A NAS or home server belongs in every technology-loving household. These are not only practical for backing up data with safe data protection, but also helpful for learning about servers and their management.
If you don’t want the latter, then a “ready-made NAS” from Synology, QNAP, ASUSTOR, etc. is of course your best choice.
But putting together a NAS/server yourself is more fun! Many American YouTubers often recommend completely exaggerated systems or old enterprise servers.
The problem for us here is simply the electricity costs. Old servers are cheap to get, but incredibly expensive to maintain.
This article is about a DIY home server for Unraid or TrueNAS, which offers the lowest possible power consumption and is inexpensive to purchase.
Overview of the components
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These are the basic components without storage drives. Maybe you could also plan a Noctua NF-A12x15 PWM.
The heart, the Szbox Alder Lake N100 NAS motherboard
First we need a suitable motherboard and CPU. We want to keep our system as compact and economical as possible; it should have 2.5 Gbit LAN or 10 Gbit LAN “onboard”. Why OnBoard? Costs, a separate LAN card costs a bit more to purchase and usually increases power consumption significantly more than an on-board model.
An exciting option here would be the Supermicro X10SDV-4C+-TLN4F. This is a really “professional” board with everything we could want for the price of €700. But this is too much for me.
In the end I decided on a motherboard from AliExpress. The best thing to do here is to search for “NAS motherboard N100” and you will find several models that are all +- identical.
I chose the “Szbox Alder Lake N100 NAS motherboard” for +- 150€. This is an ITX motherboard with Intel N100 CPU and features that are fantastic for a NAS.
Szbox Alder Lake N100 NAS Motherboard
Intel N100
1x SO-DIMM DDR5 RAM Slot
4x 2,5 Gbit LAN Ports Intel i226
2x m.2 NVME SSD Slots
6x SATA Ports
1x PCIe x1 Slot
Here we have a mainboard with a very economical CPU and a total of 8x connections for SSDs / HDDs as well as 4x 2.5 Gbit LAN and a PCie expansion slot.
Unfortunately we only have one RAM slot, but that is a limitation of the Intel N100 CPU. We’ll take another look at the motherboard and CPU in detail later.
Housing, Jonsbo N2
Of course, you can use whatever you want with the case. However, I decided on a “NAS like” case.
The Jonsbo N2 is a mini-ITX case, but has 5x 3.5 inch “hot-swap” bays in its “belly”.
The case looks very chic and elegant. It is made entirely of metal and makes a good impression. It’s a bit tight to build and I would perhaps miss an additional fan in the “mainboard area”, but apart from that I’m really happy.
The hard drive bays are accessible via the front and have a corresponding backplate.
The power supply, be quiet! SFX-L Power 500W SFX-L
The power supply was a tough choice! The Jonsbo N2 includes an SFX-L power supply, which are generally quite expensive if you want something sensible.
I chose the be quiet! SFX-L Power 500W decided. Why? be quiet! is one of the best manufacturers in the field of power supplies and we want a reliable power supply.
be quiet! SFX-L Power 500W SFX-L
You can also get the power supply for under €100 and it offers 80% Gold certification or ETA Platinum certification.
Maybe we could save a little more energy with a “PICO-PSU”, but these are a little more special.
A detailed look at the motherboard
Let’s take a slightly more detailed look at the Szbox Alder Lake N100 NAS motherboard. Let’s start with the basics. The Intel N100 is used as the CPU here.
Intel N100 Alder Lake-N architecture 4 cores up to 3.4 GHz built in 2023 6W TDP
The Intel N100 is actually a current CPU. However, it is extremely throttled and trimmed for low power consumption. Modern Intel CPUs have 2 types of CPU cores, performance cores and efficiency cores.
The Intel N100 only has 4 efficiency cores, which are also limited to a power consumption of just 6W! This is extremely low, so the maximum performance of the processor is massively limited. More here: How good (or bad) is the Intel N100?
However, in a NAS / Home Server the N100 is great! It is more than sufficiently fast and extremely efficient for this application.
On the connection side we have the following:
3x USB 2.0
2x USB 3.0
1x HDMI
1x DisplayPort
4x 2,5 Gbit LAN mit Intel i226 Chipsatz
1x 3,5mm Audio-Ausgang
This is completely sufficient for a NAS / home server! The 4x 2.5 Gbit LAN ports with Intel chipset are particularly pleasing.
One of the USB 2.0 ports is internal! This is intended for a USB stick with the server OS. Many server/NAS operating systems can be installed on USB sticks, such as UnRaid or TrueNAS. You can then safely install this USB stick in the housing.
Internally we also have the following important ports:
2x M.2 NVME 2280 slots (PCIe 3.0 x1) 1x PCIe 3.0 x1 slot 6x SATA 2x 4-pin fan connector 3x USB 2.0 header
First of all, we have 6x SATA ports, so we can connect up to 6x HDDs or SSDs to the mainboard. We also have 2x M.2 slots for NVME SSDs.
However, these slots are only connected with PCIe 3.0 and x1! The installed NVME SSDs are limited to +- 800 MB/s. However, this is “OK” due to the 2.5 Gbit LAN ports, which limit our data rates to +- 250-300 MB/s over the network anyway.
The limitation of the PCIe 3.0 slot to x1 is a bit of a shame. Although we could install a 10 Gbit LAN card here, this would also be somewhat limited due to the interface.
CPU temperature and cooling
The Intel N100 is cooled by an integrated “MINI cooler”. This does not appear to be temperature controlled and constantly rotates at 100%. However, this is barely audible even at 100% speed.
The CPU temperature settles at +- 66-69 degrees under full load, which is not a problem.
Which operating system?
In principle, you can install pretty much any operating system on this server. We have a normal X86 CPU. If in doubt, you could even use Windows or a normal Linux distribution.
However, I would normally recommend the following systems:
Both systems are not perfect, especially when it comes to user-friendliness. What are the benefits of each system?
UnRaid
User interface a little friendlier and simpler Ideal if you want to mix drives with different capacities Data rates sometimes noticeably lower than with TrueNAS More energy efficient (since spindown works) Chargeable
TrueNAS
Very high data security Professional system Free to use Complicated for newbies Mixing and swapping different hard drives with different capacities can be suboptimal
In a really professional environment I would rather choose TrueNAS. However, if you have several different hard drives with different capacities that you want to combine into the system, I would rather choose UnRaid.
There is also a 30 day trial version that you can use to see if this is right for you.
A very important point for me: UnRaid requires less energy. Why? Hard drives that are not needed reliably go into standby with UnRaid, which never worked for me in TrueNAS!
ECC RAM?
ECC RAM is usually recommended for TrueNAS. Unfortunately we cannot install ECC RAM here.
Is this bad? What is ECC RAM?
ECC RAM has integrated error detection and correction. If a bit in the RAM “flips”, i.e. unexpectedly outputs an incorrect value, an ECC RAM module can detect and correct this.
Why is this important for TrueNAS? TrueNAS uses ZFS and ZFS relies heavily on file checksums.
If a RAM error occurs, the checksums could be incorrect and, in the worst case, lead to data loss. However, a double error must occur for this to happen.
For example, your HDD would have to fail at the same time as your RAM.
I think this is a manageable risk, especially if you have additional backups. ECC RAM is certainly good in combination with ZFS and TrueNAS, but it is also not mandatory.
Performance in practice
But what about the performance of the system? Is the Intel N100 enough here? As a rule, absolutely yes!
In combination with UnRaid (and SSDs), around 270 MB/s over the network was consistently not a problem. The Intel N100 will probably still be able to provide the full speed even when using two ports in parallel.
We definitely have enough reserves to run a few Docker containers on the system.
However, I’m primarily thinking of smaller things like a network advertising filter (PiHole), HomeAssistant, etc. Such Docker containers are designed to run on a RaspberryPI and the Intel N100, for all its limitations, has many times the performance of a RaspberryPI.
Only if, for example, you want to run Windows or real Linux VMs on the system via Proxmox etc. things could get a bit tight. It certainly works, but it’s not ideal.
Plex could also be a thing like that. Admittedly, I haven’t tried Plex and the GPU in the Intel N100 is theoretically Quick Sync compatible, but frankly I don’t see this system being used for video encoding on the fly.
Possible fan mod
I might recommend replacing the fan in the Jonsbo N2 for the HDDs or throttling it with an appropriate adapter.
By default it runs constantly at 100%, which is why it is relatively loud.
Power consumption
The power consumption varies massively depending on the HDDs/SSDs used. An HDD can easily require 5-10 W of power.
In the Jonsbo N2 we can install 5x HDDs, which could consume between 25 W and 50 W alone.
Therefore, we will only talk about the power consumption of the mainboard, only with a USB stick with UnRaid and 2.5 Gbit LAN.
In normal operation this requires +- 15-17W. This is economical, but admittedly not extremely low for a motherboard with an Intel N100. However, this may be due to the many 2.5 Gbit LAN ports and PCIe connections.
The bottom line is that 15-17W is absolutely not too much consumption.
Without HDDs or SSDs approx. 15-17W. With 2x NVME SSDs the consumption increases to +- 18-19W. With 2x NVME SSDs and 2x HDDs the consumption increases to +- 34W. With 2x NVME SSDs and 4x HDDs, consumption increases to +- 48W.
Conclusion
I hope this project gave you some inspiration when building a NAS. In my opinion, the “NAS motherboard” in particular is extremely exciting and the Intel N100 version in particular makes a lot of sense for a NAS!
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This version of the NAS has been running absolutely problem-free for me for a few weeks now with UnRaid, which I use because of the reliable HDD spindown. Personally, I still clearly prefer the software from Synology or QNAP NAS systems, but unfortunately these cannot be used on DIY systems.
In terms of performance, the Intel N100 is more than sufficient for the 2.5 Gbit LAN ports. The power consumption is OK at 15-17W without drives.
It’s a bit of a shame that the PCIe slot is only connected with PCIe 3.0 x1 and therefore 10 Gbit LAN cards are difficult to use here. Nevertheless, 2.5 Gbit is currently the “sweet spot” for most home users.
The Jonsbo N2 case and also the be quiet! SFX-L Power 500W SFX-L power supply are of course “flexible”. If you want a NAS form factor these are a good choice (although I don’t like the Jonsbo N2’s fan setup that much). However, there is of course some potential for savings, especially when it comes to the housing.
I wouldn’t save too much on the power supply and especially in the SFX form factor it’s be quiet! a good choice that is reasonable in terms of price/performance.
Accordingly, I consider my template to be a basis for a good, cheap and economical DIY NAS system in 2024!