New NAS

Show off your quiet rig.

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vishcompany
Posts: 96
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 1:46 pm

New NAS

Post by vishcompany » Mon May 30, 2016 1:59 pm

Fact is, the QNAP TS-109 Pro II is a very, very good unit. It sports a 500MHz CPU and a whopping 256MB DDR2 RAM. In the 8-9 years it has been running here 24/7 it never ever failed or hung. It also keeps refusing to die, even the power brick is still happy as a lark. Passive cooling, so there is no fan, which could fail.

Why would I want to replace it such a great NAS?
1. Transfer rate max. 20MB/s (down) 12MB/s (up)
2. QNAP developed it's own ext.3 version (sort of ext.3.5, this was before ext.4), which only works within this box. So if it ever fails, all data is lost, unless I get another TS-109
3. For fear of data loss I had a second NAS running next to it, which automatically rsynced twice a week, otherwise doing nothing. Two boxes consume as much juice as one Baytrail or Skylake box, methinks.

So either go for a new QNAP or Synology two-bay box, or try to get something self-made for about the same money (I set the budget to ~300€ without disks). As I like tinkering, it was clear that I would go the second route.

Main objectives for the new box were:
Low power
Run at least 1 SSD (OS) + 2 x 3,5 HDD, if possible, add another 1-2 HDD if I ever feel like it
As quiet/silent as possible
Be able to use an existing ATX PSU (also use existing SSD)

The main challenge was to find the right case. On the shortlist there were the Cooler Master Elite 110, Fractal Design Node 304 and Antec ISK 600. I really liked the Elite 110 for its compactness, but ultimately went for the Node 304 for the possibility to mount up to 6 HDDs and rubber decoupling. I like the looks, but wish, it was a bit smaller.

I went with Skylake, mainly for the possibilty to swap the parts with a Baytrail general purpose PC, if I ever feel like it. H110 offers only 4 SATA ports, so I went for an MSI mobo offering M2 (MSI H110I Pro). If I run out of ports, I still can move the OS to an M2 SSD.

CPU: G4400 (again). It's cheap enough and also proved to be great as a general purpose (web/office) CPU. G3900 would be plenty for a NAS, I guess.

RAM: KINGSTON 8GB DDR4 2133Mhz. Again a more than necessary (but prices have come down). 2 GB should be ok for NAS.

Adding up to € 253,- Off we go.


First try, using an existing be quiet! Pure Power L8-CM 430W, the PC would not start (it used to work ok in my main rig).
Second one waiting in the shelf: Seasonic Platinum SS-400FL2. Turns out, this thing is buzzing like hell. Really loud. Also running quite hot. *sigh*

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Just could not stand it. Stretch the budget a bit and get a SilverStone SST-ST30SF. I really liked this one in my last build. Frees up a bit of space, too.

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Both fotos show already the Noctua NH-L9i, which replaced the stock cooler. Just could not stand it #2 (could hear it outside the closed cabinet, the NAS is sitting in)

Two more shots of the sides open and one portrait. It is a bit hard to photograph this case in a meaningful way.

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It is now running 2x2TB HDD: Seagate Barracuda Green ST2000DL003 (taken out of the QNAP) and Western Digital WD Green 2TB, WD20EZRX. As I hear mixed reports of the new Reds I went for a WD Green, which was still on sale. Disabled the head parking feature. It is really, really quiet. The Seagate is much louder. So the WD is the new data drive and the Seagate only runs for backups.

OS is Debian 8, I access it through serial port or ssh. At the moment it runs a file server and DLNA server. Rsync twice a week. Print server still a goal.

Transfer rate:
120MB/s (roughly). Finally...

Energy:
13,5W: SSD connected, no case fans.
16W: SSD and 2 HDD sleeping
19W: SSD + WD spinning, Seagate sleeping
23,5W: SSD + both HDD spinning

Temps:
After some experiments I settled on taking out the rear fan (it does make a difference) and running the two front fans at 5V. Compared to no fans running this brought down the temps by 5° (CPU) and 3° (drives). (The temps were higher with the Seasonic PSU).

So now it is idling at:
36° CPU socket
32° CPU core
35° SSD

I did not torture this rig. It is sitting inside a closed cabinet with a ca 10cm round hole in the back.

The Noctua cooler took about a week for delivery. By the time it arrived, the stock cooler had smoothed quite a bit. If it had been like this from the beginning, I might have kept it in.

The case is really versatile. Would be fun to pop in an i7+proper cooler and a GPU just for giggles.


Thanks for reading! :-)
Last edited by vishcompany on Tue Jul 11, 2017 1:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

CA_Steve
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Re: New NAS

Post by CA_Steve » Mon May 30, 2016 2:42 pm

Nice :) Have you gone into the BIOS and turned off unneeded devices? Might save another watt or two at idle.

quest_for_silence
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Location: ITALY

Re: New NAS

Post by quest_for_silence » Mon May 30, 2016 10:52 pm

Thanks for sharing vishcompany!
Out of curiosity: did you mount the ST30SF with the fan facing upwards because it runs fanless?

vishcompany
Posts: 96
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 1:46 pm

Re: New NAS

Post by vishcompany » Tue May 31, 2016 3:07 am

Thanks, guys.

I did go through the BIOS once, but only shortly, found nothing then to switch off. Will give it another try. I whish, it was possible to get to the BIOS through the serial port. Which features should I look out for?

Yes, I turned the PSU this way, so the (little) heat it produces can escape upwards and be blown out.

CA_Steve
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Re: New NAS

Post by CA_Steve » Tue May 31, 2016 7:27 am

Wow, this mobo has an uninformative manual as far as BIOS screens go :)

vishcompany
Posts: 96
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 1:46 pm

Re: New NAS

Post by vishcompany » Tue May 31, 2016 8:49 am

Yep, I guess they call it lean. :-)
(The paper pages are tiny, too)

I will try screenshots or some kind of writeup.

vishcompany
Posts: 96
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 1:46 pm

Re: New NAS

Post by vishcompany » Tue May 31, 2016 11:40 am

OK, I did a set of screenshots, the collection can be found here, if anybody is interested.

I disabled the audio controller, which saves ~0,3W. Other than that I don't see much left to disable. (I do use the serial port)

The screenshots also show, how MSI organizes fan control in this (cheap) board. Not very intuitive, but efficient enough, IMO. PWM only for both ports, btw, so no joy with the 3-pin case fans. In this scenario it does not matter.

quest_for_silence
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Re: New NAS

Post by quest_for_silence » Tue May 31, 2016 11:58 am

vishcompany wrote:The screenshots also show, how MSI organizes fan control in this (cheap) board. Not very intuitive, but efficient enough, IMO.

I didn't understand it: may you change those temp thresholds and the relevant duty cycle figures or not?

vishcompany wrote:PWM only for both ports, btw, so no joy with the 3-pin case fans.

I don't think so (despite the SYS_FAN is a four pin header): did you check that actually? Also in the manual?

vishcompany
Posts: 96
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 1:46 pm

Re: New NAS

Post by vishcompany » Tue May 31, 2016 12:13 pm

quest_for_silence wrote:I didn't understand it: may you change those temp thresholds and the relevant duty cycle figures or not?
Yes, it is possible to change those temp thresholds and duty cycles (I actually did change them).
quest_for_silence wrote: I don't think so (despite the SYS_FAN is a four pin header): did you check that actually? Also in the manual?
I did check the manual and tried a 3-pin fan.
In the manual MSI state: "... Therefore, when you plug a 3-pin (Non-PWM) fan to a PWM Mode fan connector, the fan speed will be always maintained at 100%, and that could be noisy."
Plugging in a case fan it behaved as described (100%, no matter what setting).

------------------

Just out of curiosity, I installed CPUburn and gave it a run on both cores. (Htop showed 100% on both cores)
It pushes temps to ~51° and power consumption from 16W to 30W.

CA_Steve
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Re: New NAS

Post by CA_Steve » Tue May 31, 2016 2:48 pm

Yep, the audio controller was my first thought. Hey, there's always the blinky power LED :)

Thanks for the screenshots.

quest_for_silence
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Re: New NAS

Post by quest_for_silence » Tue May 31, 2016 10:45 pm

vishcompany wrote:I did check the manual and tried a 3-pin fan.
In the manual MSI state: "... Therefore, when you plug a 3-pin (Non-PWM) fan to a PWM Mode fan connector, the fan speed will be always maintained at 100%, and that could be noisy."
Plugging in a case fan it behaved as described (100%, no matter what setting).
That's odd because the pinout on the manual is clearly a 3-pin one (for the SYSFAN1).
Thanks anyway! :wink:

vishcompany
Posts: 96
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 1:46 pm

Re: New NAS

Post by vishcompany » Thu Jun 02, 2016 2:04 pm

quest_for_silence wrote:That's odd because the pinout on the manual is clearly a 3-pin one (for the SYSFAN1).
Thanks, Luca, for this comment. It made me check once more.

You are right and I was wrong. My mistake had been, that I had expected the changes in fan speed to take place immediately. Well, it needs a reboot. My bad. Lesson learnt. (I normally do my fan setups with speedfan).

So now the front fans are running off the mobo, I got rid of the cabling for the fan switch of the case, tidied up cabling in general and now the thing looks like this:

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Additional benefit of this setup: The front fans did not start spinning at 5V when cold-booting the system. Not a big problem with a NAS which is supposed to run 24/7, but still. Now the BIOS makes sure, that the fans are spinning. I also defined break points, though I doubt I will ever need faster speeds. Even at 100% CPU load the whole rig takes just 29.5W, temps stay below 50°C.

Happy camper, here. Thanks everybody!

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