New ultra low power, very basic TrueNAS build

[Jakub1]

I am currently looking for the following for a new TrueNAS build:

• Ultra low power CPU
• ECC memory
• Able to run very basic applications (qbittorrent, speedtest, metube)
• 10G networking

I have picked out the following:

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1275L V3 ($50)
Mobo: Supermicro X10SLH-F ($50)
Ram: 32GB of Micron ECC RAM ($45)
Case: Node 804 ($80)
Boot: 2x Crucial BX500 240gb ($25ea)
NIC: Intel x710-DA2 ($85)
HDDs: 4x Seagate Exos X16 14TB Manufacturer Recertified ($129ea) in Raid-Z2 for storage
2x Seagate Exos X16 18TB Manufacturer Recertified ($189ea) in Raid parity for cameras

Total idle power consumption: 50w~

This should be about $1,000 total for everything including the DAC cables, PSU and CPU heatsink. The only thing I question is whether the CPU is too old or I need more memory. Again I am basically looking for a very very low power system that supports ECC memory and can do basic tasks.

Edit: Final build that was purchased around $1,300 including drives and accessories (DAC, PSU, Heatsink, etc) with updated listed of parts I bought

 

[DigitalMinimalist]

Totally sufficient!

 

[NugentS]

I wouldn't describe that as a very low power system. Its is however way more than adequate to run quite a lot of tasks as its a 4c/8t @2.7 Base

Very low power would be a C3758 or N100, something like that. Possibly one of the PentiumD's

 

[Jakub1]

I wouldn't describe that as a very low power system. Its is however way more than adequate to run quite a lot of tasks as its a 4c/8t @2.7 Base

Very low power would be a C3758 or N100, something like that. Possibly one of the PentiumD's

N100 works, but has no ECC support. I’m also having a hard time finding an Atom C3xxx series that isn’t too crazy expensive.

The combo I have now is $100 for both cpu and mobo. Paying extra for the atom would offset any money saved on electricity. It’s basically a poor man’s qnap/synology alternative with this build that tries to sip power.

 

[NugentS]

And the difference pays for a lot of electrons.
C2000 (of some description) might be practical.

 

[Ericloewe]

C2000s don't seem particularly available these days. Same goes for C3000s, with crazies on eBay asking for more than the price of the same brand-new board you can buy from a Supermicro distributor.

C3000 in general seems to not have really hit the mass replacement stage yet. C2000s are probably getting junked left and right instead of repaired and resold thanks to the silicon bug. Plus shortages have delayed a bunch of upgrades (and even a C3558 can push a lot of VPN traffic for a small office on a modest WAN connection).

 

[Jakub1]

C2000s don't seem particularly available these days. Same goes for C3000s, with crazies on eBay asking for more than the price of the same brand-new board you can buy from a Supermicro distributor.

C3000 in general seems to not have really hit the mass replacement stage yet. C2000s are probably getting junked left and right instead of repaired and resold thanks to the silicon bug. Plus shortages have delayed a bunch of upgrades (and even a C3558 can push a lot of VPN traffic for a small office on a modest WAN connection).

Thank you for this information. It seems like the C3000 is the way to go. Seems very promising for future TrueNAS builds when prices drop and they become more available.

 

[joeschmuck]

Look in the Great Deals section, and you will find other options.

There is nothing wrong with the components you selected above, but I wouldn't call it low power. It's not a 300 Watt machine, but it's also not a 40 or 50 Watt machine.

I do have a question, Why 10Gb NIC? I'm asking because I normally do not see this in a low power machine.

 

[Ericloewe]

You know, minus the X710, it should be a sub-50W machine at idle. My X10SLM+-F does that with more disks, but an i3.

 

[Etorix]

Thank you for this information. It seems like the C3000 is the way to go. Seems very promising for future TrueNAS builds when prices drop and they become more available.

C3000 is a very attractive low-power storage plateform… if and only if you tick all the right boxes: SATA only, and no more ports than the motherboard provides because there's typically a single x4 PCIe slot for any kind of extension (assuming boot duties are on the x2 M.2 slot).

But, as already pointed, second-hand is scarce (and can well come up even more than new if the buyer is not careful!), and we have absolutely no idea when the day of available and faily prices refurbished C3000 boards will come—if ever.

Your planned build is not ultra-low power (merely low), but it is ultra-low cost (excluding drives) and all genuine server-grade components. Well done!

 

[NugentS]

HairyNAS in my signature is a C3758 based Server with 12 disks. 5 * SSD & 7 * HDD
Power useage is 95 Watts with a replication to it going on

 

[Jakub1]

You know, minus the X710, it should be a sub-50W machine at idle. My X10SLM+-F does that with more disks, but an i3.

I am anticipating around 40w-50w at idle as well. For a 5-10 year solution, this build should be sufficient for simple file storage and basic applications. Especially considering the price of the hardware that was picked out. I will reassess the hardware around the 5-10 year mark to determine needs if an upgrade is warranted. Eventually I will be running Frigate, we shall see if the Xeon is capable of handling several cameras at once.

I was planning on buying a N100 Alibox to run Debian server w/ portainer, however I expect TrueNAS Scale will be enough to virtualize Debian and run any docker containers eliminating the need for one. I should have enough horsepower to do all of my required needs, alas being limited to only 4-cores.

I do have a question, Why 10Gb NIC? I'm asking because I normally do not see this in a low power machine.

My current network is 10Gb and I have a few SSDs that I may utilize for mass file transfer. They may or may not have redundancy in the pool, but they will contain files that I do not mind losing. The wear on the NAND storage won't be much of a concern for me as these are drives that are extras handed to me that are just sitting in storage not being used.

I actually also managed to get an offhand X520-DA2. It is less efficient than the X710 I was looking at. They seem to draw an 10W~ at idle with a DAC cable. This would be more of a convenience factor, but absolutely not necessary as the onboard 1GbE NIC is more than sufficient.

Given that I am looking at a low power build, I might actually omit the 10GB NIC unless an absolute need arises.

 

[joeschmuck]

My current network is 10Gb

That is very nice. One day I may migrate there as well.

 

[Jakub1]

That is very nice. One day I may migrate there as well.

I managed to get lucky as the house I purchased had Cat 5E that was wired for telephony purposes in several areas.

I fished through solid core Cat6 and multimode OM4 fiber. This gives me the capacity to run PoE and have both LC + RJ45 connections.

Fiber was a bit more rough as it didn’t like to be snagged or bent compared to copper.

Threw in a few 10G switches from AliExpress and I managed to successfully have a 10Gb network for a relatively very affordable price.

The wife works with several fairly large video files at times, so the transfer among devices was much appreciated and gave me an excuse to upgrade the infrastructure.

 

[Jakub1]

You know, minus the X710, it should be a sub-50W machine at idle. My X10SLM+-F does that with more disks, but an i3.

The build is complete. Thank you everyone. It idles around 50w~ I am very happy with how the build turned out. I ended up going with 4x 14TB Exos X16s for $129 ea off serverpartdeals in a Raid-Z2 config. Then two 18TB in raid parity for the house cameras.

Boot is using 2x BX500s 240gb with a SSD to USB enclosure coming off the rear I/O

 

[joeschmuck]

I fished through solid core Cat6 and multimode OM4 fiber. This gives me the capacity to run PoE and have both LC + RJ45 connections.

Fiber was a bit more rough as it didn’t like to be snagged or bent compared to copper.

When I was a young man I would have done that too. Heck, I probably would do it today as well but running anything in the walls in my current house would be a nightmare. My previous house I ran CAT5E (it was the popular thing back then) everywhere and they all ended up in my basement. I bought a 500' box for $50 USD. That was 16-17 years ago.

Dang it, now I want to look into fiber but I need a new car more than I need fiber. I'll still look to do a little dreaming but I definitely do not need it.