A lot of people talk about self-hosting as if it was a mountain. I don’t understand it. I self-host using QNAP and it’s really not that harder then learning a new OS. You go through the settings making it secure (disabling lot of networking options lol), set your firewall rules and download the apps you need (I never had to use docker). The only thing that truly was a pain is setting up a VPN for remote access until I learned the existence of tailscale which was like magic.
Is the gap from QNAP to TrueNAS that big?
It was a bit discouraging reading that thread. A bit like @overdrawn98901 said here. Many things I didn’t understand.
One thing grabbed my attention in the beginning though:
I researched this and it seems that this statement is mostly true as the community and the developers strongly recommend using an Intel‑branded NIC. The reason is that Intel Ethernet controllers have long‑standing, well‑maintained Linux drivers that are known to work reliably with the FreeBSD‑based TrueNAS Core and the Linux‑based TrueNAS Scale kernels.
So I tried searching for Intel NIC in the steam machine specs, but couldn’t find anything. I asked AI and it said the Steam Machines ship with integrated Realtek or Broadcom Ethernet, which may work but could require extra tweaking.
Is this true?
If so, I’d be again back to square one.
I guess I’d either have to go with a True NAS mini, but it’s so expensive. The other option would just be to use SteamOS (from steam machine) as my server and forget TrueNAS?
Still so confused on what to do. Halp.
If you forget money, what’s the simplest way to achieve my goal described above with a FOSS solution (exception being Steam Machine because in the end it’s a PC).
You only need a NAS-first based system if you are hosting a NAS. Otherwise, ProxMox is a better choice (which has NAS configurations) and support for managing services, or a vanilla Linux distro you manage it yourself.
NAS means networked attached storage. Its best use case is managing multiple external hard drives and providing controls for say utilizing ZFS (file system, great for multiple external drives). In my perfect scenario, I’d have one server only dealing with NAS, and I’d have another server dealing with the services running, and the two talk to each other. I’d run backups of my virtual machines (VMs) to the NAS for recovery.
For minimal homelabs, also like mine, you got one server dealing with NAS and dealing with managing services (maybe multiple virtual machines, maybe just containers, or whatever). ProxMox handles NAS needs, and handles service needs, making it great for this use case.
I utilize different abstractions. I use a standard server based Linux distro and automate system admin and dev-ops tasks with Ansible. This lets me not be tied to a specific distro, but lets me hop around, or lets me rebuild from scratch.
But again, this all depends on your needs, how you want to simplify things, and if you’ve got good hardware. I got a beat up old desktop repurposed as a server.
I wasn’t sure what you meant by hosting a NAS, if it was some kind of terminology I didn’t get, but yes, I want to self-host my stuff. I don’t want to use a VM or go through third party like Proxmox even if it’s FOSS for this.
Plex is going a very bad path from what I saw.
It’s a product, they don’t care that much, strip out features and don’t really listen or care about community’s needs apparently.
Not sure I would put my wallet on their side given their behavior.
If you want peace of mind, consider Jellyfin yes. At least, once done you will never need to go back to it.
I mean, updates might be needed but you won’t have enpoopified situations where the Plex company just decides to strip some features because…why not?
Why in such a time frame specifically? Did you bought an Asus router as of recently?
Because you might just never pull the trigger on it if you keep postponing and I do seriously think that the first thing to focus on, should be the networking part with proper security.
Hence, this leaves you with a few choices:
keeping your current Asus router[1] and see if you can add Netbird to it
buy yourself an OpenWrt-friendly router, flash it and install Netbird on it[2]
buy an OpenWrt-friendly router like the Flint 2 (that could then later on be flashed with OpenWrt) but use the default firmware and setup Tailscale (it’s a 2min process)
I would focus on this part of a homelab first, before going with a NAS/else because this is the starting point of everything in your house and should be the most sturdy IMO.
No, a NAS should always be on based on what’s its for, for the health of the hard drives and it doesn’t really make sense to choose one or the other.
So yeah, they should preferably be different machines altogether.
Should be fine then, you need 10Mbs or something next to that to be comfortable and have some spare room I guess. Stability matters more than bandwidth in your case I think, hence do a wired approach to it.
Restream/StreamYard are products and not FOSS.
But if your needs are very basic, you can probably skip it entirely tbh.
Usually, if you’re not sure if you need X or Y, it means that you probably can go with a simpler/cheaper approach. When/if you hit a limit, you could then upgrade.
If you understand your needs/product you’re planing on buying and are sure on how/why/what, you could skip the first step altogether and buy something more expensive.
But that’s very personal and subjective. Hence up to you to make the decision.
Everybody is different.
Some might consider that a jog at 5am in the morning is super hardcore (no prior experience(.
Some find it just fine if in the right mindset and enough stamina/motivation (overwhelming or not enough resources ).
Some find it difficult because they want to run a triathlon and be ranked top 50 (high ceiling, basics are already done).
Usain Bolt finds it easy from A to Z (veteran on the topic).
Put all of those people into 1 bucket and you get the result above.
You might be in front of a few people already, so it might not be as hard for you.
Not everybody wants to tinker or take this path.
Moreover, QNAP is just like Synology: very friendly and visual with buttons to click. Once you go deeper, you’ll need to get your hands dirty and understand the CLI, Docker and a few extra things.
Depending on how custom/fine tuned you want it to be. You could of course just stick to abstractions like Synology allows you to do[3].
Depends: do you plan on having 10Gbe, with a ZFS pool of 108TB, blazing fast local speeds to video edit over it and have some badass self-healing setup with some cluster/redundancy?
How many VMs are planning to host there? If any (might be using Proxmox).
Also, do you have the money for a shiny 96GB of ECC RAM?
If none of the above, you might just be totally fine with clicking buttons around there too.
Give it a try and see if you’re a beginner jogger or Usain Bolt, everybody’s needs are different.
You might not need every tool listed, maybe you’ll need some of them.
Only you can tell and it’s faster to try rather than ask me permission for it.
It’s just my old rusty opinion vs yours at the end of the day.
Maybe you’ll hit a wall, maybe you’ll be cruising.
Don’t wait for my approval sir.
Yes, there is always the challenge of knowing which hardware runs well with Linux.
Hence why it’s safer to buy some well known brands that are power efficient, powerful and compatible with all the software. People went through some of the struggles and solved the common issues for you, hence it’s safe to pick some of the hardware the community had success with.
A cheap mini PC is also cheap, easy to tinker and flexible for some first hacks on the self-hosting journey.
Not sure, I think that you need to get some official source for this and an official answer.
I have not looked into it myself but some forum/reddit/user/reviewer probably knows the answer to this.
Anyway, you should probably not use the Steam Machine as a NAS because their roles are quite different in the first place.
Hire me as a consultant and let me borrow your bank card for some hardware geeky purchases to set it all up for you.
Having 2 dedicated machines for each their own specific task is probably the best yes!
Otherwise, Proxmox sounds like the best way to wrap everything like a NAS, HomeAssistant OS and some nice containers with either VMs or LXCEs.
Let’s go easy and not overwhelm people with meta topics, win11 can probably start with simple bash scripts for their first time.
I also got surprised when I looked into this topic myself but for some stuff, Proxmox might actually be quite mandatory, like running HomeAssistant OS alongside other Linux distro on the same machine.
But hey, it’s a great piece of software and allows for quite some nice features + easy backups from what I saw. Still very new to it myself.
I don’t always have the time to thoroughly reply: doing my best but I am still keeping my tabs open so I have not forgotten to reply don’t worry.
I’m a bit late on schedule for this one but that would be a more sustainable thing down the road so that I can reply live haha.
Again, thank you so much for taking the time to reply! It is truly and sincerely appreciated!
Yes, for wifi 6 purposes, I did buy kind of recently an asus router. But also, I evaluate it will take about that time to go down my privacy journey lol. I’m far behind. I want to have a NAS so I can self-host and move my family out of Google photos for instance. This is my priority #1. I also need to switch or delete lots of old accounts from outlook and gmail and this will take some time. This will permit me to delete those 2. I’ll have to go through my password manager and there are probably around 500 accounts that need deleting / switching. I want to prioritize this because of the speed of enshittification of these (Microsoft / Google). I need to switch to GOS as well, which will probably happen at end of year. Then, I also anticipate Microsoft going worse and worse and I know switching to Linux with all the tools I’m currently using will take probably another year.
There are some other things, but you get the gist of it I’m sure
All that to say, switching to open wrt is on the list, but it’s pretty far down as I think all of the above are more “urgent.”
I put the flint 3 (unless I should stick with flint 2 for any reason?) in my buy list and will check for deals on it so it will probably happen this year after reading you, thanks!
I was afraid you would say that.
Meaning owncast should work to replicate something like what the switch 2 does? I’m thinking owncast + OBS.
It does feel like I’m asking permission eh? hahaha! I DO need validation though
A friend told me the exact same thing. To just try, and see if I need to upgrade. The problem is each decision are super expensive either money wise or time wise That’s why I ask so many questions and want to be sure with the decision and stick with it.
After this whole thread where we’ve analyzed all sort of different devices with the help of you and multiple people here, it seems the only one that remains and is turnkey is the truenas mini R, but it seems overkill and again, too expensive. The other solution is to build a mini-pc and use it for NAS and HTPC purposes.
I would have wished for the steam machine solution to work and hit 2 birds with one stone, but reading you, it might not be the best approach afterall.
How much?
There’s clearly a market for a turnkey device like the TrueNAS mini-r, but not overkill and not as expensive.
Somebody do it!
Apologies! Did not meant to pressure or anything, take your time! As you can see, my todo list is still quite big
Honestly, all of the routers currently support Wifi 6 super well. They are not all equal but that tech is very much ready (unlike WiFi 7).
You can read more about WiFi in general on this page[1] alongside what truly matters beyond the BS (for your next future purchases ).
First thing, take a breather.
I know it feels good to do all of that but it also needs to not be a burden and you can take it slow without pressuring yourself!
That would be a lot of stress because it’s not trivial and there are a lot of things to it.
Hence take it slow and don’t feel like being the hero saving your family here haha.
That being said, back to the topic!
That one might be easier than you think. Especially if you have some homelab already, will make switching to fully FOSS apps even easier.
I mean depends on how hardcore you are with your apps, but it might not be as bad as you think.
Same here, might not be as bad depending on how many alternatives are needed.
And having self-hosted stuff will ease the migration by a lot too!
I do get the urgency. Both approaches are valid:
top to bottom with network security, NAS, down to individual devices
giving prio to things needed first and getting up the stack progressively
both are valid I guess.
Go with the Flint 2, here is the reason. I mean, maybe by the time you’re back at your networking setup a Flint 4 or better will be released (like OpenWrt Two).
Those devices change and improve quite quickly but I’ll help you narrow down the best device in time if you want![2]
Linux mindset: one tool for one job.
One shouldn’t do 15 things mid/poorly but 1 thing just well.
Moreover, if one thing dies or bug out, everything goes down the drain which is not the most resistant approach to things. Better to just have the streaming device down only for example.
One thing for sure: OBS is by far the best input source available on the market yes.
Might not be the smoothest experience if comparing to a few paid products but eh, for FOSS it’s amazing and the ecosystem/customization around it makes it the best by a long shot if investing a bit of time into it.
I have to say that I am not too familiar with what the Switch 2 does. But I am also not sure that it’s the best example in town given that you need a capture card for it apparently?
If you want to stream some games from your PC while having OBS running on the same machine, then yes you could skip all of that. You might need to consider if you want to also facecam + mic (and how to setup those alongside) but there are free solutions given your wishes/gear.
And yes, you could even skip OwnCast entirely if your goal is to share some game footage by using vdo.ninja. PG used to use that before using StreamYard and it is plenty powerful with a lot of guides + tools to make it super nice to stream + invite people to join.
For you, it could be as simple as creating a link to a room, sharing it to your friends and you’re ready to go!
If the goal is to bring newcomers outside of your friends circle, then OwnCast is the way to go (the YouTuber/Twitch grow an audience kind of path haha).
I’ll give vdo.ninja + OwnCast a try myself this year to see how nice it is.
Might be quite fun to follow my journey along for your own use case!
As a saw some people mentioning here, you’re probably victim of Analysis paralysis.
Happens with anxiety-prone people, I include myself into that box.
Sometimes I do agree that buying or upgrading is rather expensive.
Thing is, the time you invest thinking, researching and trying to figure out the correct thing is technically also money. So…that means that you could do the wrong decision by taking the wrong decision.
Solution to this? Start small and understand the topic better before “going all in”.
Now, the time part. It is true that it will take some time away from other things meanwhile see it as an investment for your own knowledge. Things you do learn about Linux will not be lost or useless unlike a product or proprietary tool.
You’re hence investing into some long-term FOSS knowledge and things working for the next (potential) decades without needing further tinkering down the road.
This is not a get-rich-quick AI-crypto-bro hype scheme but a sturdy foundation that will be evergreen.
Now, the hard truth part. My opinions or ones from other people on the Internet are just that, opinions.
Best way to learn and achieve things? Try to practice and do the things yourself.
Don’t forget to take notes on your way so that you do have persistency and don’t forget about them by dumping it into Notion, Obsidian or even a blog!
But yeah, rather than thinking about all the paper cuts and technical parts, give it a shot by investing into a miniPC like Beelink, Minisforum or alike (with a N100+ CPU).
You can get it for around 300€, play with different things, wire some NVME or HDD drives to it down the road to give TrueNAS a try before pouring a load of money into something that might just not fit your needs.
Also, you’ll figure out if you do even enjoy doing that. Or can achieve that (or if it’s too complex and not worth a try). In which case, back to QNAP…
Hopefully not!
Yes, hence start small and give DIY a try. For 300€, you can’t really go wrong.
Even if it doesn’t fit or is not powerful enough, guess what? You’ll have a small PC for something and as you saw, it’s never a bad thing to compartmentalize things.
You could even get into 3D printing your own enclosure and making it fully custom.
It won’t be as enterprise as the Mini R but maybe it’s not even needed, yet you could even print your own mini rack while still being under the price of a mini R.
Self-hosting/home-labbing doesn’t need to be crazy expensive and hardcore.
You can start small, have some fun, iterate and build upon things without breaking the bank[3].
There is a reason plenty of people got hooked on homelabbing in the first place with a cheap 30€ RaspberryPi. It was lame in terms of specs, could fry easily, not very “production-ready” in comparison to Synology’s NASes but hey, it was your own little thing!
Nowadays, this is still a thing but better: we have toys that are production-ready while still being affordable to a “consumer wallet” while leaving the field to experimentations.
I have not followed the hype around the Steam machine myself. Maybe I need to catch up on some Gamernexus or LTT but how I see things:
you can build yourself a computer, with a GPU and play games on it (being on Windows or Linux), takes some hardware knowledge and then some software knowledge
you could buy yourself a mini PC and get into homelabbing and doing self-hosted/server-y things on it
you could buy yourself a console, like a PS5 and call it a day: go play Fifa 39 with lots of micro-transactions!
I am not sure which one the Steam machine targets but I guess that it’s kind of a Framework Desktop for normies? Hence games + good Linux support + some basic work like Blender?
If you have the knowledge to build 1., Steam Machine is not that crazy amazing. It’s great, small and probably quite accessible but nothing ground breaking. Unless you don’t know how to build a PC haha.
Which then is dope because you’re not buying a pre-built like Omen, Nzxt or whatever crap companies are selling with an awful performance (or even a subscription) while not delivering the basics of it…
If you take 3., you just opt out from the whole thing and don’t care about doing the hard work, you want to chill on your sofa. I guess it’s fine, no hard feelings.
But yeah 2. is not exactly the same use case hence I would indeed differentiate both machines. You could leave the Steam Machine run 24/7 like a server and have lightweight things on it, sure but it might be a bit annoying if you want to reboot, upgrade or do other cool things because then one will bring down the other.
Actually, there are 50 different ones like that yes:
There are plenty of options with all kinds of budgets to make your life a tiny bit easier and dozens of reviews to go along. Just pick one above and go like Beelink Me mini VS ... and you’ll have plenty of alternatives that will be TrueNAS compatible or their own custom reinvent-the-wheel-make-it-easy-and-shiny NAS OS.
Hence, people are already doing it.
As you guessed, even if you offered I would still refuse because you need to understand what you’re doing. There is no point for me setting up something for you and leaving you with no clue on how to fix it when it will need some update or config file tinkering.
It’s part of the journey. Also we’re on a Privacy forum, hence you’re not even supposed to know who I am.
And vice-versa. Don’t share your home address haha.
No problem, hope this message was helpful too.
I linked directly to the Recommendations paragraph to showcase why I picked the Flint 2 ↩︎
which pretty much comes down to going to OpenWrt forum and checking the 2026 recommended hardware because I understood a bit too late that it’s the best way to find the best device in no time ↩︎
trust me: it comes from someone that poured quite a lot of money into things and it is not an easy thing for me to write that down ↩︎
Oh don’t worry about that, hence the 3 years forecast that I provided. I know it’s a marathon, not a sprint
I wanted to switch from apps to webapps and I’m nearly done. I’ve been deleting apps and I’m down to now a total of 46, which is really not a lot compared to what I had. Also counting all the background apps like keyboard, etc.
I’m almost there
This one I know will be bad, because I use a lot of different softwares and I’ll need to find replacement for those. I know this will take awhile. I know it’s not great for attack surface, but
Nah, if I would have just used the “do and break things” approach, I would have bought a Synology, an Asustor, a Zima/Hex/Casa product, a ZimaCube, an unraid product, a Ugreen NAS and finally a steam machine.
I would be broke and crying in a corner.
I have a huge library on steam, so I’m actually saving money with the steam machine hahaha!
Since the plan of NAS + gaming machine is going down, I’m actually thinking of not buying it afterall.
Not really, it target people that have already a huge library on steam where they want console-like plug and play experience to your TV screen. Basically a new competitor to PS5, Xbox and Switch.
I might still go mini-PC + Steam machine. Or just mini-PC.
Yes this would be an issue if someone wants to game and someone else wants to watch something for instance.
Amazing, this is what I’m looking for then.
If they are turnkey products , which 4-bay SATA drives mini-pc would you recommend given all our discussion?
Please note that although I find the mini-R too expensive, I still value time > money. Meaning, I prefer paying a little more if it will save me time.
Yeah, 3 years is quite a good forecast that is on the safe side.
Oh okay, scary then.
I’m favor of having as much public interaction as possible because it can help others rather than being 1:1 and me needing to repeat a point to other folks.
As of today, I can just reference one of my past messages to someone else. Let’s keep it this way.
Oh it’s a Nintendo-specific thing with account + proprietary. So yes, it will work flawlessly if you’re into that walled garden etc. Hopefully it does work well given those drawbacks!
Oh yeah, that one is a dead project from 3 years ago. Haven’t touched it since really.
An update is very much due I know, will get there soon enough.
Just like here but at the same time, it’s nice to not invest a lot into something if you don’t know anything about the topic. I was about to pull the trigger on a 800€ router from Protectli not so long ago while it would have been very far from what I actually needed while being hella overpriced for my needs.
Found out by reading/learning more about networking hardware before pulling the trigger but there are diminishing returns to all of that too. Hence it’s not an easy answer for sure.
Careful with Steam, you’re renting games from them. It’s a bargain for sure but you’re not owning them anyhow. As mentioned here. Consider buying DRM-free from GOG.
I mean, hopefully you can hack it enough to not be locked into Steam-only games. Would be quite lame if it’s the case.
Otherwise, if you build your own gaming PC and slap SteamOS on it, you pretty much have the same thing? Sure, you need a bit of a know-how and components might be harder to source since you’re just a consumer but at least you get to choose everything yourself and can upgrade/make other things on it too.
I built computer since too long now that buying a pre-built PC is very stranger to me as of today.
I can understand buying into a PS5 if you want to play some exclusives like Bloodborne[1] but a PC? Not really given the fact that you have community-approved/recommended lists of Linux-compatible hardware → all the hard work is already done for you.
If you go DIY enough, you can always also stream from your desktop gaming PC to your living room via HTPC with Moonlight/etc. More raw power, still comfy enough on your sofa and you own the whole chain.
Kinda like this one.
Yeah or use any self-hosted instance of anything, or do an automated backup or anything else really.
I still think this is a solid recommendation given what I read on Reddit and other popular hobbyist places.
You can also ask for a recommendation on this forum if you want a cross-reference.
not saying it’s cool that this is a thing but I can relate to exclusives ↩︎
Of course, no worries at all, and I agree with that perspective!
So he’s saying I should go with the M-Serie then, just in case
I think setting up all the above will already take me some time and I definitely don’t need the mini-R for those need as it’s overkill. Finding the right product is not always easy, but I do prefer future proofing a little. Hence, same approach with the router. I will probably wait before switching router to at least upgrade a bit at the same time (with a good wifi 7 open wrt product for instance).
Yes, hopefully Gabe chose his successor well.
Nah, it’s basically a pre-built PC with SteamOS, but you can tweak it however you like and install other OS if you like. At least, from what I’ve seen and understood.
Yes, exactly. But again, to me, time > $ I’m not rich or anything , I just value it more.
This is exactly the kind of video that is pushing me the other way . Way too many little things that can happen. The Steam machine for instance, would (or at least should) take care of all those little things for you. As long as steam doesn’t start tracking and selling to third parties any sort of info, I’m fine. This will not necessarily always be the case, but for now, I’ll enjoy it while it lasts
Thanks, I thought at the time that a NAS device was better then a mini-PC to run 24/7. I guess, this is a wrong understanding of mine?
The Beelink doesn’t have 4-bays SATA HD it seems. The Aoostar comes from China and I believe it can be susceptible to the same thing as here.
I guess this leaves minisforum N5 Pro and there’s even a deal
Honestly, if you have the matching hardware, enough drives, data, fine with the noise and electricity consumption, why not.
Yeah it’s a balance of:
budget
how good the tech is today VS tomorrow
prices of the current market (good/bad timing to buy?)
the ecosystem/hardware you already possess, very not trivial indeed
Building a PC can be done in a day if you have the list of all the components and they are available at a decent price.
Depending on the games you play and launchers you use, might be a needed pain.
If you just stick to SteamOS and don’t do anything fancy with it, satisfied with basic SDR games wired to your TV’s speaker etc, I guess a custom PC can be just as quick of a setup honestly.
It all depends on how exotic you want your setup to be honestly.
This per-se doesn’t mean anything in itself, lacking context for an appropriate comparison.
Is a muscle car faster than a sports car? Depends on which cars you’re comparing. I’m sure I can find an example one way but also the other with the right cars.
Same, is a NAS more power efficient than a miniPC? Depends on the components, CPU, hard drives running there etc.
I can definitely make a RaspberryPi[1] consume more than a Gaming PC with the right wrong components/things running on it.
Also, a miniPC can be a NAS.
A NAS[2] is just a computer with a specific amount of software running 24/7. It is not specifically more or less performant in itself.
Hence why people usually recommend miniPCs with the N100 CPU, power-efficient, compatible and plenty powerful. Of course, you can go ARM or Rockchip or RaspberryPi if you want to have an even smaller consumption, use some GPIO pins etc.
You do realize every piece of hardware comes from China?
Even iPhones or any typical US products. It might be designed elsewhere but the manufacturing of the chips/PCBs/etc is either done in China, Taiwan or Hong Kong[3].
Very good choice indeed.
Check Wendell’s video, he’s amazing at explaining and showcasing how nice it is[4].
Stumbled upon this one today, nice quick summary of how to speed run your homelab
small embedded device, hence should not consume a lot out of the box in comparison to a traditional x86 computer ↩︎
or home server, or homelab server, or whatever other trendy name ↩︎
I’m probably forgetting a few other East Asian places ↩︎
From my understanding of that video, that’s a bit too overkill for my needs.
That’s a big if
Pretty much only solo. Don’t have to deal with most of the headaches some people encounter.
I had this impression that a dedicated QNAP / Synology had something (software of hardware) that was more adapted to run 24/7 then if you build it yourself, but I think this is simply wrong?
Hahaha This is what threw me off:
Much more friendly video, thanks for sharing!
I want to avoid building my own PC for now.
Still haven’t had the time to look at the Minisforum N5 Pro I’m doing that soon.
Ok, I read a lot and would have a few more questions… I hope I’m not abusing of your benevolence
Here’s what I watched and read and I believe to be my final questions for finally buying a device!
Would you recommend the N5 Pro or N5 Standard for my use case and future proofing? The Pro version includes a better processor and ECC RAM support, but is nearly twice the price.
Since it doesn’t come with RAM, which RAM should I pick? If I go the ECC route, do I need to pickup a certain type of NAS hard drives for it to work?
There seem to be marketing pointing towards AI for the pro version with the NPU talk (whatever that is ). Would I be able to run a LLM on the pro version? How would it compare to the likes of Lumo or duck.ai unpaid versions?
I also understand I would need another GPU for this to work? It’s not really a need right now, but for future proofing it could be nice. I wouldn’t be able to get there until maybe 3 years (the magic number ). I will not be updating this NAS for awhile 5-10 years and the local AI models might be better and run more efficiently by then.
Since there are 5 bays, I’m thinking of doing raid 1 for the first 2-bays (20tb x 2 Media Server) and exploring doing raid 5 for the next 3 (4tb x3 everything else). With this in mind, I might as well do my own “Proton Drive.” This is extremely important sensitive data though. I might have an option to sync with another person’s NAS. Thoughts?
Also, can I mix WD NAS hard drives and Iron Wolf for example?
What is U.2? I understand this is a new type of SSD?
It runs “server software” yes, so no desktop environment and no GUI, mostly daemons.
The hardware can be more energy/noise efficient too VS a beast gaming PC throttling full power.
Oh this is pretty much like the NanoKVM.
Guess that kind of thing can happen but Open Source hardware is pretty much not a thing nowadays so I am not sure what we can do about it really…
Hopefully, most of the time companies do care about their reputation and we also have security experts checking the given devices.
If future proofing, take the more powerful one.
Otherwise you need to understand that chips might be of different types:
CPU: helping with compression, image processing, compiling things
GPU: mostly everything graphical, can be transcoding, training LLM models, helping with NVRs
NPU: useful for NVRs too, full sovereignty of your local AI, getting the model to recognize people/things in your Ente/Immich, any other kind of AI stuff that is not based on hype/nonsense overall
Depending on your needs, you might enjoy the package the Minisforum is coming with, it’s not only about “AI”. That’s what they do have on their website for the sales/board members but it doesn’t need to be the main reason as of why you buy it.
I do have some Apple devices, it’s not for Apple Intelligence that you can be sure.
Best thing would be to maybe take a task that you care about as of today, run it on your current machine and then compare benchmarks online to find out the gap difference. That way, you can maybe narrow down how much faster it will be and if it would be overkill or actually very welcome for your daily use cases.
Only you can know if it’s overkill/future-proof enough or not by checking your own needs.
Do NOT open this one, you've been warned 🙈
funny thing but apparently they announced the Minisforum N5 Max at CES last month.
Let’s not side-track tho otherwise we will still be deciding about that one for years on.
For a regular desktop computer, you need to care about the different timings, frequency, the binning company, the different kinds of NANDs etc if you want to fully tune the hell out of it.
Moreover, I know that Ryzen likes a specific multiplier (forgot the ratio).
Meanwhile, given that it’s for a NAS and with the current state of RAM pricing, I think that any RAM would just be fine. Just get as much as possible like 64 or 96GB because ZFS on TrueNAS loves it a lot and it bumps the performance significantly apparently.
ECC is a bits correction thing, not specific to HDDs no.
Yes.
In short:
probably not as good as ChatGPT
yet, probably better than Lumo
but again, depends on a few things like the model, the kind of query etc.
Not gonna lie, I do not have such NAS nor have started having any local AI myself so I don’t have any “practical experience” on this specific topic.
But using Hugging Face/other and checking how it performs by comparing to other people on YouTube will definitely give you an example on what to expect in terms of tokens/second. @lone-cloud used to be heavy on the topic but he left the forum so yeah[1].
Moreover, you might not need the same kind of info from a Browser search vs a local one. Local one could be having some kind of local Siri, or one for Home Assistant, maybe something automated working with your voice? Plenty of possibilities that you can use or not, at least you will have the choice to do so.
Read the specs of the machine, you already have a dedicated one inside.
You could use a bulky RTX 5090 some day yes if you want.
If the connectivity for that is there, haven’t double-checked myself.
TrueNAS has its own RAIDZ1, 2, 3…
Honestly, you can figure out that once you have the machine IMO, no point thinking about it right now.
There too, it’s very subjective as of what you do want in terms of speed for R/W, reliability etc etc.
I can’t tell you the holy truth there, it depends on what you do with your data and if you need MOAR or not.
Then 3-2-1 backup rule.
And yes, you could encrypt at somebody’s else NAS if you wish so[2].
You can burn sensitive data to an M-disc too (search on the forum) and encrypt then upload to some cloud too.
The world is your oyster once you have it running smoothly. Plenty of tools/scripts available to automate the whole thing too.
The elite would say absolutely not but since you’re not the NSA, you definitely can. Not a huge deal breaker and your HDD will still break at some point yet be sturdy enough haha.
Maybe consider basic stuff tho, like having them running at the same speed (not one at 5k and other 10k RPM).
In an ideal world, you should buy 5 brand new HDDs from a good batch after doing some data mining on the sales/returns of your closest store.
In practice, you can wing some good healthy 2nd hand it might just be perfect for the upcoming 10 years too. Even the best HDD in town can just die out of thin air while you did everything right. It’s an odds thing.
One basic rule tho that is quite common and universally applied here too: never turn off your NAS if not very much needed to restart, let it constantly run. Hence why the initial idea of dual-boot was an awful one.
The motherboard + HDDs indeed hate when they’re powered off/on constantly. This applies specifically for NASes that do have more data and inertia than your typical desktop SSD.
Never heard of it before tbh. New connector, might be slightly faster, cooler or the opposite? No clue specifically but apparently that’s the one the Minis is running its OS from. Eh, not a big deal, just buy a small one for the OS (install TrueNAS on it).
Lanes for the motherboard. Read on it, it’s mostly for:
faster speeds with your SATAs
extensions cards in case you need some more
if you want to plug in extra GPUs
I think you’ll have plenty enough for your needs.
But you can deep on that topic too, it’s quite nice to understand what speeds you can expect.
Otherwise, both articles/videos linked above explain quite well the pros/cons of each + redirect to good resources like Jim, Wendell, ServeTheHome.
Your choice to decide from that point.
and I do not care enough myself as of today, other priorities ↩︎
maybe some day, we could share some disk space on each other’s NASes but none planned in immediate for me haha ↩︎
at 5am in the morning is super hardcore (no prior experience(.
).
