No budget for now, and I own the SSDs already I just want to know what’s out there and what other people like.
My current setup is cobbled together from random parts and the HDDs are loud in my bedroom. I want all SSD storage (at least 4x) but with enough CPU/Ram to handle a lot of apps/VMs and some above-average demanding tasks (jellyfin, syncthing) than just being a NAS.
The only other criteria is that I would prefer it to be as small as possible (not rack mount).
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Assume an unlimited budget for now, I just want to know what’s out there.
I mean, if you’re willing to pay the price of a car per SSD they go up to at least 122TB density per drive… (e.g. Solidigm SBFPF2BV0P12001 D5-P5336 – $16K~$20K depending on supplier from a quick search)
I don’t actually recommend that for personal use, but since you were curious about what’s out there, there’s some absolutely crazy shit in enterprise server gear if you have deep enough pockets.
For that kind of money, I would expect the SSD drive to be able to provide some other qualities beyond technical things like capacity/bandwidth/latency.
Some very good qualities.
For that kind of money, I would expect the SSD drive
For that kind of money, I would expect breakfast and a blowie every morning.
For the price of the car I would expect the SSD drive to grow wheels and be able to actually drive it
What you get is something with an acceptable warranty and maybe some support.
What you then realize is what you DON’T have on your consumer gear.
Exceptional qualities that usually go for a high price.
Those are awesome lol what would be a good system to run them in?
EDIT: I feel I need to say I’m not actually going to pay for that, 4x4tb is probably plenty but it’s still awesome.
It looks like the connector is U.2 so I’d look for motherboards that indicate support for that explicitly. From a quick search, it looks like SuperMicro makes some. This is getting out of my area of expertise though; I just know the crazy drives exist…
https://www.bee-link.com/products/beelink-me-mini-n150
I have no experience with this. Just sharing so you have more ideas to think about
OK now that’s cool! Thanks for sharing.
@sic_semper_tyrannis @flork I have a similar tiny PC. There’s a few manufacturers of similar items, some even have like 4 or 6 m2 slots to make excellent little NAS or similar.
From memory, Geekcom (Sp?). have a look on your favourite AliExpress-type mart. Intel N100 or N150 CPUs seem to the thing, but beware of the RAM limits for those if that’s a thing for you. There are some fun AMD ones out there too.
Yeah, that’s not going to work. You’ll have to at least rank your requirements. Is size more important, or is it the number of RAM slots? Also, what is “enough CPU/Ram”?
Also also, “unlimited” will only get you unrealistic things like the 10k+ PCI-E SSDs.
Silence is the only requirement, I just want to know what’s out there that other people like. I prefer small. I own SSDs I am interested in the NAS itself.
Ok, so if you want to do a bunch of drives in a box:
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/FhPzK8/gigabyte-mw50-sv0-atx-lga2011-3-motherboard-mw50-sv0
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/yFWJ7P/crucial-bx500-4-tb-25-solid-state-drive-ct4000bx500ssd1
However, that’s expensive. I would go with spinning disks.
If you want to bring the cost down more,
You can drive the price down more by buying a used system.
The pile of SSDs will be easiest to stuff into a box.
You will need to get creative with cooling.
Thank you that’s probably too big for my tastes but I appreciate the insight.
The last board suggested with 5 ports would handle 4 drives in raidz2.
This is smaller even. https://pcpartpicker.com/product/hRBrxr/asrock-motherboard-970mpro3
I would prefer having the smaller board with the hba and putting 8-10 smaller drives in raidz3. That would give you 6 TB with three drives for failure to prevent loss.
Outside the drives, the cost would be under $200 for the board and the hba.
If you have an old system with two PCI-e 16 ports, then your cost is about $90 before you start buying drives.
I’m doing similar with a DDR3 system and spinning 1 TB disks. It’s fast enough to serve video streams.
enough, a lot, more demanding.
You need to give some sort of guidance here.
Give me the smallest and fastest that you can come up with as long as it is SILENT
I have an ancient Drobo.
Believe it or not, it’s only sound is the fan, which I can’t hear even when it’s on.
SSD will still generate heat, so will need a fan.
You’re requirements are too vague as “lots of apps/VMs” doesn’t describe the expected load. Overall though if you want small just build a mini-ITX system. Then you can put in any x86 chip that fits your needs.
If I/O speed is important the challenge will be getting lots of nvme slots in a small form factor. Many atx motherboards have bifurcated pci-e slots that can be converted to manage 2 nvme drives at once (in addition to on-board nvme slots) but I don’t know if matx boards do that, so if you wanted 3+ drives that would be the first thing to consider. If you just want a bunch of sata ssds there are more options, but all considerably slower.
Silence is the only important aspect, SATA is fine. I see a lot of options out there much smaller than ATX. Here’s one example: https://www.lincplustech.com/products/lincstation-n2-network-attached-storage but like I said I am more curious as to what everyone around here is doing.
NAS only, or storage and workload?
“Home Server” more than “NAS” so I guess, your typical docker apps, but no LLMs or anything. I would like at least 4 hard drives, preferably m.2 but SATA is fine too.
A high-cpu small machine will have noisy fans, there’s no avoiding that. The fans have to be of small diameter so they will spin at high RPM. Maybe you can say what you’re actually trying to run, and make things easier for us.
I gave up on this approach a long time ago and it’s been liberating. My main personal computer is a laptop and for a while I had a Raspberry Pi 400 running some server-like things. It’s currently not in use though maybe later. All my bigger computational stuff is remote. So the software is self-hosted but not the hardware. IDK if that counts as self-hosting around here. But it’s much more reliable that way, with the boxes in multiple countries for geo separation.
That’s not true anymore I’m running a VERY compact setup in an old Asrock Deskmini and the fan is SILENT,the only noise is the HDDs.
Web search shows max CPU power for that unit is 65W. I was thinking of something more power hungry.
If you’re looking for more compact than powerful asustor has this https://www.asustor.com/en/product?p_id=91 12 nvme sticks with 8tb per stick would give you 96tb of storage in that small form factor. Only problem might be how much power you’d get out of that processor but you can bump the ram up to I think it was 96 gigs
Thank you this looks great
