My $1886.69 NAS Build
We love numbers, right? So here is a short write up about what I consider a decent NAS build, with pictures, centered around pricing, to give an appropriate perspective of what would it cost you to build your own NAS box in 2019.
It’s been a while since I purchased my good old Synology DS216J disk station. It was a lazy option, nothing to build, just add 2 drives and you are good to go. Since it’s a lazy option, specs were, obviously, abysmal: Dual Core 1.0 GHz, 512MB of RAM. Nonetheless it did it’s job and still does it well.
This station only has 2 bays for 3.5" drives, so I had 2x8TB WD Red PRO drives with Synology Hybrid RAID, providing a total of ~7TB of usable space. Yes, 7TB Sounds like a lot but it’s really not, so after about ~1.5years I started running out of disk space and, largely influenced by https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/ , decided that it’s time to build my own NAS with decent specs, right $/spec ratio and extensibility.
Case: Fractal Design Node 804, $121.28
A proper case is very important for the home NAS build as it determines your extensibility and, mainly the number of drives you can use. I decided to go with Fractal Design Node 804:
This case is a great option and offers a very compact design for what it can fits. What attracted me the most are 8 bays for 3.5" HDDs and 2 bays for 2.5" HDDs/SSDs. I managed to snatch it on Amazon for $121.28.
Storage
Storage is tricky and the most expensive part of any NAS/DAS. For the drive manufacturer, Western Digital is a clear winner for me. Unlike last time with Synology, I have decided to go with their regular Red label 10TB NAS drives instead of the PRO models:
I ordered 3 of these babies on Amazon for $279.99 each.
Ideally I need to have 4x10TB drives for somewhat decent redundancy, and thankfully Best Buy was there to help me out with the 4th drive by having an awesome sale:
— Gasp! But it’s external!?
— Worry not, not anymore:
Oh shucking was satisfying! I always wanted to try it and now finally got a chance. The main concern with shucking is that I just lost my warranty by doing it. The pro (which greatly outweighs the con) is the awesome White label WD drive, which is practically the same as the Red label but half as expensive.
I also got lucky as this drive had modern SATA connector and I didn’t have to mess with the drive’s SATA pins.
System Drive
For the system drive I went with Crucial P1 1TB 3D NAND NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD ($119.95 on Amazon):
SSD Cache
Since performance is important, SSD cache is a must! I went with Samsung 860 EVO 1TB 2.5" SATA III ($147.99 On Amazon):
Board
Board choice was pretty straightforward, case is MATX, all I needed is support for Intel and enough SATA slots, I went with GIGABYTE B360M DS3H, $66.01 on Amazon:
CPU
I figured that for a NAS Server (which will run a couple small VMs with personal projects) modern i8-9 would be overkill so I went with an i5 - Intel Core i5–9400F Desktop Processor 6 Cores 4.1 GHz Turbo, $149.99 on Amazon:
Graphics
I’m not planing to stress load this box thus, humble CPU + humble graphics card, MSI GeForce GT 710 2GB GDRR3, $54.91 on Amazon:
Memory
After consulting with reviews, I have decided to get DDR4 32GB of Patriot Viper, $134.99 on Amazon:
Assembly
FreeNAS was my Operating System of choice:
It’s been a bit over a month since the initial idea, research, and shipment of all components and the final result definitely worth it!
Raw storage: 42TB.
After redistribution (system, cache, Z2 raid) I ended up with ~17TB of usable storage space of 4 x 10TB drives with redundancy that allows any 2 of these drives to fail (special thanks to ZFS) while maintaining data integrity.
Considering that I have 5 empty drive bays left (four 3.5" and one 2.5"), not bad!
As for Synology DS216J, it easily became a local backup for essentials.
More detailed pricing:
