosure connected via USB (https://icybox.de/product/externe_speicherloesungen/IB-3780-C31)

I want to build a second system and have this set of requirements
A) Based on new hardware, and not something I have lying around (does not need to be latest-gen specifically, but I don't want to buy second hand, or use 3 or 4 generation back CPU's etc.. --- just personal preference)

B) Something not based on USB (I've read somewhere this is not recommended)

C) Not something too expensive (<850euro's ideally, without storage - but including boot disk) - flexible budget here.

D) Must support up to 8 disks (might not use them all in the beginning)
E) Not something too high end. Might store it in the office, but mostly used as off-site backup for my home-NAS. Might run a VM or 2.

F) Must have some expansion options. IE If I decide to put more load on it, replace CPU + add memory + maybe even add dedicated GPU for encoding needs to be a possibilty

I've looked into it and I am thinking around this

* Case: Jonsbo N3 https://www.jonsbo.com/en/products/N3.html (Supports 8 disks, ITX form factor) - 160 euros
* AM5 platform. Looking at this CPU AMD Ryzen 5 7600 / Ryzen 5 8500G - 200 euros. Probably overkill, but as I said before I don't want to run too old hardware. I want to be able to use this NAS in 5-6 years time, and be able to use it for more.
* 16 GB RAM (1 x 16GB so upgrade path to 32GB) - Probably overkill, but not huge cost - 60 euros
* Powersupply: Not looked too deep yet, but around 150 euros max I would say (500-650 W)
* Boot disk:  SSD M2. Lets throw in another 50 euros.
Which leaves me with around 230 euros for a motherboard.

Question now is, what do I need to lookout for a motherboard, given I want to connect 8 disks to it. From what I can see on my search (knowing little to nothing about motherboard specs), its quite hard to find a motherboard that might support this many disks. So any suggestions for an AM5 compatible motherboard, that is not too expensive, but still would support this use case?
What do I need to lookout for, ie SATA ports, (do I need 8??), do I need to look at PCI slots? (I guess one for the possible graphics card at least?)

Am I stupid for going with AM5, should I use AM4 (seems to have slightly more options, might also reduce price of CPU, but feels too old generation wise to me)

 

[Nathan Samson]

Just for clarification, HexOS license is not included in my cost calculation 🙂

[PsychoWards]

Hey,

The Ryzen 5 7600 does not have an integrated GPU, so make sure you have one ready when installing Hexos if you decided to use that CPU.

If you only use 1 RAM stick you will only get half of the bandwidth of the memory, because it is running in single channel. If you want to have the full speed you need at least 2 modules so that they can run in dual channel. Since Hexos is doing a lot of caching in memory, you probably want to go dual channel to maximise performance.

AM5 is using DDR5, which does include on-die ECC (Error Correction Code) and can correct a 1 bit error in the memory itself. It is, however, not the same kind of EEC which is used in server applications, which can detect bit flips outside of the memory as well.

Powersupply: make sure to use a well known brand with gold or platinum rating, the Corsair RM650 for example can be had for around 90€, you don't need the 150€ which you have planned.

Motherboard: you can always get an HBA card to add more SATA ports, however in that case you cannot add a dedicated GPU. But for most things, the integrated GPU should be more then enough. Another possibility would be a m.2 to SATA port adapter, which you plug in into an M.2 port, so there are possibilities on how to get more ports to your motherboard.

M.2 SSDs: take something which doesn't have a lot of storage, since you cannot use it for anything else in Hexos, it will only run the OS.

[Mobius]

3 hours ago, PsychoWards said:

Hey,

The Ryzen 5 7600 does not have an integrated GPU, so make sure you have one ready when installing Hexos if you decided to use that CPU.

That cpu most defintely has an iGPU

As for ram speed it really is not a big deal honestly as even ddr3 is within spec. On top of that the user can like he said upgrade if he wants to.

the case he picked the jonsbo n3 only supports sfx psus not psus of the atx size like you rec'd

 

 

Edited December 31, 2024 by Mobius

[Mobius]

14 hours ago, Nathan Samson said:

A) Based on new hardware, and not something I have lying around (does not need to be latest-gen specifically, but I don't want to buy second hand, or use 3 or 4 generation back CPU's etc.. --- just personal preference)

Depending on what you are using the server for i would actually recommend intel. If running a plex/jellyfin server is important to you, you cannot underestimate the value having a cpu that supports intel quick sync will add. That said if it is of no important yeah def go amd.
i know you said you dont want older gen hardware but you can't really go wrong with intel 12th gen, if that is too old there is the new intel core ultra 200 chips with cheaper non k skus coming out soon. (just make sure to skip intel 13th and 14th gen)

14 hours ago, Nathan Samson said:

B) Something not based on USB (I've read somewhere this is not recommended)

absolutely correct, do not ever deal with usb storage

14 hours ago, Nathan Samson said:

C) Not something too expensive (<850euro's ideally, without storage - but including boot disk) - flexible budget here.

If you tell me what country you are based in, i can check local prices and help you pick a parts list

14 hours ago, Nathan Samson said:

F) Must have some expansion options. IE If I decide to put more load on it, replace CPU + add memory + maybe even add dedicated GPU for encoding needs to be a possibilty

I just want to double check if you mean encoding a video like after video editing or transcoding a video so that you can play it on a device that does not support the original format.
video encoding def can benefit from a dedicated gpu but transcoding is very solid on an intel cpu without any dedicated gpu

14 hours ago, Nathan Samson said:

* Case: Jonsbo N3 https://www.jonsbo.com/en/products/N3.html (Supports 8 disks, ITX form factor) - 160 euros
* AM5 platform. Looking at this CPU AMD Ryzen 5 7600 / Ryzen 5 8500G - 200 euros. Probably overkill, but as I said before I don't want to run too old hardware. I want to be able to use this NAS in 5-6 years time, and be able to use it for more.
* 16 GB RAM (1 x 16GB so upgrade path to 32GB) - Probably overkill, but not huge cost - 60 euros
* Powersupply: Not looked too deep yet, but around 150 euros max I would say (500-650 W)
* Boot disk:  SSD M2. Lets throw in another 50 euros.

• solid case
• you really don't need to worry about old hardware since even something a few generations old will defintely be kicking for at least a decade without issues
• thats a good start for ram, try to keep in mind the 2 rules of thumb for ram
  • more is always better
  • You want 1gb of ram for every tb of storage
• just make sure it is a sfx powersupply that has a length under 105mm for your chosen case
• I say just get the smallest ssd you can find that is at least 32gb since hexos does not use the boot drive for anything else. 
  • for me it felt kinda wasteful not buying a 1tb ssd for 50-60 but in all honesty spending more than you have to for storage you can't use is more wasteful
  • I ended up repurposing an old 128gb ssd

14 hours ago, Nathan Samson said:

Which leaves me with around 230 euros for a motherboard.

Question now is, what do I need to lookout for a motherboard, given I want to connect 8 disks to it. From what I can see on my search (knowing little to nothing about motherboard specs), its quite hard to find a motherboard that might support this many disks. So any suggestions for an AM5 compatible motherboard, that is not too expensive, but still would support this use case?
What do I need to lookout for, ie SATA ports, (do I need 8??), do I need to look at PCI slots? (I guess one for the possible graphics card at least?)

Am I stupid for going with AM5, should I use AM4 (seems to have slightly more options, might also reduce price of CPU, but feels too old generation wise to me)

Like psychowards said you can always add more sata slots via an hba later but if you plan to do that you want at least 2 pcie slots that wont interfere with each other physically (if u still plan to add a gpu down to road, ignore this if i convinced you not to bother with a dgpu 😂)

I would not spend a large premium for a board with 8 built in sata ports but i would pay a small premium for it just not to deal with hba since that is also an added expense.

You will want a motherboard that does not use a realtek nic (network interface card)

• this link has information on motherboard specs like number of sata ports or what kind of nic is used
  • on the front page there is a link to a spreadsheet for a similar one but for intel core 200 motherboards if you decide to go that route

I personally think the later gen am4 (g variants) would still kinda be overkill.
100% would skip the non g variants for am4 since they do not have integrated gpus.
almost all the am5 cpus have igpus (except for the f variants which i would very much skip)

One of the reasons why i put so much emphasis on igpu is that it will save you so much money in the long run in electricity costs. An idle gpu does not use a negligible amount of electricity.

[Mobius]

i forgot to mention that the jonsbo n3 only supports mini itx motherboards and you will very much not find one with 2 pcie slots.

[Mobius]

gosh i seriously hate the short edit timeouts for this site

but back to your needs
im sure if we cut back on couple things we can likely fit a jonsbo n5 in your budget, which will fit even more drives
and honestly from my experience the lasting power of a nas is directly correlated with how much more storage i can jam into it lol.

But also you will not be limited to the more expensive and less feature rich M itx motherboard
so you will likely have access to 4 ram slots (up from 2)
multiple pcie slots (up from 1)

[PsychoWards]

1 hour ago, Mobius said:

That cpu most defintely has an iGPU

As for ram speed it really is not a big deal honestly as even ddr3 is within spec. On top of that the user can like he said upgrade if he wants to.

the case he picked the jonsbo n3 only supports sfx psus not psus of the atx size like you rec'd

 

 

Oh boy I was thinking about the 5600...

Good catch with the PSU size! Thanks for correcting those things 🙂

You are right about the RAM it's not needed, but it's wasted potential, if you already go with relativ newish HW, you might want to consider using it to it's full potential.

 

Also +1 for Intel CPU with QuickSync, that's the only reason why I went with Intel instead of AMD in my built.

[Mobius]

13 minutes ago, PsychoWards said:

Oh boy I was thinking about the 5600...

Good catch with the PSU size! Thanks for correcting those things 🙂

You are right about the RAM it's not needed, but it's wasted potential, if you already go with relativ newish HW, you might want to consider using it to it's full potential.

 

Also +1 for Intel CPU with QuickSync, that's the only reason why I went with Intel instead of AMD in my built.

Yeah AMD really makes it difficult to keep track of what each cpu can do. 

I agree 2 sticks are better than 1 in general but i tend to prioritize fewer larger sticks in servers where upgrading is considered. I'm not all that convinced most home servers will even use all that bandwidth 😅

 

[Nathan Samson]

Hi guys, thanks for the feedback.

Couple of key takeways, and my thought process:

7 hours ago, Mobius said:

im sure if we cut back on couple things we can likely fit a jonsbo n5 in your budget, which will fit even more drives

 Case: Yes Jonsbo N5 actually seems better. More motherboard support (ie ATX) + More drives, including 2.5 SSD's is actually a perfect fit.
One problem, I can't seem to find many listings for it...

The normal sites I buy tech do not list it (some of them do have the N3 though).

But for my reference they have it here https://www.caseking.de/en/jonsbo-n5-nas-case-e-atx-black/GEJB-157.html (out of stock though)

8 hours ago, Mobius said:

Depending on what you are using the server for i would actually recommend intel. If running a plex/jellyfin server is important to you, you cannot underestimate the value having a cpu that supports intel quick sync will add. That said if it is of no important yeah def go amd.

Uhm ok. I was under the impression that people favored AMD more now-adays, but that was my "looking for Gaming PC" bias probably... (thats another build for another day, for another forum)
So yeah going intel looks the way forward, as indeed jellyfin with possibility to stream (reencoded) videos on the fly is the use case. (although in practice I don't need the reencoding at the monent)

6 hours ago, Mobius said:

I agree 2 sticks are better than 1 in general but i tend to prioritize fewer larger sticks in servers where upgrading is considered. I'm not all that convinced most home servers will even use all that bandwidth

This is why I went with the one stick for upgradability. Going bigger case and ATX might throw this out of the window, as I can imagine myself now getting a 4 slot RAM solution, and putting 2 sticks in, still giving a path forward.

 

So new (preliminary) spec list (and approx prices, having a quick look around couple of sites, probably can find cheaper if I spend a little bit more time searching)

* Jonsbo N5 NAS case: 220 euros
* Intel® Core i3-12100: 130 euros
* ASUS PRIME B760-PLUS socket 1700 (140 euros, 2 PCI 16 slots, 4 SATA ports, seems to be good enough
* RAM: 2x16GB DDR5-6000 = 32GB: 100 euros
easy upgrade path to 4x16GB = 64GB
I decided not to do 1x32GB for around the same price, having easy upgrade path to 128GB as I really doubt I need that. Even considering the 1GB per 1TB rule.
Even if I reach 128 or more TB (with the 12 possible disks, not impossible), the 1GB per 1TB is probably a good rule of thumb for when you read a lot of data, but when 95+% of the data is rarely accessed I doubt it needs this much of RAM cache
* Boot disk: < 50 euros
* Power supply: Seasonic, or corsair 650W 80Gold plus < 100 euros. -- Not sure how overkill this is? CPU is supposed to be 65W, but 12 spinning hard disks will (theoratically) add some load?

Which brings the total to 740, in budget and with better upgrade path...  Although I might need to include the HBA card for extra SATA slots (although realistically I had that cost with my previous plan as well).

Any (obvious) stupid ideas with this plan?

[Nathan Samson]

One part I might have forgotten in the last calculation is cooling and (extra) fans or even AIO radiator.

Its a bit unclear how many stock fans the case comes with (looks like 3 but its confusing).

Question is, how much cooling (if no external GPU is being used) is needed for this setup. I would think stock cooler on the CPU, plus 3 including fans would do it?

Even if I have to buy a couple of fans, that would not break the bank.

[Joe4evr]

2 hours ago, Nathan Samson said:

One part I might have forgotten in the last calculation is cooling and (extra) fans or even AIO radiator.

Its a bit unclear how many stock fans the case comes with (looks like 3 but its confusing).

Sounds like indeed 3 (but there's plenty of perforation for air to go through).

 

[Mobius]

3 hours ago, Nathan Samson said:

Case: Yes Jonsbo N5 actually seems better. More motherboard support (ie ATX) + More drives, including 2.5 SSD's is actually a perfect fit.
One problem, I can't seem to find many listings for it...

The normal sites I buy tech do not list it (some of them do have the N3 though).

But for my reference they have it here https://www.caseking.de/en/jonsbo-n5-nas-case-e-atx-black/GEJB-157.html (out of stock though)

I think the most common place its available these days is aliexpress but it couldn't hurt to ask that site's support when itll be back in stock

3 hours ago, Nathan Samson said:

Uhm ok. I was under the impression that people favored AMD more now-adays, but that was my "looking for Gaming PC" bias probably... (thats another build for another day, for another forum)
So yeah going intel looks the way forward, as indeed jellyfin with possibility to stream (reencoded) videos on the fly is the use case. (although in practice I don't need the reencoding at the monent)

Yeah im with you in that AMD is wayyyy better for gaming or even general computing. Its nice knowing that intel still has its place so that there is at least some competition.

3 hours ago, Nathan Samson said:

So new (preliminary) spec list (and approx prices, having a quick look around couple of sites, probably can find cheaper if I spend a little bit more time searching)

* Intel® Core i3-12100: 130 euros
* ASUS PRIME B760-PLUS socket 1700 (140 euros, 2 PCI 16 slots, 4 SATA ports, seems to be good enough
* Power supply: Seasonic, or corsair 650W 80Gold plus < 100 euros. -- Not sure how overkill this is? CPU is supposed to be 65W, but 12 spinning hard disks will (theoratically) add some load?

Which brings the total to 740, in budget and with better upgrade path...  Although I might need to include the HBA card for extra SATA slots (although realistically I had that cost with my previous plan as well).

Any (obvious) stupid ideas with this plan?

Look into used 12th gen cpus that are used. In general cpus tend to have almost zero downside being bought used. This way you can likely get a 12500 or higher for around the same exact price and those do have a better intel uhd 770 gpu compared to the intel uhd 730 gpu found in the 12100.

the motherboard you picked has a realtec nic which may give you problems. i would suggest looking for a different motherboard with an intel/killer nic.

i think 650w will not be overkill for a system with potentially up to 12 drives since there tends to be spikes when you first spin up 12 drives.

 

3 hours ago, Nathan Samson said:

One part I might have forgotten in the last calculation is cooling and (extra) fans or even AIO radiator.

Its a bit unclear how many stock fans the case comes with (looks like 3 but its confusing).

Question is, how much cooling (if no external GPU is being used) is needed for this setup. I would think stock cooler on the CPU, plus 3 including fans would do it?

Even if I have to buy a couple of fans, that would not break the bank.

skip getting an aio, its way overkill and adds another point of failure.
stock cooler is more than adequate for the 12100 and if you go used without a cooler something like the artic freezer 36 is a pretty good value when looking at prices in germany

i would just make sure all the lower level fan slots for the hdds are populated (i believe that is 2)
and 1 for the top level for the computing components.

in the future when you add a hba i might zip tie a small fan to it to keep that cool.

[Nathan Samson]

Thanks for all the feedback.

N5 Case ordered. Will order all other components when I get the shipping confirmation (probably in 3 weeks), Will take the 12500 under consideration as well (But Ill check prices when I order, I might jump to the Ultra 200 Series as you suggested earlier).

12 hours ago, Mobius said:

the motherboard you picked has a realtec nic which may give you problems. i would suggest looking for a different motherboard with an intel/killer nic.

What kind of problems? Linux compatabilities?

[Mobius]

so realtek nic in general are pretty notorious for being unstable. the realtek 2.5gb nic in my asus motherboard is known to cause corruption issues with iscusi so truenas straight up disables the drivers for it. I wasn't able to figure out the workaround to turning the nic back on and just ended up using a usb nic temporarily.

I went for the core ultra 265k because there was a pretty good deal for it $220usd if a motherboard was also purchased. Itll probably make significantly less if you are paying the 312 euros i am seeing in germany for a 245k.
 

 

[Nathan Samson]

2 hours ago, Mobius said:

I went for the core ultra 265k because there was a pretty good deal for it $220usd if a motherboard was also purchased. Itll probably make significantly less if you are paying the 312 euros i am seeing in germany for a 245k.

Yeah, I guess prices are generally higher in (western) europe...
I guess wait till the tariffs hit 🙂

[Mobius]

Looking forward to tariffs lowering prices /s

But i think the big difference is the best PC store in the USA, microcenter. 

 

Their prices were around 60% other places.

[Thejs1234]

On 12/31/2024 at 10:00 AM, PsychoWards said:

Hey,

The Ryzen 5 7600 does not have an integrated GPU, so make sure you have one ready when installing Hexos if you decided to use that CPU.

I can confirm that the Ryzen 5 7600 has an iGPU.

More details here : https://www.amd.com/en/products/processors/desktops/ryzen/7000-series/amd-ryzen-5-7600.html