New NAS Build

[christmas_jones]

Hi All

Newbie here, so be gentle.

I am looking at building a new NAS for home use, mainly for storage and media streaming. I am a long time user of off the shelf NAS system from QNAP and WD but the DIY approach is new to me. I am planning on installing FreeNAS or NAS4Free.

The system must be energy/power efficient as it will probably be idle for long periods of time. To get an idea of power usage I have been comparing it to one of the new four bay QNAP’s. 29W idle 48W in use.

The system will mainly be used for storage and media streaming with Plex media server installed. There will be need for any transcode as everything is local to the network with no mobile devices being used.

So I could do with some help in knowing which board and CPU would us the least amount of electric.

AsRock C2550D41 or C2750D41
Or
AsRock E3C226D2I with an i3 4130 CPU


If there are any other board/CPU’s out there that maybe better then please let me know. Any help would be appreciated

 

[azazel1024]

I'd consider going with a Haswell Celeron or pentium processor instead of the i3. Saves just an intsy bit more power and costs less. I am looking at going the opposite direction (and going with an i3) as I occasionally have need for medium weight applications to run on my processor, but I run a G1610 Celeron right now and it works extremely well for iTunes server, Calibre server, file serving and backups as well as a few other minor things.

Total system power consumption with a Biostar H67 board (can't recall the model), Celeron G1610, 8GB (4GBx2) of G.Skill Sniper DDR3L memory at 1.2v, Antec Earthwatts 380w PSU, 60GB SSD, 3TB 7200rpm HDD (eventually moving to 2x3TB drives, but buget and I just replaced my 2x2TB array because it was dying) and a pair of Intel Gigabit CT NICs pulls down a total of 21w at idle under Windows 8 and around 50w maximum system draw with the HDD spun up and the CPU at 100% load. Just streaming media it runs around 28w.

A more efficient PSU could likely drive that down by 3-4w and relying on the onboard NIC could likely reduce that another 3-4w.

I can't speak to those exact boards, but my suggestion is, go either uATX or mITX if you can and go with the board that has the fewest features possible, without removing functionality you need or might need. Fewer components is less power consumption and also typically less cost. Same with chipset, don't get a Z87 board if an H87 board can do the job.

As much as I am extremely green and loving low power consumption, just don't spend a lot to get there. Yes, 24/7* adds up, but unless you are power limited or your electric costs are extremely high, mid-atlantic electric rates where I am (roughly 14 cents per kwh between electric and transmission costs) are roughly $1 per year per 1w of 24/7 power consumption. So if you figure 3 years of life, or even lets say 5 years of life out of the system, it makes sense if it costs less than $5 per 1w of power saved on the system. So if you need to spend $100 to drive system power consumption down by 2w...you'll never come close to recouping that cost. Of course it might make sense to spend a little more on some components, as, for exmaple, a good PSU very well might last 10 years, or maybe even somewhat more so long as future technologies don't obsolete it. One of the few reasons I am considering ditching my current PSU and getting a lowish cost 350-400w 80+ gold rated PSU. I can probably get one for ~$50 and it probably would save me 3-4w times maybe as long as 10 years. Maybe even more. So it is at least theoretically possible it may some day pay itself back. Almost as important, then I'll have a backup PSU...and it almost never hurts to have a backup PSU for your computers.

* Unless FreeNAS is missing the functionality, you might want to consider putting the server to sleep during the hours of the day you know you won't use it, if that can be done as a scheduled task. I have a scheduled task on my server to sleep it at 12:45am and then another one to wake it at 6:30am. This is because the number of times I've needed to use it between those hours has been...maybe three times in two years? Easy enough to do a WOL to wake up the server, or walk in to my basement and hit the power button to wake it up. Power consumption goes from 21w to 3w during S3 (probably because of two NICs being active, if in low power mode). Total cost to implement...a few minutes of my times to setup the tasks and to test them out. Saves around $4 per year in electric costs. Minor, but it is totally unnecessary waste.

 

[jegesq]

* Unless FreeNAS is missing the functionality, you might want to consider putting the server to sleep during the hours of the day you know you won't use it, if that can be done as a scheduled task.

It can be done with FreeNAS. I do it with my two FreeNAS boxes as scheduled tasks. You can either shut them down completely, or you can simply issue a "shutdown -h" task, which halts all operations until you issue a wakeup command (or schedule that as a task). Here's a link to a YouTube video which tells you how to schedule shutdown (and which references the -h command as well). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlOoj7s90rY