QVR Pro is plenty good enough for me, don’t need QVR Elite, but it needs more horse than a TS-873; mine now runs well on a TVS-EC1080+. Never buy used SAS drives as they would have been run flat out for the entire warranty period (often 5 years) Also noticed you use Classic Start Menu too; I do on my 64GB Win 11 Pro machine; I’ve used that ever since Windows 7! My drive cages arrived the vented type. The front face of them are vented and do draw air thru them. Unlike the photos though, I did not have any holes/venting on the right or left lower sides of the case, and had only small vent holes for the upper fan for the motherboard. SMB/CIFS/Samba — Enables Windows integration so you can access NAS server files in File Explorer on your Windows PC

5+ Drive Bay Desktop Network Attached Storage Systems

Norco ITX-S8 ( specs): Mini-ITX case, 8 x 3.5” hot-swappable HDD bays, 1 x 2.5” internal drive bay, and uses a 1U ATX power supply.The case is SUPER-EASY to build in. The PSU (Flex format) lives in the lower compartment, so there's nothing in the MB area but the 60mm fan. The only thing of note during the test was the LSI 9211 HBA had been left in RAID (IR) mode. Following the very comprehensive instructions I found here: https://nguvu.org/freenas/Convert-LSI-HBA-card-to-IT-mode/ this took less than 5 minutes to flash to the correct version of IT mode firmware. Thanks again for a very complete, informative and comprehensive video, much appreciated. I made the right decision for our needs.

Silverstone DS380B 8 Bay NAS Chassis Small Form Factor - Scan

Thank you for a very comprehensive and albeit a long video, but you covered so much material in that time. Please help with words of wonderful re-assurance of Synology having a present and Future with SEAGATE IRONWOLF Pro 18, 20 and 22 TB drives. Fractal Design Node 804 ( specs): Is a bit larger but also supports Micro ATX motherboards, which opens up a whole new form factor of potential motherboards to consider. It has internal 8 x 3.5” HDD bays, 2 x 2.5” HDD bays, and it’s very price competitive, which makes it a very attractive option to consider. Honestly, I didn’t do one. This is a home NAS, the most ‘stress’ it’s going to get is if 4 people decide to copy a 4K video at the same time. I am confident enough in the build, thermal design and the choice of components that I can skip this step.

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One of the more interesting things I’ve noticed is the staying power of Mini-ITX-sized cases, especially the ones that hold enough hard drives to host a DIY NAS build. I’ve been building my own computers for a really long time and I’m spoiled in that I’m constantly seeing new case designs or revisions of old favorites’ designs on an ongoing basis. But for DIY NAS builds, I’m usually seeing the same cases build after build. Due to the small upper compartment, and the good exhaust ventilation design, a single, quiet 60mm fan is sufficient to keep the CPU reasonably cool. If you don't mind fan noise, put a high-speed fan in there and you could keep a higher-wattage CPU fairly cool. When it comes to NAS cases, the size of the motherboard they can accommodate plays a significant role in determining their differences. ITX and ATX NAS cases differ in this aspect, with ITX cases being smaller and accommodating smaller motherboards compared to their ATX counterparts. This means that ATX motherboards have more PCIe lanes, making them better suited for multi-GPU setups or users who want to use multiple PCIe devices. So if you need a space-saving build, you can see our slim ATX cases for inspiration. How many hard drives can fit inside a mini ITX NAS case? However what eventually moved me to build my 3rd gen NAS was running out of disk slots. The RAID acronym ‘Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks’ is ironic when you have to keep buying larger more expensive disks to replace perfectly good smaller ones in your limited slots! Aside from the internal 3.5″ drive bays, the platform has access to 2-4 additional 2.5″ mounting points for SSDs, making it a great hybrid platform. SilverStone CS381 Top SSD Mounts

Silverstone SST-DS380B 8 Bay Mini ITX NAS Case - Kustom

Intel Core i3 or Xeon CPUs are the best choice for Intel based motherboards. If your budget is tight, go for a standard Pentium or Celeron CPU. Of course this is meaningless if it’s damaged, so the next step was to see what condition it was in. I tentatively popped a fresh FreeNAS 11.2 USB in the port and hit the power button, to my delight, it booted first time – not a single error on POST or Boot. Next I read the SMART data on HGST 6TB drives. ~2500 operating hours, 62 power cycles, no errors. Nearly new! The PRIME H610I- PLUS D4- CSM motherboard is perfect for a home NAS server. It accepts Intel 12th Generation Core i7, i5, i3, Pentium and Celeron CPUs in a 10nm process so plenty of choices. It has a PCIe x16 slot for the RAID card, supports up to 64GB DDR4 Non- ECC RAM running at 3200Mhz, an M.2 PCIe x4, Gigabit LAN, and 4x SATA- III 6Gbp/s ports along with other standard ports. Processor/CPUI know I can’t deploy Synology Servers or replace drives if they will PERPETUALLY alert of “Important data may be lost”. A client would consider this a fireable offense. Have NO confidence in me as their consultant or Synology as a solution to protect their data. I own and have tried QNAP, but HATE the interface… But I MAY have to switch to them for clients [and personally] to avoid these SUPER SCARY alerts. Drive temps have seen a max of 41c and that's at load with the CPU at load creating heat. The CPU with a small noctua low profile cooler (again, i7 11700) has seen 70c as a max temp during a heavy load spike. Averages closer to the 60s under load. Typically cruises with a few streams in the 37-40c range. We don’t need too much power for our NAS server, 300 watts is fine and remember that ATX power supplies are switch-mode, meaning they don’t run at 300 watts all the time. Instead, they regulate the wattage according to load, so you’ll find it will be pulling more like 70 watts during normal operation.