Help with Setting Up a NAS for Home Use, repurposing old PC, total newbie

[ectomaniac]

Hello everyone!

I'm looking to set up a NAS storage system for my home (1 User 90% of the time, 3 users max), but I have no prior experience with this. I have an old PC that I’m considering using for the task, but I’m unsure if it would be suitable for a NAS setup.

Here are the specs of my old PC:

• Processor: AMD 1950x Threadripper

• Motherboard: ASRock X399 TAICHI sTR4 (SATA 6Gb/s, USB 3.1/3.0 ATX)

• Graphics Card: EVGA Nvidia 1080Ti

• RAM: 62GB DDR4 3200 C16

• Power Supply: 750W PSU

• Storage:

  • Samsung 960EVO - 1TB PCIe NVMe

  • XPG SX8200 - 2TB PCIe NVMe

  • 2.5TB Seagate HDD

• Network Adapter: TP-Link TG-3468 Gigabit PCIe Network Adapter (not sure why this is in the build)

I’ll likely need more storage, but my main concern is power consumption, especially with the Threadripper. Also, do I need a GPU for a NAS setup?

I’d love some recommendations on how I can make use of this existing hardware or if I need to add more components to make it work efficiently as a NAS. How should I proceed with setting this up? Should I reformat the system before installing something like HEX OS?

If this PC is not ideal for a NAS due to power concerns or inefficiency, I’m also open to suggestions for affordable hardware that would work with HEX OS (preferably under $1k for both the NAS storage and system).

Lastly, I have some basic questions since I’m new to this:

• We use a projector for home cinema (Xiaomi Mi 4K Laser Projector with 3 HDMI ports, 1 USB 3.0, Audio in/out, S/PDIF, Ethernet in).
  Would I connect the projector directly to the NAS or link it via the home network?

Sorry for the basic questions, and thank you to anyone who takes the time to read and help!

[PsychoWards]

Hey,

Idle consumption of the CPU is quite high, however if that's the only reason you are looking for another server, you can run your current server for a couple of years until those 1k$ would be payed off due to the lower idle power of another CPU.

Hexos requires 1 dedicated drive just for the OS, you cannot install anything else on it and it is not usable in Hexos. A 16GB SSD is enough, everything higher is wasted capacity, so I would suggest to look for another smaller SSD as boot drive.

Hexos is currently only working with at least 2 drives of the same type and size to create a pool. Pools consisting of 1 drive are currently not supported.

So to use your current drives you need at least 1 other 2.5TB HDD and if you use both of you SSDs to create 1 Pool, it will only take the size of the lowest drive, 1TB in this case.

Please make sure your current and all future HDDs are
CMR and not SMR drives. If it's an SMR drive, please replace it beforehand, because you will have very slow write speeds (single digit MB/s) after writing a couple of GB.

Also once a pool is created you cannot change it's ZFS type afterwards. Hexos currently supports mirror (2 drives) and RaidZ1 (at least 3 drives). You cannot expand a mirror pool, however you can expand a RaidZ1 pool.

Therefor it is crucial that you decide now what you want as a ZFS type and get your drives accordingly.

There is also no write cache if you plan on using one of the SSDs as a cache.

 

You do need a GPU to install Hexos and afterwards you need it if you want to de/encode your media. Since you mentioned your beamer, you could use Plex or Jellyfin to stream your media to any device and thus you would profit from a GPU if you are not streaming in the native quality.

You would also connect your projector to the network or a PC but not to the NAS directly, neither via ethernet (to difficult to setup) nor via HDMI (there is no video player in hexos).

 

My recommendation would be to set it up with your current HW, use it and test it and see for yourself if it fullfils your needs.