I’m looking for some recommendations to improve my homelab. But first a bit of history to explain where I’m at and where I’m going. I currently have a super old Odroid C2 and a Raspberry Pi 4B. Everything is working great, but I’m missing two things in this setup: -The ability to transcode -A NAS Now a little bit about me, I’ve been using Linux for more than a decade, so I know how to do stuff, but when it comes to hardware, I have close to zero knowledge… So I was a bit surprised when I plugged 2 external HDDs on my rpi and it shutdown them after a few minutes. I found out that it was a power supply issue, so I did the first thing that came to my mind at this time: I bought another HDD with external power supply, to then find out that having a self powered and an external powered HDD would still fail (although it took longer).
So now I know my mistakes, I should have gone with a NAS instead. I checked the Synology NAS and found out NAS are actually quite expensive. I’m looking for at least 4 bays. I’ve been looking at some DIY NAS, but I’m a bit lost. I found some builds using a Jonsbo N2 that seems cool but at the same time I’m reading the fans are always running at full speed and I’m afraid that the power consumption will skyrocket.
So to sum up, I would like to have a NAS, ideally that can transcode and is low power. In the beginning, I wanted to have a NAS and a mini-PC that can transcode to replace my Odroid C2. But it seems the NAS are far more expensive than the mini PC. What are the recommendations here?
-Synology (Can it transcode?)
-A DIY (Jonsbo with an ITX board that can transcode)
-A DIY (Jonsbo with an ITX board just powerful enough for a NAS) + a mini PC
-Something else?
My budget was 500€, but it seems I won’t be able to do much below 700€
Why don’t you get a server? You can pickup a old desktop for a fairly reasonable price and then install proxmox. From there you will need a pcie sata card and some drives. Create a new TrueNAS VM and pass though the sata card with virtio. You will have a virtual NAS and then you can install whatever you want in other VMs
Alternatively you could do just TrueNAS but if you are to the point you are worrying about transcoding you should go ahead and get going with virtualization.
I would have, but this is all about the power consumption. Getting an old PC, I’m afraid to be at least around 100W…
I use an Intel NUC with a recent(ish) Intel CPU that’s good for transcoding and not bad on power. Then a 4 bay DAS. You can either get something with hardware RAID or without and do it in software. I run Debian but another OS might be better for you.
Got any recommendations for a good DAS with a fair price, either new or used?
I’m looking for something to place three 22 TB drives in, eventually to be expanded in the future, so I’m looking for a DAS with at least three 3.5" bays.
I bought a used QNAP TR-004. Seems to do the job but I didn’t realise it doesn’t support migration or expansion which is a bummer. Expansion in particular, I bought 3 8tb drives so got an empty bay that will be awkward to fill when needed.
The 4 HDDs alone will do at least 60W, no matter what you connect them to.
CPUs have excellent idling capabilities, and you can control and customize fans.
You may save like 10-20W with a low power PC but you also give up a lot of features — HDDs in a cramped enclosure with one 50-80mm fan going crazy vs having 2x 120mm fans spinning slowly for example.
You also have to figure out offsetting the initial costs — how soon will the money you spend on hardware will be recovered from the power bill savings? If it takes 10 years to break even it may not be worth it to you.
Indeed, this is something I need to take into account
Not really unless you are buying a monster. For instance, the i7-6700k has a TDP of 91W. If you go with a Intel i5-6500 it was a TDP of 60W.
If you want really efficiency you could go with a Intel N100 as it has a TDP of 8W and is much newer.
Look at mini-PCs like the Lenovo Tiny series. These can be had for very little on the used market, and don’t use much power (<10W typically, although I don’t have any mechanical HDDs in mine).EDIT: Obviously missed that you meant just a single device for everything. SFF PCs usually have a few SATA slots, and their power usage and price on the used market isn’t too bad.
Actually I wanted to have a NAS and another more powerful server. But this is because I thought NAS were some cheap basic servers… When I saw the price I thought I might as well have a single more powerful server doing NAS + transcoding. I haven’t made my mind up, I’ll check the Lenovo Tiny, thanks
