I was ready to get something that could both host my in-house applications and my archival storage. My overall goal was to get some easy, low-noise and low-power usage.
For system I simple set for TrueNAS. I have had quite a bit experience in both Proxmox and TrueNAS Scale from work, and overall I needed something with first-class storage sharing solution, easy-of-use and I am not so interested in virtual machines, so TrueNAS simple lands perfectly. I went for Scale instead of Core. It seemed to me that Scale was the new for for TrueNAS and I am down for getting latest and weirdest.
Specifications
All prices included VAT and shipping cost.
- JONSBO N2 NAS Case 156 USD This was a "nice to have", it was a little smaller than my original choice of Fractal Design Node 304. The JONSBO has a silicon base to reduce vibrations and it really helped with the noise that was resonating in the wooden floor.
- Topton Intel N6005 223 USD Low power, low noise, It had all the SATA ports and I didn't need any funny M.2 adapter to get the drives that I wanted. I was eyeing the new N100, but most of them had 1-2 SATA ports. I would've loved the extra power though, so maybe upgrade in the future if they make some new boards.
- Kingston FURY Impact 64GB 3200MT/s 605 DKK (89 USD) I wanted as much memory, both for Virtual Machines, but mainly for ZFS.
- Be Quiet! SFX L Power 500W 823 DKK (121 USD) I chose the SFX-L over the SFX, maybe because the upgrade side in the fan, so hopefully I could reduce those high-frequency noises you get from smaller fans. Whether this was worth it I don't really know.
- 4x WD RED Plus 3TB Free! Two of them was from my existing NAS archive, and we had some decomissioned ones from work that was gratefully passed on to me.
Total Cost: 589 USD
The case came with a built-in fan for the HDD, but it had an awful high-frequency hum. I bought a Noctua NF-A12X25 PWM 120mm to replace it. Unfortuantly, it was too thick and hit against the SATA connectors on the backplate, so I had to mount it on the outside of the case.
It hovers around 37 watts while not doing anything. It seems like the disks are not going into standby so I would love to get that checked out. I did remember to set all the HDD to go to standby mode, but it might be that all the Apps are running off the harddrives, so as they are writing logs or whatever they never really get inactive.
Talking about low-power I also realised a lot of modern and fairly beefy processors can hit really nice idle power usages such as 7 watts idle on Intel 12th/13th gen: the foundation for building a low power server/NAS by Matt Gadient. I haven't fully checked out all his findings, but if you are you really digging into this problem then I would look here.
In the end, the NAS supports what I need, the noise is near-inaudible to me, it doesn't consume a crazy amount of power, and I really enjoy the size of it!
