Silent/quiet small NAS. Need help with cooling, PSU and case
Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2018 4:23 am
I looked around what cases are available and only two seem to be a choice for me: Cooler Master Elite 110 and Chieftec IX-01B / IX-03B. The Chieftec can hold 1 HDD, the CM 3 HDDs. Chieftec is extremely small, CM is bigger, but I don't think that should be a problem. I want the case to not be a problem when moving to another flat or trying to find a place for it in a small room. Small and light. Both cases allow for good passive cooling, but only CM allows for big fans to be mounted - 1x120 and 2x80 in comparison to 2x50 in Chieftec.
The parts I plan to put inside are:
A 4-core Celeron J or N mini ITX motherboard or one that has Celeron C or 15W AMD APU. Passively cooled. It's unlikely that I'll go for Celeron C or APU.
1/2 x 2GB DDR3L
1x 3.5" Seagate Skyhawk, there's some possibility this will grow to 2 HDDs in the future. Max capacity I would buy currently is 8-10TB.
Maybe an SSD for OS and another HDD in the future, but very unlikely.
Maybe some (2?) fans.
I'm planning to run a network filesystem (has to be able to saturate 1Gb/s and in future 2.5Gb/s or whatever consumer NICs' limits are then), backup and a torrent client on this. There may be dozens of thousands of torrents loaded simultaneously sometimes, I think that's the only risk performance wise, but it seems to me 2000 passmark points and 2-4GB RAM should be plenty. If not I could use a Celeron or Pentium G with Arctic Cooling Passive 12 heatsink which supposedly can cool CPUs with up to 35W TDP.
I'm guessing a picoPSU-120, a Chinese DC-DC (these go even up to 250W for the price of the picoPSU) or a Chieftec DC-DC added to the case (the brick is 85W) should be both cheaper and better for this system than a passive ATX PSU. It will also reduce heat buildup inside the case in passive setting. How much wattage should I be looking for in terms of DC-DC unit's rating?
What sort of wattage should I be looking for? The power bricks that seem to be available in my location and that priced sanely are FSP/Fortron 30W, 48W, 60W and 75W, Seasonic 60W and local Chinese rebrand 84W (I have a similar unit for my monitor and it seems well built, ie. no noise, right weight and size, but it's small and gets hotter considerably more than others, it's either normal for these units and will result in less durability (not a big problem for me) or in reality it's power potential is a bit lower than FSP or HP with the same rating). Bricks with more Watts are extremely expensive and will probably be noticeably noisier. Ideally 60W would be enough as I could buy a good brand for a good money. Which of these will give this machine enough power to survive anything it can go through?
Is it a good idea to cool this fully passively? The only thing I care about is HDDs, anything else can very well have temps near the recommended limits, I don't care, but HDDs' longevity is of importance to me. If not using fans will result in HDD life shortened by a year or more, I don't think I'll do it unless forced to (by fe. having to put the NAS in the bedroom). There's someone running 2xWD RED passively for 3 years in an identical machine without failures here: https://jmtd.net/hardware/phobos/
If not, how do I cool the HDDs well enough and still keep the machine dead silent or close to dead silent? I'm on budget, I won't buy fans that cost as much as a Noctua, even a Scythe/Antec is a bit too expensive if buying more than one. For 50mm fans (in case of Chieftec case) I could buy two Fander Roxo 5015L FRX3-5015L, but I have no clue whether they would help anything with cooling the HDD nor whether they would be quiet enough.
These are the fans I have on hand that could be used and aren't very loud: 1x Lian Li LI121225SL-4 120mm, 2x Arctic Cooling AF9225L 1500RPM 12V (their full diameter is 93mm, 80mm between one screw and the other), 1x Arctic Cooling Arctic Fan Pro TC 1000-2500RPM 12V (80mm full diameter, 67mm from one screw to the other). All are 3pin.
I can buy 3pin resistors and I have a 2.5" fan controller with 3 fan slots Akasa Fan Control Jr.
I use the Lian Li fan and the Akasa fan controller to cool HDDs when connecting them via USB, so I'd prefer to not use them for this unless it's really worth it, then I'd just buy a resistor and a cheap fan or use no fan for this purpose instead.
In Chieftec's case there's also a possibility of attaching a 120/140mm fan to the case with plastic cable ties. Doesn't look great though and increases the size of the case, so it's not as appealing as before.
I will be periodically connecting to this NAS a few other HDDs to check their SMART. If possible I'll take one SATA and one power cable (and one 3pin if a fan is needed) out and hot plug them without turning off the NAS. Otherwise I'll open the case put the HDD in and hot plug or turn off the device, plug the HDD, turn on, turn off again, swap to another one and so on. The last option is not my favorite. Anyway, doing this easily would be an additional pro when choosing a case. This NAS will also do as a troubleshooting unit (things like data recovery, data transfer to a new disk etc.) if something goes wrong with any HDD I have, as I don't have any other computer to which I could attach a 3.5" SATA disk and my USB3-SATA3 cable doesn't allow me to read SMART data.
I build this NAS solely because of noise reasons. I will get rid of it once SSDs are cheap enough to just have this much data in my passively cooled PC. I don't want to pay much for this since I might get rid of it even as soon as in 3 years. I'd ideally just put it in a place I can't hear it from, but I can't warrant I won't end up in place where it causes problems to a roommate or where I have to keep it in my bedroom, so silence has to be thought through.
What do you think and recommend? Sorry for a lot of text, but I tried to describe the situation.
The parts I plan to put inside are:
A 4-core Celeron J or N mini ITX motherboard or one that has Celeron C or 15W AMD APU. Passively cooled. It's unlikely that I'll go for Celeron C or APU.
1/2 x 2GB DDR3L
1x 3.5" Seagate Skyhawk, there's some possibility this will grow to 2 HDDs in the future. Max capacity I would buy currently is 8-10TB.
Maybe an SSD for OS and another HDD in the future, but very unlikely.
Maybe some (2?) fans.
I'm planning to run a network filesystem (has to be able to saturate 1Gb/s and in future 2.5Gb/s or whatever consumer NICs' limits are then), backup and a torrent client on this. There may be dozens of thousands of torrents loaded simultaneously sometimes, I think that's the only risk performance wise, but it seems to me 2000 passmark points and 2-4GB RAM should be plenty. If not I could use a Celeron or Pentium G with Arctic Cooling Passive 12 heatsink which supposedly can cool CPUs with up to 35W TDP.
I'm guessing a picoPSU-120, a Chinese DC-DC (these go even up to 250W for the price of the picoPSU) or a Chieftec DC-DC added to the case (the brick is 85W) should be both cheaper and better for this system than a passive ATX PSU. It will also reduce heat buildup inside the case in passive setting. How much wattage should I be looking for in terms of DC-DC unit's rating?
What sort of wattage should I be looking for? The power bricks that seem to be available in my location and that priced sanely are FSP/Fortron 30W, 48W, 60W and 75W, Seasonic 60W and local Chinese rebrand 84W (I have a similar unit for my monitor and it seems well built, ie. no noise, right weight and size, but it's small and gets hotter considerably more than others, it's either normal for these units and will result in less durability (not a big problem for me) or in reality it's power potential is a bit lower than FSP or HP with the same rating). Bricks with more Watts are extremely expensive and will probably be noticeably noisier. Ideally 60W would be enough as I could buy a good brand for a good money. Which of these will give this machine enough power to survive anything it can go through?
Is it a good idea to cool this fully passively? The only thing I care about is HDDs, anything else can very well have temps near the recommended limits, I don't care, but HDDs' longevity is of importance to me. If not using fans will result in HDD life shortened by a year or more, I don't think I'll do it unless forced to (by fe. having to put the NAS in the bedroom). There's someone running 2xWD RED passively for 3 years in an identical machine without failures here: https://jmtd.net/hardware/phobos/
If not, how do I cool the HDDs well enough and still keep the machine dead silent or close to dead silent? I'm on budget, I won't buy fans that cost as much as a Noctua, even a Scythe/Antec is a bit too expensive if buying more than one. For 50mm fans (in case of Chieftec case) I could buy two Fander Roxo 5015L FRX3-5015L, but I have no clue whether they would help anything with cooling the HDD nor whether they would be quiet enough.
These are the fans I have on hand that could be used and aren't very loud: 1x Lian Li LI121225SL-4 120mm, 2x Arctic Cooling AF9225L 1500RPM 12V (their full diameter is 93mm, 80mm between one screw and the other), 1x Arctic Cooling Arctic Fan Pro TC 1000-2500RPM 12V (80mm full diameter, 67mm from one screw to the other). All are 3pin.
I can buy 3pin resistors and I have a 2.5" fan controller with 3 fan slots Akasa Fan Control Jr.
I use the Lian Li fan and the Akasa fan controller to cool HDDs when connecting them via USB, so I'd prefer to not use them for this unless it's really worth it, then I'd just buy a resistor and a cheap fan or use no fan for this purpose instead.
In Chieftec's case there's also a possibility of attaching a 120/140mm fan to the case with plastic cable ties. Doesn't look great though and increases the size of the case, so it's not as appealing as before.
I will be periodically connecting to this NAS a few other HDDs to check their SMART. If possible I'll take one SATA and one power cable (and one 3pin if a fan is needed) out and hot plug them without turning off the NAS. Otherwise I'll open the case put the HDD in and hot plug or turn off the device, plug the HDD, turn on, turn off again, swap to another one and so on. The last option is not my favorite. Anyway, doing this easily would be an additional pro when choosing a case. This NAS will also do as a troubleshooting unit (things like data recovery, data transfer to a new disk etc.) if something goes wrong with any HDD I have, as I don't have any other computer to which I could attach a 3.5" SATA disk and my USB3-SATA3 cable doesn't allow me to read SMART data.
I build this NAS solely because of noise reasons. I will get rid of it once SSDs are cheap enough to just have this much data in my passively cooled PC. I don't want to pay much for this since I might get rid of it even as soon as in 3 years. I'd ideally just put it in a place I can't hear it from, but I can't warrant I won't end up in place where it causes problems to a roommate or where I have to keep it in my bedroom, so silence has to be thought through.
What do you think and recommend? Sorry for a lot of text, but I tried to describe the situation.