this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2025
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datahoarder

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Hi all,

I've been thinking about picking up an N150 or 5825U MiniITX board for a NAS, but I'm wondering if there are better options given my requirements.

  • At least 2x 2.5Gb LAN
  • A 10Gb LAN, or 2.5Gb if not
  • 2x NVME
  • 8x SATA for spinning disks
  • 2x SATA for SSDs
  • MiniITX is required for the 10" rack
  • 64+ Gigs of RAM (ZFS cache) (This is not possible on an N150)

The problem I'm running into with the boards I've looked at is PCIe lanes, and not having ways to expand the sata or network ports without stealing from NVME.

I've started to look at boards with PCIe 4.0x16 slots and risers/splitters for expansion, but then I can't find low power CPUs for them.

Thoughts?

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[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I'm looking for 10 ๐Ÿ˜† 8 spinners and 2 2.5" SSDs for cache. I've had good luck with AliExpress boards. I'm about to set up a miniPC cluster from them, too.

Options that aren't perfect for me but might be for you:

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256807101632310.html

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256808231013677.html

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256807579724357.html

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

miniPC cluster

Thank you! You got me thinking here. Maybe several minis are better than one fat new ryzen with so many cores on an ATX board? But the mini's fans are usually ugly loud when doing some real work.

I need to read actual benchmarks and then compare...

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Yea, I realized how quick a Ryzen 5825u is at 15w. Just loaded 2 with 2x 1TB drives and 64GB RAM. Will be running mail server/DNS/VPN/Samba AD replicated across them, plus a bunch of other single services.

Happy to keep you posted as I go. I'll probably end up de-casing them in a 10" rack.