Ahh... making a list of your spare parts and realising I had more than I thought. TL;DR at the bottom. This ended up much longer than I intended. I'm trying to put together a few different machines from the parts I already have, while hopefully selling my current main PC to free up some cash. The three systems I'm aiming for are: A small, light gaming PC to replace my current main machine. A new NAS to replace my ancient Synology DS211j. A small gaming PC for my nephew (this is the lowest priority). Light Gaming PC; I still play modern games, but I'm perfectly happy running lower graphics settings if it means I can build something smaller. I was running Assassin's Creed Shadows on the i5-4690K, RTX 4060 on the H81N board. It was actually... okay. Mostly low settings, the occasional stutter, but playable on a 65" TV over HDMI. I'm not chasing ultra settings. NAS (This is where I'm stuck); My current NAS is a Synology DS211j (2-bay, 2×2.5TB, Marvell Kirkwood 1.2GHz single-core with 128MB RAM). It's painful to use now. At the moment I have: Plex Server running on a Mac Mini The Synology purely acting as storage I'd really like to replace both with a single machine that can; Run Plex Server Download torrents directly Act as my file storage That's all I really need it to do. I did try Plex and torrenting directly on the DS211j, but it's simply too slow. It struggles to load a torrent client, never mind actually doing anything useful. My current idea, I was thinking about using: Gigabyte H81N i5-4690K DDR3 2×16TB IronWolf Pros One SSD for the OS (I was thinking Unraid) I also wondered about adding NVMe cache drives using a PCIe adapter card, with the idea of eventually running a 4-drive adapter. However, after doing some reading, it looks like the H81N doesn't support PCIe bifurcation, so that idea probably dies there. The two Z390 boards feel like they'd be wasted as a NAS, and from what I've read they'd only support x8/x8 bifurcation anyway (so, two NVMe drives rather than four?). So my questions are: Is the H81N/4690K actually a sensible NAS build? Would NVMe cache even make much difference for my use? Should I instead be looking for a different mini-ITX motherboard that supports bifurcation? Or am I massively overthinking this? TL;DR Using the parts below, what would you build? I'd like to end up with: NAS (Plex Server, torrenting and storage) Light gaming PC Smaller/lower-end gaming PC (for my nephew) I'd like to keep all three builds fairly compact, especially the NAS, and ideally use as much of what I already own as possible. The parts marked (**) are from my current main PC, which are simply listed for comparison reason. I’m selling those. And not to put the money back into these systems. What says the clever people? Code: Mobo: ASUS ROG STRIX Z390-I GAMING ASUS ROG STRIX Z390-I GAMING Gigabyte GA-H81N RAM: Corsair 2x16GB DDR4 3000Mhz 16-20-20-38 (cmk32gx4m2d3000c16) Corsair 2x8GB DDR4 3200MHz 16-18-18-36 Corsair 2x8GB DDR3 1600MHz 10-10-10-27 (cml16gx3m2a1600c10) CPUs: Intel i9 9900K Intel i7 9700K Intel i5 4690K GPU: Gigabyte 4060 Low Profile EVGA GTX 980ti SC Palit GTX 970 PowerSupply: HDPlex GaN 250 Corsair CS750M Corsair TX650M (INSIDE the NZXT H1 Case) 650W SFX 80 Plus Gold NVME: Kingston NV2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 Internal SSD 2TB M.2 2280 Kingston A2000 (SA2000M8/1000G) SSD NVMe PCIe M.2 2280, 1 TB Lexar NM790 4TB SSD, M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4x4 NVMe 1.4 Lexar NM790 4TB SSD, M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4x4 NVMe 1.4 Samsung 970 Pro 512GB Gen 3.0 x4, NVMe 1.3 ****** ? ? SSD: Kingston SSD 480GB Samsung SSD 830 256GB Crucial M4 256GB Crucial M100 256GB Crucial MX500 2TB CT2000MX500SSD1 Crucial MX500 2TB CT2000MX500SSD1 HDD: Seagate Ironwolf Pro 16TB Seagate Ironwolf Pro 16TB 2 x 2.5TB-ish something or other in Synology NAS Cases: Open Frame Case 'bench' ATX NZXT H1 V.1 mITX Phanteks Eclipse P200A Lazer3D HT5 AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D (**) Kingston Fury 64GB DDR5 (**) ASUS ROG STRIX X670E-A GAMING WIFI (**) MSI RTX 3080 Suprim X (**) Thermaltake Toughpower GF3 Snow 1200W (**) Phanteks N7 drgb (**)
You can buy add in cards for NVMe that don't need bifurcation that have a Pci express lane switch chip, this is how I could have had 10 Nvme in my x570 NAS you need to look for cards with a PEX chip, amazon, aliexpress etc. starting from 60quid, looking for cards with the following chips for example there are other from the likes of asmedia too. PEX8749/8747 for gen 3 PEX88048 (8 nvme) 88024 (4 Nvme ) for gen 4 These will drop in a 2 lane slot and still run all Nvme, obviously at speeds limited by lanes so more lanes in the slot the faster but in a NAS unless you have more than 20Gb LAN its fine as you can only get on and off so fast. Me personally, I built a NAS and it was awesome, powerful etc, but only used it for router, storage and the odd game server, just decommissioned for a minisforum N5 and it is so much better, so small, so silent, much lower power, yes I have lost some of the flexibility but not a lot. N5 air looks a decent box, would probably be more powerful than something built from your lower end parts and more compact.
I'd suggest: - 9900K for the NAS without a dedicated GPU, probably best if it has 32GB RAM for dockers and other apps, but 16GB might work - 9700K for your nephew with the 980Ti or the 3080 if you just wanted to re-deploy it with 16GB or try to make it up to 32GB - 7800X3D with the 4060LP in a small ITX case unRAID ... well if you have two m.2 slots you can have your cache as a mirror, and then the 2 x 16TB as unRAID array with a parity and a data drive. The way unRAID works, is you configure the 'folder' to be array, cache, cache->array, array->cache. So when reads and writes go into the 'folder' that defines where the data is read/written. With the '->' pairs, a cleanup task overnight runs 'mover' to move the real location while still making it appear in the 'folder'. I have a single 1TB NVMe in my unRAID, and I run the docker apps off it exclusively. That data needs to remain on the cache for speed, so it's just set to "cache". Setting it to "cache->array" would only run it to the slow drive. What I should do (and keep not getting round to, unfortunately) is then setting up the docker backup tool plugin; what it does is on a rolling basis stop each docker, and *copy* a backup of the data folders from cache to a specific backup location on array. That's probably more what you want also, so having two cache drives in a mirror is not essential unless you want to have a mirror for your data before the backup occurs (i.e. you're willing to roll-back upto 24 hours). My media stack dockers, their own data files are on cache, and the media folder itself is on array. Also, while unRAID in the latest version *does* support installing to a SSD, you can still run it off a USB stick like it always has. Or, a SATA m.2 or 2.5" drive in a USB caddy, which you could connect to one of the internal USB headers by using one of these https://www.amazon.co.uk/StarTech-com-USBMBADAPT-Female-Motherboard-Header-Black/dp/B000IV6S9S (or a USB3 version) could be the target drive. Given unRAID works perfectly acceptably from a USB stick, you don't have to throw an NVMe slot at it at all.
Another option for your NAS, meandmymouth is selling a just-add-disks DS380 NAS for a bargainous price, which I've also previously owned, and run unRAID on. The case fits inside a Kallax cube for size reference, and had plenty of power for my media stack.
I didn’t know that about unraid, being run off USB. Useful! As for hardware, I can’t really spend more money certainly not more than the odd fiver here or there. So meandmymouths NAS is out of reach. And the hardware I have listed with ** im intending to sell. I only have the full atx board for the 7800X3D. So wouldn’t be able to use that in a small build. I’ll keep looking at it see where my options lie
Alrighty! - Sell the 4670k with the 970 as a full system on Facebook locally or something, be fine for Minecraft and Roblox for someone on a tighter budget - 9900k with the 4060LP as your mini ITX system - 9700k with the 980ti for your nephew - Sell the 7800X3D, mobo, GPU and the DDR5 for meandmymouth’s server and have leftover monies! Alternatively the 9700k as your server and sell the 7800X3D chip for a 7600 or 7500f or something and make that the nephew system. Also, selling the 3080 and your current ATX mobo should free up enough for an ITX board for the 7800X3D. Few options now, so I’m sure you will find inspiration somewhere in it!
