Asus Z690 ProArt Creator WiFi (Thunderbolt 4) + i7-12700K + AMD RX 6800 XT

[Bergier3K]

I was actually looking into my NAS this morning, maybe this hole thread is a figment of my imagination...

whole-home solar panels for zero carbon footprint

@CaseySJ You are my hero for saying that, but one might also point out that solar panels are absolutely not zero carbon. Most of them are made in China by factories powered by coal electricity, so, not zero carbon. And the fact of owning a NAS is again not at all zero carbon (far from it, even if it is never turned on and used as an expensive book holder). Sadly, the only zero carbon NAS is the one we don't buy. Not criticising at all here, just mentioning (I fell down the ressources/climate problems rabbit hole a few years ago)

We can repurpose our previous Hackintosh builds, particularly if they’re based on mini-ITX or micro-ATX.

The elders in this forum will remember the very popular GA-H170n build, it was my workhorse for years as a hackintosh and is now my NAS (i3-6100 powered, enclosed in a Fractal Design Node 304 cased).
I was recently considering updating the NAS with 4TB SSD drives (reducing the power consumption), but the price tag here makes it a bit difficult.
I was just last night looking for BIOS settings that would reduce the power usage (with Truenas) and couldn't find any straight answer...

 

[etorix]

My recently purchased QNAP (about a year ago) TS-h973ax has a quad-core Ryzen V1500B and 32GB memory. It also runs various services in the background to catalog photos, scan/update music libraries, and index all files for system-wide search. QuTS also comes with “Surveillance Station” for monitoring security cameras. It supports all the IP cameras that I installed years ago.

You must have put quite a load with indexes or surveillance to make it sluggish (or the GUI is really heavy).
Running Pi-Hole or similar services on top of NAS duties, on the other hand, should be well within the abilities of a V1500B (4C/[email protected] GHz).

This experience dictated my component choices for the TrueNAS build. I prioritized CPU performance, and here the mixed-topology Alder Lake with P- and E-cores seems like a perfect fit. The underlying kernel in latest TrueNAS Scale supports mixed cores (from what I’ve read). We get performance when we need it and efficiency when we need that.

I just checked and 22.12 Bluefin runs on 5.15 kernel while Alder Lake support is in 5.18. So, for now, the hardware is actually too new for the OS and hybrid architecture is ignored—just like with macOS

This is a good point, but we don’t have to use low end components if the “NAS” will not be used 24x7. We can repurpose our previous Hackintosh builds, particularly if they’re based on mini-ITX or micro-ATX.

For 24x7 file-serving use cases, low power consumption becomes an important consideration.

I fully agree, but for low power the Atom C3000 (Denverton) and Xeon-D 1500 (Broadwell-D) series are still unmatched. These just sip power; newer generations use more power (Xeon-D 2100 systems reportedly idles around 60 W, which is about the full load draw of a D-1587) and/or lack enough SATA ports to make good NAS (C5000/P5000).
And, despite your bad experience with their Ryzen 1000 counterpart, embedded Atom/Xeon-D CPUs are not quite low end.

I should add that @etorix provided excellent technical insight throughout my TrueNAS build process. He’s the expert in this area.

Thanks. I do have some experience with TrueNAS (CORE) but "expert" may be too strong a word.

The elders in this forum will remember the very popular GA-H170n build, it was my workhorse for years as a hackintosh and is now my NAS (i3-6100 powered, enclosed in a Fractal Design Node 304 cased).

Nice case for a little NAS, though mini-ITX is limiting and requires to have exactly what's needed on-board due to the limited expansion possibilities. Socketed server boards are typically micro-ATX or larger; mini-ITX is for soldered CPUs… or indeed recycling desktop boards.
I have a NAS in a Node 304, powered by a (second-hand) Supermicro X10SDV-6C-TLN4F.

I was just last night looking for BIOS settings that would reduce the power usage (with Truenas) and couldn't find any straight answer...

As far as I know, there are none, except for disabling unused on-board devices if possible. A NAS is idle most of the time, waiting for a request to serve; when a request comes, it serves it and goes back to idle as fast as possible. TDP, and similar metrics under load are irrelevant: The only occasion when a TrueNAS system goes to full load is a scrub (typically once a month… do not forget to set up this task). So, beside the number of spinning drives, the key metric for power use by a NAS is CPU power draw at idle, which is purely a matter of CPU architecture. Haswell/Broadwell and newer are quite efficient in this respect.
Some try spinning down the drives, but this is rather advised against because stop-and-start wears drives faster than constant spinning—and it also takes a lot more power to set drives spinning than to keep them spinning, so stopping drives too quickly, and restarting too often, may end up using even more power.

 

[SmackAttack]

Ok, I may be losing my mind, but for those using a Broadcom pcie WiFi/BT card, do Apple Air pods connect and stay connected? I swear when I first built this it worked, and not sure if somewhere between OC 088 and 091 it broke b/c I rarely use them.
I’m using an old Broadcom BCM94360CD in slot 4. Other BT devices seem (mostly) stable. Also tried disabling the three BT kexts.
TIA,
J
EDIT: Nevermind, apparently not having the antennae pointed up enough can cause this. All good now.

 

[SmackAttack]

Would someone mind clarifying this:

My understanding was that this is partially cosmetic and really only necessary when using a non-Apple equivalent card (esp not necessary with SMBIOS’s that don’t run headless), or when needing GPU port definitions. I’ve been running with both this and the audio DP commented out b/c if they are enabled/defined, System Profiler reports Metal as “supported” and GB has a non-descript ID. When commented out, System Profiler shows “metal 3” and GB identifies the GPU correctly. IOW: default auto RadeonFB definitions seemed better. HOWEVER, seems pretty clear GB scores higher when it’s defined in DP.

I know there were some discussions about this a few hundred posts ago, but I don’t think I gleaned any clarity there.

I’m using a reference AMD 6900 XT BTW. I might have to freshen up on my WG reading again!

Thank you for any help,
J

 

[Bergier3K]

@SmackAttack I have been using Apple original WiFi modules for years. A common issue I had (and it turned me insane) was flaky Bluetooth. I solved the problem entirely by shielding the Apple module. Aluminum tape (over thick plastic or masking tape), thin metal sheet (the old beer can or soup can, or fancy from the store) or anything of that sort helps a lot. Just be careful not to short anything Nowadays I never ever install an Apple module without shielding it.

Quick ponder for the pros out here, on an Apple module with 4 antenna slots (Ipex1), is there any way to determine which slot is BT and which is WiFi ?

 

[Bergier3K]

@etorix thanx for the insight do you think downclocking the i3 would be wise ? I fear it would save a tiny amount of power for a big loss or performance (especially when using Plex)...

And you are 100% right about itx being limited, my Nas is only a very small one, very amateur, and, one could say, not completely needed It's just fun to play with it !

 

[ramazarusx]

Atom C3xxx 8/8 will be enough for 2-3 2k Streams under TrueNAS CORE (behyve) and it's really good on power, since power is not an issue for me I gave Plex its own VM(under ESXI) with RTX 3060 for transcoding, but I've got over 30TB media (Music/Movies/Shows,RAW Photos, Personal Videos at el.). You might be able to do the same thing under the TrueNAS SCALE and passtroght the GPU, I know Unraid can do it.

 

[etorix]

@etorix thanx for the insight do you think downclocking the i3 would be wise ?

No. A NAS CPU is mostly idle, and you can't do anything about its power draw in this state, but when it comes under load you actually want that it ramps up as high as needed and completes its task as fast as possible… to go back to idle. Artificially throttling or slowing down the CPU means it would take longer to complete, and "longer at medium power" may be worse than "short at high power".
The general advice when doing server builds with C226/C236/C246 chipset and Core i3 (because these can use ECC UDIMM) is to take the regular parts and not the 'T' CPUs. For the same reason, do not attempt to throttle down the CPU, unless there really is a thermal issue.

And you are 100% right about itx being limited, my Nas is only a very small one, very amateur, and, one could say, not completely needed It's just fun to play with it !

I said mini-ITX was "limiting", in terms of hardware choice: There are few socked server boards in this size, and there's only one slot for extras.
But if you find a board with the right feature set, mini-ITX is not limited in capability. A mini-ITX X10SDV board with 10 GbE on-board is a perfect match for the Node 304: 6 SATA ports for 6 drives, boot from M.2, fast networking—nothing more is needed. A2SDi-8C-HL4F and A2SDi-H-TF (C3758) boards come with 12 SATA ports (more than you'll find in much larger desktop boards!), on-board 10 GbE for the -TF variant, and can take 256 GB RAM (a mere half of that would cost about $200, or under, at the current price for 32 GB DDR4-2400 RDIMM sticks). That's very capable.

[edit to complete the hardware discussion]
Compared with the above specialist server solutions, your GA-H170n is limited in RAM (32 GB max.; more expensive UDIMM; no ECC—possible with the i3, but requires a C232/C236 chipset, which may not be available in mITX size). But it has higher clocks for SMB sharing, and it would only take a Solarflare SFN5122F, SFN6122F or SFN7122F NIC (all about $50 on eBay, the first two can work in a Hackintosh too) to upgrade it beyond 1 GbE (whether it can saturate 10 Gb/s with only 6 spinning drives is another matter…).
Power use is possibly slightly higher for the i3-6100 compared with Atom C3000 (15-25 W TDP) or Xeon D-1500 (35-45 W TDP), but probably not much more because the decisive factor is not the TDP.

For a first NAS, and/or a NAS "to play with", one cannot argue about re-using already owned hardware.
For a more serious NAS build, server-grade parts are worth considering—for their technical merits, and because refurbished/second-hand server parts offer great opportunities. (A plain NAS, or even a NAS with some extra functions, does not require the latest and newest hardware.)

 

[xanderevo]

I was under the impression that RGB doubles the speed and halves the power consumption. Just like $10,000 audio interconnect cables, but without the high price tag…

That surely gives a confidence boost, especially for clients.

With no real added benefits ofc.

 

[oli.mathieu]

No. A NAS CPU is mostly idle, and you can't do anything about its power draw in this state, but when it comes under load you actually want that it ramps up as high as needed and completes its task as fast as possible… to go back to idle. Artificially throttling or slowing down the CPU means it would take longer to complete, and "longer at medium power" may be worse than "short at high power".
The general advice when doing server builds with C226/C236/C246 chipset and Core i3 (because these can use ECC UDIMM) is to take the regular parts and not the 'T' CPUs. For the same reason, do not attempt to throttle down the CPU, unless there really is a thermal issue.


I said mini-ITX was "limiting", in terms of hardware choice: There are few socked server boards in this size, and there's only one slot for extras.
But if you find a board with the right feature set, mini-ITX is not limited in capability. A mini-ITX X10SDV board with 10 GbE on-board is a perfect match for the Node 304: 6 SATA ports for 6 drives, boot from M.2, fast networking—nothing more is needed. A2SDi-8C-HL4F and A2SDi-H-TF (C3758) boards come with 12 SATA ports (more than you'll find in much larger desktop boards!), on-board 10 GbE for the -TF variant, and can take 256 GB RAM (a mere half of that would cost about $200, or under, at the current price for 32 GB DDR4-2400 RDIMM sticks). That's very capable.

thanks
keep answering
I learn a lot by reading them