What new gear are you interested in?

[Dylan]

Title - just curious what new DIY / Home lab / NAS hardware has your attention recently?

[Mobius]

I still want a jonsbo n5 but outside of that the 120+ tb ssds are what i see in my dreams 😅

[Duncan Innes]

It's not so much new gear for me, but I'm looking for anything which maximises M.2 slots.  I have never bothered to have or build a NAS before now, but the power available at this point is pretty amazing, so going all-flash seems key for me.  I used to track how filesystems were going with tiered storage, as I planned slow spinning rust tier and a modest amount of SSD for fast tier.  But these days I just don't see the need for HDDs in there, so tiered storage no longer seems necessary.

I do like the idea of the Jonsbo N5 with water cooling though 🙂

[Dylan]

Not an advert but I thought this was really informative especially for the budget conscious:

 

Edit to add that I thought the DAS/SFF combo was pretty cool and tagging @ulfn @Sonic

 

[ulfn]

4 hours ago, Dylan said:

Not an advert but I thought this was really informative especially for the budget conscious:

 

Edit to add that I thought the DAS/SFF combo was pretty cool and tagging @ulfn @Sonic

 

Thanks for the video! GMKtec was actually the brand I considered before getting my PocketNAS. Interesting with a small main unit combined with the external drive case. I might by the way have good use for this video to help me setting up my own NAS properly 😀

[ulfn]

New gear?

Yes! I’ve just got a Raspberry Pi 5 to play with for a second unit placed elsewhere, with a USB drive for storage, OR as a separate device for implementing  Nextcloud. There is a Nextcloud PI OS for this.

I even found a wooden case for the Pi, to make it not look like computer gear.

[Sonic]

8 hours ago, Mobius said:

I still want a jonsbo n5 but outside of that the 120+ tb ssds are what i see in my dreams 😅

120+ TB is a lot 😀. I will start with 4 x 4 TB in raidz1. I will reveive my brand new Lincstation N2 next week and I am looking forward to have 10 TB net storage. 10 TB fast SSD storage and a 10 gbe NIC will bring my HexOs NAS to the next level. 

[Sonic]

10 hours ago, Dylan said:

Title - just curious what new DIY / Home lab / NAS hardware has your attention recently?

I am waiting for indepth reviews of the Minisforum N5 (pro) and WTR Max. Both are interesting devices. I am also reading a lot about oculink NVME boxes. This is a link to the one from Aoostar, but also other brands have them on the roadmap.

https://aoostar.com/products/aoostar-tb4s-oc-usb4-oculink-4-slot-m-2-nvme-ssd-enclosurepcle3-0-x-1-single-slot-up-to-800mb-s-support-thunderbolt-4?variant=50145471889706

 

[Sonic]

I almost forget Minisforum MS-A2. Also a lot of performance in a small box. 

[Mobius]

23 minutes ago, Sonic said:

120+ TB is a lot 😀. I will start with 4 x 4 TB in raidz1. I will reveive my brand new Lincstation N2 next week and I am looking forward to have 10 TB net storage. 10 TB fast SSD storage and a 10 gbe NIC will bring my HexOs NAS to the next level. 

The power savings compared to 12 hdds and reduced noise is just mouth watering. 

Fast ssd storage sound like such a treat, what do you plan on using yours for?

[Sonic]

Mainly as a power efficient NAS to store files, pictures and movies. I will run HexOs as Proxmox VM with NVME passtrough. I also run Proxmox Datacenter Manager in a LXC container. My Lincstation N1 will be my Proxmox Backup server. I use spinning rust only as offline storage and as backup target. The spinning rust is activated only when needed using Cron jobs (shutdown) and Wake-on-LAN.

The Lincstation N2 (and also my N1) uses only 6 to 9 watts in idle.

 

 

 

[Sonic]

10 hours ago, Mobius said:

I still want a jonsbo n5 but outside of that the 120+ tb ssds are what i see in my dreams 😅

What do you plan on using 120TB for?

[Mobius]

i have over 50tb of personal blu ray rips and linux isos
with so many more blu rays i want to add.

I'm eventually gonna combine my old server and current hexos machine (which has an empty 50tb)
into one bigger 100+ tb server.

once it gets that big itll also be used to replace google photos and computer storage.
I'd get to stop purchasing anything more than the base storage for macbooks and phones.

[SpencerP]

I'm backing the new ZimaBoard 2 and look forward to trying many things. One is to get HexOS running on Proxmox.

[Sonic]

48 minutes ago, SpencerP said:

I'm backing the new ZimaBoard 2 and look forward to trying many things. One is to get HexOS running on Proxmox.

excellent platform to try a lot of things. 2,5 gbe NIC's is a really nice upgrade. Also nice to experiment with 3d printed cases

[Sonic]

16 hours ago, Dylan said:

Title - just curious what new DIY / Home lab / NAS hardware has your attention recently?

Did you also spot some interesting new hardware?

[Sonic]

4 hours ago, SpencerP said:

I'm backing the new ZimaBoard 2 and look forward to trying many things. One is to get HexOS running on Proxmox.

Review Nascompares:

https://nascompares.com/2025/05/16/zimaboard-2-review/

 

[Dylan]

5 hours ago, Sonic said:

Did you also spot some interesting new hardware?

Not especially which is why I posted the question. Was hoping a few folks would chime in about new devices being considered. Glad I posted the question as there is really good feedback!

 

13 hours ago, ulfn said:

New gear?

Yes! I’ve just got a Raspberry Pi 5 to play with for a second unit placed elsewhere, with a USB drive for storage, OR as a separate device for implementing  Nextcloud. There is a Nextcloud PI OS for this.

I even found a wooden case for the Pi, to make it not look like computer gear.

Please share the link to the wooden case - that'd be cool to see.

[Dylan]

11 hours ago, Sonic said:

I am waiting for indepth reviews of the Minisforum N5 (pro) and WTR Max

That WTR Max is crazy. I'm really curious how loud that thing is under load (spinning disks/fans) especially compare to the WTR Pro's we have.

[ulfn]

10 hours ago, Dylan said:

Please share the link to the wooden case - that'd be cool to see.

So, here’s the link to my Raspberry Pi 5 walnut case. I’ll write more about the Pi in my own topic.

https://barebaric.com/en/shop/barebaric-raspberry-pi-5-case-made-from-real-oak-or-walnut-wood-1#attr=14,2,3

[Sonic]

10 hours ago, Dylan said:

That WTR Max is crazy. I'm really curious how loud that thing is under load (spinning disks/fans) especially compare to the WTR Pro's we have.

Let the reviews enter the room 😀. I think the WTR Max, the Zima Cube and the N5 (pro) are only the beginning of series of new NAS / SFF server innovations. I expect to see a lot of new concepts in 2025 / 2026.

[Sonic]

BTW, Robbie from Nascompares announced that he will visit AOOSTAR in October 2025.