'
Build’s Name: LocalCabeza
Operating System/ Storage Platform:
Debian 14 Forky (testing), kernel 7.1.x
CPU:
AMD Ryzen 7 255H (really just an AMD Hawk Point/Zen 4 based 8845HS with the NPU disabled) - comes with a Radeon 780M iGPU
Motherboard:
n/a (Proprietary)
Chassis:
Minisforum N5 Air
Drives:
1 Toshiba Kioxia XG8-512GB
RAM:
N5A: 2x64GB DDR5-5600 SODIMM (Crucial CT64G56C46S5), 128GB in total
Add-in Card
Minisforum DEG01 dock with PurePower 13m 750w PSU and an AMD Radeon Pro V620, connected via Oulink
Usage Profile:
Local AI inferencing box with eventual task as a 5 bay NAS (once the N40L croaks....)
To be honest, this is more in praising the longevity of the HP Microserver Gen 7 N40L as it survived nearly 15 years of being in nearly continuous service, first as a standalone BYOD server for the first 6 years, then as an iSCSI storage box with a t730 (lasted 2 years from 2018 to 2020), then a t740 (4 years from 2020-2024) and then as a TrueNAS standalone box divorced from the t755 "compute module". It survived going from VMWare ESXi 5.5, then 6, then 6.0U3, then TrueNAS from v11 all the way to v13U6, and then a half-hearted migration to TrueNAS Scale 24.0.5. It is also on its 3rd PSU as the KDM MFX9350 failed after 5 years (well, it didn't completely die as much as it started to brown out powering the drives and caused hardware lockups) and was recently replaced with an FSP270-60LE. After the PSU replacement it was migrated to TrueNAS Scale 25.10.4. Other than some unexplained shutdowns (which was then traced back to the connected APC BE600M2 UPS reporting a battery issue and causing upsd to gracefully shut the machine down) it has been the quiet and reliable NAS box running in the background.
I bought the Minisforum N5 Air (N5A) since I want to have a new NAS box that has some decent horsepower and room to grow the workload...and it's also on sale. Whether the N5A can last 15+ years...is anyone's guess.
(to be continued...)
Build’s Name: LocalCabeza
Operating System/ Storage Platform:
Debian 14 Forky (testing), kernel 7.1.x
CPU:
AMD Ryzen 7 255H (really just an AMD Hawk Point/Zen 4 based 8845HS with the NPU disabled) - comes with a Radeon 780M iGPU
Motherboard:
n/a (Proprietary)
Chassis:
Minisforum N5 Air
Drives:
1 Toshiba Kioxia XG8-512GB
RAM:
N5A: 2x64GB DDR5-5600 SODIMM (Crucial CT64G56C46S5), 128GB in total
Add-in Card
Minisforum DEG01 dock with PurePower 13m 750w PSU and an AMD Radeon Pro V620, connected via Oulink
Usage Profile:
Local AI inferencing box with eventual task as a 5 bay NAS (once the N40L croaks....)
To be honest, this is more in praising the longevity of the HP Microserver Gen 7 N40L as it survived nearly 15 years of being in nearly continuous service, first as a standalone BYOD server for the first 6 years, then as an iSCSI storage box with a t730 (lasted 2 years from 2018 to 2020), then a t740 (4 years from 2020-2024) and then as a TrueNAS standalone box divorced from the t755 "compute module". It survived going from VMWare ESXi 5.5, then 6, then 6.0U3, then TrueNAS from v11 all the way to v13U6, and then a half-hearted migration to TrueNAS Scale 24.0.5. It is also on its 3rd PSU as the KDM MFX9350 failed after 5 years (well, it didn't completely die as much as it started to brown out powering the drives and caused hardware lockups) and was recently replaced with an FSP270-60LE. After the PSU replacement it was migrated to TrueNAS Scale 25.10.4. Other than some unexplained shutdowns (which was then traced back to the connected APC BE600M2 UPS reporting a battery issue and causing upsd to gracefully shut the machine down) it has been the quiet and reliable NAS box running in the background.
I bought the Minisforum N5 Air (N5A) since I want to have a new NAS box that has some decent horsepower and room to grow the workload...and it's also on sale. Whether the N5A can last 15+ years...is anyone's guess.
(to be continued...)
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