CPU/Mobo Which Skylake mATX Mobo for NAS (Using Pentium G4400)

Lord Nemesis

Lord Nemesis

Overlord
Skilled
Planning to get the parts for my NAS build. Its going to be loosely based on this

http://www.technikaffe.com/anleitung-332-nas_advanced_2.0_mit_skylake_pentium_prozessor_und_6x_sata

CPU: Pentium G4400

I could go for the same Asus B150-K D3 Mobo, but investigating other suitable mATX alternatives that has the following.

Low power consumption
6 x SATA
USB 3.1 support

I already have a CM Stacker 830 lying around, so, I will be using it for this build. OS will most likely be OpenMediaVault.

Also looking for an efficient 300~450W PSU (Semi-Modular preferred)
 
Anything from the Asus p10s series. No USB 3.0 but has ECC memory support (very important for NAS).

Availability is patchy though. Planning to pick up p10s-m when it is available.
 
Any reason for not going with Haswell? I know of several mATX boards with 6x SATA ports and USB3.1. Power consumption would just be a tad bit higher.
 
I would have loved to go with the Haswell. There are several issues that I have to deal with by going for Skylake (USB Booting issues do to removal of EHCI, LAN drivers etc), but things that are prompting me towards Skylake

1. Skylake ought to be more power efficient than Haswell.
2. LGA1150 platforms and for that matter DDR3 is nearly EOL.
3. I could not decide which CPU to go for in Haswell. There is a Celeron G1840 build on the same site which this new G4400 build replaced and with similar power efficiency. But G4400 is significantly more powerful. I could easily re purpose it when required, G1840, I am not so sure.
4. Not enough price difference to make the weaker and older platform look attractive.
 
dpandey said:
Anything from the Asus p10s series. No USB 3.0 but has ECC memory support (very important for NAS).

Availability is patchy though. Planning to pick up p10s-m when it is available.
Click to expand...

My purpose for the NAS is very different. There is not going to be any RAID and I am not going to be using FreeNAS. It going to be just a bunch of HDD sharing content across the network + Downloads + some other stuff. So no ECC memory for me. I will be getting an 8gb stick of non ECC RAM.
 
Lord Nemesis said:
Anyone seen the MSI B150M ECO available in India?

MSI B150M-ECO

This one is apparently tailored for low power consumption and comes with profile settings in BIOS to switch off power to all unnecessary hardware for home server/nas kind of builds.

Alternatively I am thinking about these.

MSI B150M PRO-VDH

MSI B150M-MORTAR

I have also ordered a couple of these hot swap bays from AliExpress

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/3-5-...ay-Installation-3-5-Sata-HDD/32505810142.html
Click to expand...
http://mdcomputers.in/motherboard-9...ation-series-cpu-max-64gb-ddr4-2133mhz-memory
 
I just realized that USB 3.1 Gen 1 is just a relabeling of USB 3.0 (Superspeed 5Gbps). The higher speeds come with USB 3.1 Gen 2. Even the MSI boards which advertise USB 3.1 Gen 1 are technically USB 3.0 ports only. None of the mATX boards seem to have Gen 2 support even if they have a Type C connector.
 
Lord Nemesis said:
My purpose for the NAS is very different. There is not going to be any RAID and I am not going to be using FreeNAS. It going to be just a bunch of HDD sharing content across the network + Downloads + some other stuff. So no ECC memory for me. I will be getting an 8gb stick of non ECC RAM.
Click to expand...
Then why do you need something this powerful ? Why use a hammer when a thumb would do?
I get 30 MB/s transfers on wireless on a banana Pi NAS that chugs along at a few watts of power and is as stable as they come

You don't need mid end desktop specs unless you intend to use zfs /raid
Also, would strongly recommend OMV over FreeNAS - I switched from freeNAS to OMV over 2 years ago (for the exact same use case) and am a happy camper

At most, you should be getting a NUC with gigabit ethernet
Of course, this assumes that this is a typical home environment use case with at max a few concurrent connections from the NAS and you don't anticipate a multi user environment
 
Last edited:
PS: Do not , i repeat, do not use freeNAS ..it is optimised for zfs - which is a great FS for zero tolerance setups
For home usage however, it is a massive PITA because in the off chance something goes wrong, you will have a hard time accessing those disks from any other OS

While shifting to OMV, I had no choice but to transfer out some 4 odd TB of data over LAN to a spare set of HDDs - A painstaking task that was spread over a few days
This is Something that wouldn't happen with the regular ext4 FS used by other NAS distros
 
As I said before, I have no intention of using Free NAS. It is meant for a different purpose than mine. My OS is going to be OpenMediaVault or XPEnology.

Regarding using Raspberry Pi, I have a Pi 2 already and yeah, theoretically you can build a basic NAS using a USB HDD and it will work, but that's about it. From a practical angle its meaningless for me. The LAN is 100 Mbps and USB is also 2.0 and both are handled by the same chip and apparently they seem to be sharing the bandwidth. Its quite easy to choke it and that is what I found after preliminary tests. If it were just reading speeds for video etc. it might not matter, but I would be copying stuff from my main rig too.

Further my plan is to have to be able to scale to 9 HDD in my NAS. As I am using a Stacker 830, I have 9 x 5.25" bays and I can technically have up to 12 HDD with 4 x 3 modules or even 15 HDD with 5 x 3 modules.
I have 4~5 spare HDD totaling 8~10TB already. I may or may not add all of them at the moment, but I plan to have system in which I can have more HDD and I can switch off/on power to particular HDD based on need.
 
Not the raspberry Pi but I use the Bananapi which is GBE
Obviously though you can't add that many disks to it..
Also since you do need major scalability, you would end up needing a full blown desktop as a NUC won't cut it either

The reason I am so particular about the power draw is because backup power during power cuts takes anywhere between 3-5 mins at my place...
Yet even with a basic UPS, i have not had a single shutdown on the OMV NAS since day 1

Not to mention that the super low TDP and the fact that low current power supplies ten to be efficient, it probably reduces 50W of continuous consumption - Which probably would have otherwise added around 1 KWH a day or 365 a year (which with the super high Maharastra unit prices comes to over 3650/- a year)
 
The power consumption for the G4400 based rig with 6 x 6 TB WD Red in active use is measured at 57W as per the article. That's just about 8-10W higher than Celeron equipped NAS Boxes from QNAP and less than the Haswell Pentium based models.

A DIY NUC or a Mini ITX build based NAS would not scale. Below are quotes that I got for QNAP/Synology NAS boxes that are highly optimized for power consumption. It would take years to offset the difference in cost with the cost incurred due to extra power consumption.

QNAP TS-651-4GB RAM @ Rs. 65000 + tax
QNAP TS-451-1GB RAM @ Rs. 47000 + tax

Synology DS-1515+ Five Bay NAS Diskless, 2GB Memory, Quad 1G LAN @ Rs.90,000/-
Synology DS-1515 Five Bay NAS Diskless, 2GB Memory, Quad 1G LAN @ Rs.80,000/-
Synology DS-416 Four Bay NAS Diskless @ Rs.49,000/
Click to expand...
 
Need feedback on the Corsair CS450M. It's 80 plus Gold rated and costs 5.3~5.8k.

http://www.corsair.com/en-in/cs-series-modular-cs450m-450-watt-80-plus-gold-certified-psu-eu

I have seen some mixed reviews online. Some people reported that it failed after a year or so which is concerning. I have heard bad things about the RM series too.
I have a HX1000 which I have been using for last 8 years and my general experience with Corsair brand has been pleasant.

Also, how is the Corsair CX500M. This is 80 plus bronze though.

Any other 450~500W PSU worth considering costs under 6k and is modular.

One suggestion is CM G550M made by sunil. Any others?

Circle has some cheap 80 plus gold rated modular PSU, but I am not inclined to trust the brand unless the product is from a good OEM.
 
Lord Nemesis said:
Need feedback on the Corsair CS450M. It's 80 plus Gold rated and costs 5.3~5.8k.

http://www.corsair.com/en-in/cs-series-modular-cs450m-450-watt-80-plus-gold-certified-psu-eu

I have seen some mixed reviews online. Some people reported that it failed after a year or so which is concerning. I have heard bad things about the RM series too.
I have a HX1000 which I have been using for last 8 years and my general experience with Corsair brand has been pleasant.

Also, how is the Corsair CX500M. This is 80 plus bronze though.

Any other 450~500W PSU worth considering costs under 6k and is modular.

One suggestion is CM G550M made by sunil. Any others?

Circle has some cheap 80 plus gold rated modular PSU, but I am not inclined to trust the brand unless the product is from a good OEM.
Click to expand...
I have used previously Corsair CX430M @ 3.2k for almost 2 years and its very good. No problems at all.
 
Back
Top