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Perfect home NAS, or collect mini-ITX server with 4 HDD


Despite the fact that the habrasoobshchestvu already crammed reviews of boomburum and home NAS devices, I would venture to present my vision, because in the end, in my opinion, the device turned out to be quite interesting.

Prerequisites


First, a little about infrastructure. In our family, large and cumbersome desktops are not welcome, in which you can stuff a bunch of screws and thus get enough disk space. My wife and I live on two-three-year-old laptops, with screws standard for 60 GB capacity for those times. With such a space, you are not particularly clearing up, but with the active development of torrents there is a need not only in volume, but also around the clock. ) I really didn’t want to leave the laptops on for the night, they still make noise, you bastards. So they started thinking about a dedicated rocking chair, and at that time I really wanted the solution to be as cheap as possible. Thus, in the requirements for a hypothetical device loomed:

The first solution was (and we used it for a long time) a bundle from an Asus WL-500gP router with Oleg's firmware and an external screw in the USB box. For the router, there are quite advanced rocking chairs for almost all networks: torrents, eMule, etc. The noise characteristics were also up to the mark: the screws in the box were almost unheard of, the router was absolutely silent. But in the process some flaws were revealed:

And then one good man took and gave me three 750Gb screws. And now it is time to read the reviews.

Market


Naturally, I carefully read everything that I could find reviews about NAS on Habré and on the web. Given that I have three 3.5 ”screws, the picture loomed not so rosy, my own toad gut rebelled against having to give about a thousand dollars just for the“ box for screws ”.
In the process of marketing research were considered:
Synology :
Cube Station CS 407e , priced at about 13000-18000 r on the Yandex market, CPU at the level of my router is 266MHz, 64bit @ 133, with floating point, Memory: 64MB, in general, a castrated device.
Disk Station DS409 + , the price on the Yandex market is about 25,000, there is already a normal processor of 1.2 Ghz, 256MB of memory.
It was also possible to look at Thecus n4100pro already mentioned by Bumburum, which costs about 20,000 and built AMD AMD Geode embedded CPU (the specification on the site could not be found), but the sums in any case turned out to be quite impressive for me, and I started looking for alternatives.
Why not build such a NAS yourself, based on the mini-ITX platform? I asked knowledgeable people, is there a mini-ITX package in nature that can accommodate three or more 3.5 ”HDDs? I was promptly suggested that this is: Chenbro ES-34069 .

Unfortunately, I did not find a single analogue, I didn’t wander around mini-ITX.com and seller sites on eBay. The corps was then sold only in one place in Moscow - in Tradition for 9500. Expensive, but having estimated that in sum, the same 9,500 + 4,000 mothers on an atom + 1000 memory = 14000–15000 turns out, which is much more interesting than 25,000. Plus - standard x86 platform and no restrictions in terms of the possibility of using operating systems.

Platform selection


The next choice was the choice of platform for the motherboard.
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I was going to buy one of the mothers on the Atom + ION platform, for example, one of the mothers of ZOTAC IonTX -..., and save on the processor, but ... all the same knowledgeable people threw a comparison of the performance of the Atom, VIA Nano platforms with Intel Celeron processors. Here it is: http://www.fcenter.ru/online.shtml?articles/hardware/processors/25048

I will give only one picture showing the overall performance of Atom processors in comparison:



So, if not Atom, then what?
The heat dissipation of “full-fledged” Intel processors began with 65W. There was a feeling that they would warm up very much in my not very spacious case. And the hint comes again. AMD has a set of economical processors Athlon X2 4450e, 4850e and 5050e with a heat release of 45w for Socket AM2 +. Will I find a mini-ITX mother for this socket? Yes, even with 4 SATA ports?
Found! Several suitable at first glance mothers:

A bummer is that none of them are in Russia.

An absolute favorite is the first issue. 6 sata ports, RS780MN chipset, but ... it is still on the Coming Soon website, and the research took place in June. What remains? Albatron caused serious doubts as a producer, his acquaintances were already scolding him. I have never heard anything about Jetway before, but the reason for it was that along with Zotac, Via, Nexus and MSI it is on the list of manufacturers on mini-itx.com. We look:
Jetway NC81-LF - AMD 780G + SB700 chipset, ATI Radeon HD3200 video, 1 IDE + 4 SATA, 2 Gigabit LAN, WiFi! .. And for all about $ 190, but unfortunately at that moment I could not buy. None of the "sellers" in Russia then did not carry it.
The choice was Jetway JNC62K-LF, MCP78S chipset, Nvidia 8200 video, 1 IDE + 4 SATA, 2 gigabit LAN, $ 160, eventually bought on eBay from this seller.

Logistics


Thus, with a config like decided:

An additional internal 2.5 'PATA screw, on which the system stands, was ruthlessly picked out of a portable Transcend Storejet + 40pin adapter that is 44pin - 300 r on the Savel

Total: 20,000 p.

At first glance, the same eggs are the same as the NAS hardware.
But if to compare, this device is more versatile, more powerful in terms of CPU and memory, allows for upgrades and instead of proprietary software involves installing a general-purpose OS: even Windows, even Linux, even Freenas. The performance of the CPU and the integrated graphics allows it to be used as a media center (the chassis provides for mounting an IRDA receiver), and the presence of two LAN connectors on board as a router. In short, the mass of options. )

If you need to drive performance tests, explain what and how, I'll do it. )

Photo


Well, a few photos of the resulting device:

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/68214/

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