U-NAS NSC-800 +Pentium G4600T+Asrock Rack C236 WSI

[PalixPanur]

Looking for some advice on the below build. The goal is high capacity inside a small formfactor chassis, with low heat and low noise.

o CPU: Intel Pentium G4600T 35w tdp
o CPU COOLER: Noctua NH-L9I
o MOTHERBOARD: ASRock C236 WSI (M-ITX)
o CHASSIS: U-NAS NSC-800
o POWER SUPPLY: Seasonic SS-350M1U
o MEMORY: 16GB (2x Kingston ValueRAM 8GB VR21E15D8/8)
o STORAGE POOL: 8x 8TB WD white labels, shucked from WD mybooks - RaidZ2 (Can't get Easystores)
o OS DRIVE: 2x SanDisk Ultra Dual USB Flash Drive 32GB - mirrored (connected to the internal USB 3.0 header using a USB 3.0 header to dual USB 3.0 female adapter)
o FANs: 2x Noctua NF-S12A PWM
o EXTRA CABLES: extension for ATX 12V and ATX 24pin, CableCreation 18inch Sata cables, StarTech 2 Port Internal USB 3.0 Motherboard Header Adapter Cable (USB3SMBADAP6)

The build will solely be used as a fileserver, no services, VMs or transcoding will be done on this server.

Questions:
1. I've seen people suggesting to replace the NSC-800 two back fans - What would you suggest? Noctua NF-S12A?
2. Any disadvantages to using a 4-pin PWM fan splitter cable like this? Board only has two 4 pin ports.
3. I've heard about needing extension cables for the Mobo power connector and power button - will I want extension cables for other things i.e CPU and sata power?
4. What length Sata cables would be ideal for this case?

Anything else I should know before tackling this build?

Cheers,

 

[EffrafaxOfWug]

I use a couple of these cases. Whether or not you replace the fans is really up to how quiet you want it, the supplied ones are fine if you're not concerned too much with noise. I used one such chassis with them and a Y-splitter.

You'll definitely need an extension cable for the ATX connector; probably not for the 12V aux connector but it will still be a tight squeeze around the SATA ports..

Can't speak for SATA cables since I use an HBA and SAS cables which simplify cable routing greatly - I assume you're going to be going direct SATA port > SATA port with this motherboard. At a guess you'll need four 50cm and four 30cm ones for the shortest distance from the motherboard to the backplane, but the key here will be flexibility; there's very little room between the SATA backplane and the fan wall so you will need thin cables that can survive a 90deg bend. Silverstone make some utterly tiny SATA cables like so which might be worth investigating. They're expensive, but a build in a case this small everything you can do to save space will save your hairline.

 

[PalixPanur]

I use a couple of these cases. Whether or not you replace the fans is really up to how quiet you want it, the supplied ones are fine if you're not concerned too much with noise. I used one such chassis with them and a Y-splitter.

You'll definitely need an extension cable for the ATX connector; probably not for the 12V aux connector but it will still be a tight squeeze around the SATA ports..

Can't speak for SATA cables since I use an HBA and SAS cables which simplify cable routing greatly - I assume you're going to be going direct SATA port > SATA port with this motherboard. At a guess you'll need four 50cm and four 30cm ones for the shortest distance from the motherboard to the backplane, but the key here will be flexibility; there's very little room between the SATA backplane and the fan wall so you will need thin cables that can survive a 90deg bend. Silverstone make some utterly tiny SATA cables like so which might be worth investigating. They're expensive, but a build in a case this small everything you can do to save space will save your hairline.

Thanks - I think I will replace the fans. The Fileserver will likely be in the living room for now, so want it as quiet as possible.

Considered using a SAS HBA, but decided I wanted to keep the one PCIe port free for an eventual 10GbE card.

Those cables look amazing, but as you've said - they're very expensive. I'll do a bit of digging around and see what else is out there - and might bite the bullet if it comes to it.

 

[K D]

If you are buying the case from UNAS, it comes with 8 slim sata cables. You don't need to buy any extra.

See my build log for details

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/zeus-v2-u-nas-nsc-810a-x10sl7-f-e3-1265-v3.13678/

 

[PalixPanur]

If you are buying the case from UNAS, it comes with 8 slim sata cables. You don't need to buy any extra.

See my build log for details

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/zeus-v2-u-nas-nsc-810a-x10sl7-f-e3-1265-v3.13678/

Thanks for your response KD - I have been reading your build, very impressive!

My NSC-800 came today, but unfortunately came fitted with SAS Looks like they took the sata cables in bunches of 4, cut the heads off and wired them up to a SAS head. So back to square one for the cables, a shame because they look just as thin as the $20 Silverstones.

See below

 

[K D]

That's an 8087 breakout cable. Useful if you are using a HBA. But since you plan to use the onboard sata ports you may have to buy them separately.


I've used these jn several builds. They are cheaper than the silverstone ones.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IBA3ITK/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_pCy1Ab59KX5SR

Edit: hit post before I finished typing.

 

[PalixPanur]

That's an 8087 breakout cable. Useful if you are using a HBA. But since you plan to use the onboard sata ports you may have to buy them separately.


I've used these jn several builds. They are cheaper than the silverstone ones.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IBA3ITK/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_pCy1Ab59KX5SR

Edit: hit post before I finished typing.

Thank you! I've now ordered everything, and have now updated my parts list at the top

 

[TomUK]

Is 16GB enough memory for a 64TB ZFS pool?

 

[PalixPanur]

Is 16GB enough memory for a 64TB ZFS pool?

From what I've read the old 1GB of ram per 1TB of storage rule is total nonsense, it's never been suggested by the ZFS team - only by third party software that use ZFS - I.E FreeNAS. I've read ZFS devs that tell you 4GB of ram would be fine for 100TB of storage, if you don't use dedupe and don't need much of an ARC cache.

The more memory you have, the more benefit you'll get from the ARC cache - but you can offload that by using a SSD as a L2ARC cache, which is way more cost effective per GB of cache and makes more sense when your reads are mostly larger files, which would fill up the ARC cache too fast.

I might add an SSD or two in the future, but I don't really expect my usecase to require much of a cache to be honest.

 

[TomUK]

I only ask as I'm using 8gb of memory with a 16tb pool - no fancy ZFS features just a straight fileserver with no VMs - I agree the 1GB per TB is not true in this scenario, but I don't see any SSDs on your spec list for L2ARC.

What OS / Distro you going to be using?

 

[PalixPanur]

I only ask as I'm using 8gb of memory with a 16gb pool - no fancy ZFS features just a straight fileserver with no VMs - I agree the 1GB per TB is not true in this scenario, but I don't see any SSDs on your spec list for L2ARC.

What OS / Distro you going to be using?

I don't plan on making a L2ARC cache as yet, don't think I'd make much use out of it currently. I might add one in next year, when I plan on getting my VM server up and running. Right now my use will just be a basic fileserver, limited concurrent access and mostly random reads - so a cache wont benefit me much.

Have you got your ZFS server up and running, or are you still in the planning stages?

Currently planning on going FreeBSD - but I've heard ZFSonLinux is pretty much feature transparent with ZFS now, so might consider going the Linux route.

 

[TomUK]

Yeah I've been running for about 5 weeks now, no issues so far, running latest Freenas

I have a single Sata 840 pro for read cache that only gets really used when spinning up a large number of VMs on my main system in a short period, as they pull a lot packages from the freenas box during build - but its not really needed in my setup tbh, just had it sitting in a draw so used it!

I will be adding more memory to my setup before I run anything other than a basic file server - as things are quite marginal right now for me.

 

[PalixPanur]

Yeah I've been running for about 5 weeks now, no issues so far, running latest Freenas

I have a single Sata 840 pro for read cache that only gets really used when spinning up a large number of VMs on my main system in a short period, as they pull a lot packages from the freenas box during build - but its not really needed in my setup tbh, just had it sitting in a draw so used it!

I will be adding more memory to my setup before I run anything other than a basic file server - as things are quite marginal right now for me.

Ah yeah - I did look at FreeNAS, but I don't need any of the fancy GUI's and I prefer to do things myself, be more in control and know how it was setup.

I plan to use Proxmox for VMs in the future (On a separate server) converting base images for the different OS's to templates, and deploying the VMs via those. That way the templates can be cached as the data wont change, and they will be read frequently. The changes made in the VMs after deploying are stored in a seperate file that will be read off the mechanical drives.

That's the idea at least, haven't put it into practice yet, having only one expansion slot means deciding between a L2ARC cache and 10GbE, so might go the 10GbE route

 

[TomUK]

Yeah go 10Gbe if you can only do one, caching can be improved by adding ram when needed anyway