Hi! I’ve never built a NAS before and only one custom gaming PC, so I’d love if any of you more experienced folks could take a look at my parts selection and possibly suggest better options.

Of course first my use cases:

  • Nextcloud
  • Immich
  • Jellyfin
  • Possibly more, similar to the above

Planning on using Truenas with a Raidz (1? - 1 disk failure tolerance) and running most of my stuff in Docker containers. The amount of users will likely stay at or below 3, certainly at or below 5, so it doesn’t need to handle that much.

Here’s my parts list:

  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 Pro 4650G
    • iGPU, power efficient, AM4 so cheaper, performant enough (I think)
  • Case: Jonsbo N3
    • This is the component I started with, since I really like the form factor. It did limit my choice on motherboards heavily though.
  • Motherboard: Gigabyte A520I AC
    • I was trying to go for one with ECC memory support, but at least on pcpartpicker I struggled to find ones at this form factor supporting it. However from reading through Forum threads ECC isn’t critically important for a more “casual” build like mine, just a nice-to-have.
  • Memory: Found about 16GB of DDR4 in my old pc, they worked before so I didn’t bother looking at them in detail
    • Cheap
  • Storage:
    • OS: Western Digital Black SN770 1 TB M.2-2280
      • Where I live the 500GB version is actually more expensive
    • Cache: Samsung 870 Evo 500 GB
      • Cheap enough, although if I can combine this with the OS drive, then even better
    • Primary Storage: 4x Seagate IronWolf Pro 8TB (ST8000NT001)
      • I have to admit, I can’t recall why I settled on these. 8TB seemed good for price-to-size and I didn’t want the server ones despite them actually being cheaper because they’re extremely loud apparently, but why Pro and not non-pro and why this exact model… I can’t recall, I just remember having a headache that afternoon TwT

I realize I left out the cooler and psu as I don’t think they’re particularly relevant here, I can deal with those myself. Price-wise, I am going by German prices and parts availability. On any of the parts listed, or if I forgot anything else though, I would love advice on the quality of my decision and how to improve it, thanks <3

  • monkeyman512@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    9 hours ago

    When you read files from the ZFS filesystem it will automatically keep the files in RAM. This is called the ARC and it is why people frequently recommend having a lot of RAM with ZFS. The ARC is very effective, automatic, and has no risk because it only caches reads. A cache drive is a secondary ARC generally using a fast SSD. The problem is that it generally only helps performance when you are reading lots of small files multiple times. This is because ZFS does so well reading large files from HDD that it doesn’t make much of a difference.

    In short: If you already have the drive and want to play with the feature, go for it. But if your going to spend money on the drive, you will probably be better served spending it on more RAM.