←back to thread

The Synology End Game

(lowendbox.com)
452 points amacbride | 3 comments | 29 Aug 25 06:37 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
M95D ◴[29 Aug 25 08:47 UTC] No.45061719[source]▶
But self-building a NAS is still a problem, and I'm also talking about this [1] article from the same blog:

There are NO low power NAS boards. I'm talking about something with an ARM CPU, no video, no audio, lots of memory (or SODIMM slot) and 10+ SATA ports.

Sure, anyone can buy a self-powered USB3 hub and add 7 external HDDs to a raspbery, but that level of performance is really really low, not to mention the USB random disconnects. And no, port replicators aren't much better.

[1] https://lowendbox.com/blog/are-you-recyling-old-hardware-for...

replies(14): >>45061750 #>>45061794 #>>45061859 #>>45061869 #>>45061894 #>>45062063 #>>45062494 #>>45062628 #>>45064215 #>>45064499 #>>45067093 #>>45067377 #>>45068745 #>>45071007 #
SirMaster ◴[29 Aug 25 14:20 UTC] No.45064499[source]▶
Why do you need a bunch of SATA ports? Just get a cheap SAS2 PCIe card on eBay.

There are definitely low power ARM boards with a PCIe lanes. Typically its NVMe, but you can adapt that to 4x PCIe 3.0 which is a lot of bandwidth for HDDs. Not sure why you need a lot of memory for a NAS though, but they do have boards that have 32GB of memory.

What's wrong with this?

https://www.amazon.com/Radxa-5B-Connector-Computer-32GB/dp/B...

And connect a card like this to the NVMe PCIe which you can connect 8 SATA HDDs to with SATA breakout cables.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/155007176276

If you need more than 8 HDDs you can get a SAS2 expander to connect to the SAS2 card and then you could easily connect 24 HDDs with a 6 port SAS2 expander and breakout cables.

Or if you put this small board and card into a server case that has a SAS2 backplane with expander built in, then you can just connect all the disks that way.

Another option, not ARM, but still low power and neat.

https://www.lattepanda.com/lattepanda-sigma

This has Thunderbolt 4 which you can connect to a PCIe slot like this:

https://www.dfrobot.com/product-2832.html

They have a lot of neat stuff, you can get the tiny LattePanda Mu, and dock it in this:

https://www.lattepanda.com/lattepanda-mu

https://www.dfrobot.com/product-2822.html

replies(1): >>45067636 #
M95D ◴[29 Aug 25 18:20 UTC] No.45067636[source]▶
That SAS/SATA controller would consume more power than all the rest of the system.
replies(2): >>45067762 #>>45067798 #
1. SirMaster ◴[29 Aug 25 18:33 UTC] No.45067762[source]▶
Really?

6.1 Electrical Characteristics

The maximum power requirements for the LSI SAS 9200-8i HBA under normal operation are as follows:

 PCIe 12.0 V = 0.74 A

 Power

— Nominal = 7.92 W

— Worst Case = 13.20 W

Seems like it uses just a little more than 1 large capacity HDD.

replies(1): >>45068174 #
2. M95D ◴[29 Aug 25 19:12 UTC] No.45068174[source]▶
It's 2-3 times more than the drives. All 8 HDDs consume 4W in sleep, and they sleep more than 80% of the time (all night, all day while I'm at work, they only start 2-3 hours in the evening).
replies(1): >>45068419 #
3. SirMaster ◴[29 Aug 25 19:34 UTC] No.45068419[source]▶
I am pretty sure the card is not using 8+ watts when all the drives on it are idle...

I can't believe people are worrying about something less than 10 watts.

10 watts in constant use for a whole year is like $12 at the average electricity cost in the US.

I don't even let my HDDs sleep, the constant spin up and spin down and temperature cycle associated with puts way more wear and tear on them and would cause them to fail quicker and that is way more expensive to replace.

I have 20 HDDs connected to one of these SAS2 controllers in my home server.