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Hi Team,

I wanted to separate my HD storage from my workstation to a DIY NAS (FREENAS,OPENFILER..etc)

MY requirement was
The new case/motherboard shall able to support > 4 HD
MITX casing to cut electric cost..
A motherboard able to support this Appliance (NAS)
SATA2 or USB3.0 is must to avoid bottlenet during transfer
Build in Gigabit LAN.
Have extra PCI slot for WLAN connections if require.

Any recommendation will be much appreciate as i dont want to throw my build into recycle bin after few year..

A Mini-ITX motherboard with >4 SATA ports (and an enclosure to accommodate the mobo and drives) may be tough to find. If you're willing to go micro-ATX your choices expand considerably, as there are quite a few decent micro-ATX boards on the market with 5 or 6 SATA ports. Buy an efficient PSU, put a low power CPU in there, and enable CPU power management, and your power usage should be pretty reasonable.

Newegg has a couple of Lian-Li Mini-ITX cases with many drive bays like the $120 Lian-Li PC-Q08 (reviewed here), but I agree that Micro-ATX cases would be cheaper and more plentiful.

There are some interesting Mini-ITX motherboard+CPU options.
The $125 Asus E35M1-I has six SATA III ports with the appealing AMD Zacate E-350 APU.
The $187 Jetway JNF99FL-525-LF has six SATA II ports with the Intel Atom D525 CPU.
The $140 Zotac H67ITX-C-E has two SATA III ports and four SATA II ports. Its LGA1155 socket would accept a $57 Celeron G530 or other Sandy Bridge processor.

Nearly-universal 1x4 GiB for $20 or 2x2 GiB PC3-10600 for $24 or 2x4 GiB PC3-12800 for $40 (CAS 9, 1.5V) 240-pin DDR3 desktop memory should work with the Zacate and Sandy Bridge options, but the Atom board would require 2x2 GiB of 204-pin DDR3 laptop memory.

Even a small energy efficient ATX power supply like the $48½ SeaSonic SS-300ET is likely to be overkill for this low-power application.

In micro-ATX, there are many possibilities. A micro-ATX tower case like the $118 SilverStone Temjin TJ-08E (reviewed here) or a flimsy $35 case could do the trick.

Zacate still offers an appealing low-power solution like the $127½ Asus E35M1-M Pro with included E-350 APU.
You could consider Llano in socket-FM1 like the $120 Asus F1A75M Pro with a $50 A4-3400 or $45 A4-3300.
You could consider socket-AM3+ like the $112½ Asus M5A88-M with a $65 Athlon II X2 260.
You could consider Sandy Bridge in LGA1155 like the $130 Asus P8Z68-M Pro with a $57 Celeron G530.

If you don't already have some old parts lying around to re-use, either Zacate or Sandy Bridge would be the most appealing option. Atom is slightly slower and much more expensive than Zacate while using slightly more power, so there's no good reason to consider Atom for any applications anywhere. Socket-AM3 processors are more power-hungry than Sandy Bridge. Socket-FM1 APUs use less power than Socket-AM3 CPUs, but you don't really need the graphics performance that Llano provides.

just brew it! wrote:

A Mini-ITX motherboard with >4 SATA ports (and an enclosure to accommodate the mobo and drives) may be tough to find. If you're willing to go micro-ATX your choices expand considerably, as there are quite a few decent micro-ATX boards on the market with 5 or 6 SATA ports. Buy an efficient PSU, put a low power CPU in there, and enable CPU power management, and your power usage should be pretty reasonable.

Hi ,

Sound realistic //:) NAS typical follow by slot of HD , USB slot and last is the LAN too.

Is there any good case + motherboard for this ? I will like to have a NAS where it dont have bottlenet in term of IO , CPU wise i think Intel is much in favor..(I'm an old AMD timer)

mghong wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

A Mini-ITX motherboard with >4 SATA ports (and an enclosure to accommodate the mobo and drives) may be tough to find. If you're willing to go micro-ATX your choices expand considerably, as there are quite a few decent micro-ATX boards on the market with 5 or 6 SATA ports. Buy an efficient PSU, put a low power CPU in there, and enable CPU power management, and your power usage should be pretty reasonable.

Hi ,

Sound realistic //:) NAS typical follow by slot of HD , USB slot and last is the LAN too.

Is there any good case + motherboard for this ? I will like to have a NAS where it dont have bottlenet in term of IO , CPU wise i think Intel is much in favor..(I'm an old AMD timer)

CPU wise just about anything is powerful enough. A dual core Atom or E-350 is more than enough for simple file sharing. This will allow you to run your NAS at extremely low power. The only reason I would go with more CPU power would be if you were doing ZFS and in that case it's more for it's memory requirements than anything else.

More CPU would also be advised if you plan to do RAID-5. But I would advise going RAID-1 instead of -5 anyway (if you're even planning to do RAID at all).

My motherboard is the X7SPA-H from Supermicro. The CPU comes included, it's mini-ITX, fanless, has 6 SATA ports built in, dual gigabit NICs (although I got a separate Intel NIC since it works better with jumbo frames), and has a PCIe slot:

http://www.google.com/products/catalog? ... CD8Q8wIwAw

I have a not-quite NAS setup here using this atom motherboard + Arch linux running a RAID array of 1 TB drives. It's a not-quite NAS because my main PC accesses the drives using ATA over Ethernet (AoE) instead of a network share like NFS or SAMBA.

It is extremely stable and quite fast. I use a pair of gigabit network links that run in parallel using the AoE software. I use suspend to RAM on my main PC to save power when I'm not using it, and the main PC comes back up every time (I've been running 38 days since my last kernel upgrade). The Atom is not a speed demon, but it can saturate 2 Gigabit links from the server to my main PC using software RAID-5 in Linux, so that's good enough for my purposes.

The Atom board I'm using is a little bit older now (bought it in early 2010) but it is fanless, has a PCIe expansion slot, and has 6 SATA ports that I am using for 3 HDDs in the RAID array and 1 old SSD that has all the system software. If I were to build a system like this today I'd probably grab an integrated bobcat board as long as it had lots of SATA ports and a decent disk controller.

JustAnEngineer wrote:

Newegg has a couple of Lian-Li Mini-ITX cases with many drive bays like the $120 Lian-Li PC-Q08 (reviewed here), but I agree that Micro-ATX cases would be cheaper and more plentiful.

There are some interesting Mini-ITX motherboard+CPU options.
The $125 Asus E35M1-I has six SATA III ports with the appealing AMD Zacate E-350 APU.
The $187 Jetway JNF99FL-525-LF has six SATA II ports with the Intel Atom D525 CPU.
The $140 Zotac H67ITX-C-E has two SATA III ports and four SATA II ports. Its LGA1155 socket would accept a $57 Celeron G530 or other Sandy Bridge processor.

Nearly-universal 1x4 GiB for $20 or 2x2 GiB PC3-10600 for $24 or 2x4 GiB PC3-12800 for $40 (CAS 9, 1.5V) 240-pin DDR3 desktop memory should work with the Zacate and Sandy Bridge options, but the Atom board would require 2x2 GiB of 204-pin DDR3 laptop memory.

Even a small energy efficient ATX power supply like the $48½ SeaSonic SS-300ET is likely to be overkill for this low-power application.

In micro-ATX, there are many possibilities. A micro-ATX tower case like the $118 SilverStone Temjin TJ-08E (reviewed here) or a flimsy $35 case could do the trick.

Zacate still offers an appealing low-power solution like the $127½ Asus E35M1-M Pro with included E-350 APU.
You could consider Llano in socket-FM1 like the $120 Asus F1A75M Pro with a $50 A4-3400 or $45 A4-3300.
You could consider socket-AM3+ like the $112½ Asus M5A88-M with a $65 Athlon II X2 260.
You could consider Sandy Bridge in LGA1155 like the $130 Asus P8Z68-M Pro with a $57 Celeron G530.

If you don't already have some old parts lying around to re-use, either Zacate or Sandy Bridge would be the most appealing option.

Atom is slightly slower and much more expensive than Zacate while using slightly more power, so there's no good reason to consider Atom for any applications anywhere. Socket-AM3 processors are more power-hungry than Sandy Bridge. Socket-FM1 APUs use less power than Socket-AM3 CPUs, but you don't really need the graphics performance that Llano provides.

Wow..this was quite good recomend at least some of those match my tast.. yummy
Did i really need an Z68 chipset ? Asus P8Z68-M Pro for SATA2 and USB3 feature .

I have totally 3 machine with me , 2 of them was listed at my sginature , another was atom machinese ] from HP but it was limited which i plan to use for torrent stuff .

But existing i have 3 HD which plug in my workstation and i can spare out 2 (500GB seagate,WD) of them to start this NAS ...cut cost..

just brew it! wrote:

More CPU would also be advised if you plan to do RAID-5. But I would advise going RAID-1 instead of -5 anyway (if you're even planning to do RAID at all).

I believe RAID is the way to go for performance and reliability ..?? or simple 1 hd backup another hd....

chuckula wrote:

My motherboard is the X7SPA-H from Supermicro. The CPU comes included, it's mini-ITX, fanless, has 6 SATA ports built in, dual gigabit NICs (although I got a separate Intel NIC since it works better with jumbo frames), and has a PCIe slot:

I have a not-quite NAS setup here using this atom motherboard + Arch linux running a RAID array of 1 TB drives. It's a not-quite NAS because my main PC accesses the drives using ATA over Ethernet (AoE) instead of a network share like NFS or SAMBA.

It is extremely stable and quite fast. I use a pair of gigabit network links that run in parallel using the AoE software. I use suspend to RAM on my main PC to save power when I'm not using it, and the main PC comes back up every time (I've been running 38 days since my last kernel upgrade). The Atom is not a speed demon, but it can saturate 2 Gigabit links from the server to my main PC using software RAID-5 in Linux, so that's good enough for my purposes.

The Atom board I'm using is a little bit older now (bought it in early 2010) but it is fanless, has a PCIe expansion slot, and has 6 SATA ports that I am using for 3 HDDs in the RAID array and 1 old SSD that has all the system software. If I were to build a system like this today I'd probably grab an integrated bobcat board as long as it had lots of SATA ports and a decent disk controller.

In Malaysia ,we dont have anything from supermicro and dual gigabit NIC was only can find in heaven (Out of malaysia) , since the market for NAS DIY was lesses ..

My Atom machinese was totally handycap..refer to my blog post).. i will use it for solely torrent../megaupload stuff .. separate it to another VLAN (future plan).

Have you considered adding a PCIe x1 SATA controller card to your existing Atom-based board to allow you to connect up to six SATA devices?

It looks like you can purchase a pre-assembled NAS more affordably than you could build one from completely new components.

JustAnEngineer wrote:

Have you considered adding a PCIe x1 SATA controller card to your existing Atom-based board to allow you to connect up to six SATA devices?

It looks like you can purchase a pre-assembled NAS more affordably than you could build one from completely new components.

Previous i was consider of adding functionality on my old ATOM but it only have a PCi slot with low profile available and the case itself only can support 1 HD and 1 CDROM(which i can replace it with another HDD )..

Going to the max for this ATOm , the most is i swap the motherboard to a bigger spare casing and buy in a PCIe card and put 4 HDD and get it run ..but still it PSU was only 100W..can it support up to 4 HDD ?

Netgear product was good it but limited was there and we can't customnize and add CPU/Memory if needed... It was the world of DIY

This was my motherboard

chenbro makes a micro atx case that has a 4 bay hotswap. its not itx but at the same its not that big of a difference. and if you're going openfiler/linux route i'd avoid and motherboards with Realtek NICs since linux doesn't really play nice with realtek. So to solve that problem i say use a supermicro itx motherboard or if you're willing to go up to a micro atx go with a Intel s1200bts or the supermicro equivalent. If your worried about the number of LAN ports there is a 1155 supermicro board that that 4 lan ports built into the motherboard with or without IPMI. Send me a message if you have any server part questions.

case:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811123154
s1200bts:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813121526
supermicro itx:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813182233
supermicro 4 lan:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813182258

Just got a compaq presario S5180AP , hook up the power and try to test it guess...only CPU spin and stop after 2 seconds..

I think i just got myself a M-ATX casing with dead motherboard..

Shall I migrate my Atom in MIni-ATX into this M-ATX casing was it possible ?

My Windows Home Server (which could just as easily run Linux or FreeNAS or whatever):

Athlon LE-1660
Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2
2GB DDR2
6x 1TB WD Green drives
Antec Sonata 2 case
Corsair 400CX power supply

With slow fans, the only thing you can hear are the hard drives thumping away. Power consumption is under 100W. These components are all obviously obsolete now, since I built it almost two years ago, but they've all got modern counterparts.

Go with Llano and you would be under 40 watts. Zacate could be less than half of that.

JustAnEngineer wrote:

u would be under 40 watts. Zacate could be less than half of that.

Let me test out my Atom first , at least it have 2 SATA port which can still serve up to 4TB...

FuturePastNow wrote:

My Windows

Home Server (which could just as easily run Linux or FreeNAS or whatever):

Athlon LE-1660
Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2
2GB DDR2
6x 1TB WD Green drives
Antec Sonata 2 case
Corsair 400CX power supply

With slow fans, the only thing you can hear are the hard drives thumping away. Power consumption is under 100W. These components are all obviously obsolete now, since I built it almost two years ago, but they've all got modern counterparts.

My ATOm was running an 100W power adapter (Same as laptop) ... i think it can survive for time being till extra storage is needed.

I try to search from amazon and neweggs abouta PCIe x1 SATA controller card , will it a good buy because i only have PCIe X1 slot..
and it was a Atom motherboard can it support this extra bus/bandwidth ?? Still i wonder can my existing power supplier can hold up another 4 Sata drive..

If can't maybe later i will Zacate or LLnao..?

JustAnEngineer wrote:

Have you considered adding a PCIe x1 SATA controller card to your existing Atom-based board to allow you to connect up to six SATA devices?

It looks like you can purchase a pre-assembled NAS more affordably than you could build one from completely new components.

Hi JustAnEngineer ,

I was thinking of giving it a try , shall i get a SATA Controller Card as you mention to plug into my Atom box with PCI-e X1 ? will it limited the bandwidth ..
If it was ok to fit and run as NAS i dont mind to get it from US as Chrismas gifl for myself