Ultimate 2025 NAS Build

This is my ultimate DIY NAS build of 2025. It packs 8x hot-swap 3.5-inch disk bays, a decent Pentium Gold 8505, 64 GB of RAM, and enough NVMe slots in a compact case. I use it as a NAS as well as to host multiple VMs. It’s a great home lab server.

This is the final of my three-part post on this NAS build. You can read the first one on my choice CWWK Pentium 8505 NAS Motherboard, and then the next on the Jonsbo N3 8-Bay NAS Case. Those two components are about the most important in any NAS and thus deserve dedicated posts on them. This post covers all the remaining components in the build. I’ll also wrap up with some observations and learning points.

Unlike some others who write about their annual NAS builds, I don’t build one all that often. The last was 7 years ago. So, when I say this is my ultimate NAS build, this is something that’s going to be for another 7 years. It’s not quite the build of the decade, but it’s not too far from there!

Let me state my requirements so that you understand what I’m going for in this NAS build. I want a compact case that has at least 6 hot-swap disk bays. I want good enough performance for the system to serve as a NAS as well as to host multiple VMs. Budget is a fairly important consideration too. I will be running TrueNAS on this sytem.

With the motherboard and case already covered, let me go down the list of remaining components starting with the PSU. The Jonsbo N3 case requires a SFX PSU. I decided to go for a modular PSU in order to reduce unnecessary cables. I also looked for 80Plus rating, not just because of efficiency, but also because they tend to be more reliable. Each of those specs — SFX, modular, and 80 Plus — mean more cost, and all three together, isn’t good for budget. I decided to go with a Chinese brand, and eventually chose the Metalfish SFX-500W PSU.

This is a 80Plus Bronze 500 W PSU. My NAS build is not going to exceed 250 W even for the startup surge. However, SFX PSU under 450 W is pretty hard to find.

Metalfish did not ship enough modular cables to match the ports on the PSU. I learnt that these cables are all proprietary and it is not easy to find extra cables from alternative sources. In fact, it is even possible that the same brand of modular PSU may use different cables for different modular PSUs. I ended up ordering some extras from the same seller.

I bought a couple of fans. I value the quietness of my fans, and I know the gold standard for quietness is Noctua. However, Noctua fans are very expensive. I decided to settle for Arctic fans. They work fairly well and don’t make much noise. These 80 mm ones are for the top of the Jonsbo N3 case.

The Jonsbo N3 already come with 92 mm fans for the bottom part of the case so I could just stay with them. However, as the Artic fans worked so well, I replaced the Jonsbo ones (which they list as 100 mm) with 92 mm Arctic ones. I felt that the Arctic fans were quieter than the ones that came with the Jonsbo case.

Note that the P-series Artic fans are optimised for static pressure, while the F-series ones are optimised for airflow. These models with the PST suffix have connectors that allow you to cascade multiple fans, very convenient when you have more fans than fan headers on your motherboard.

There’s already thermal compound on the CPU on the CWWK Pentium 8505 NAS Motherboard, and an extra tube included to use with the Jonsbo HP400S cooler in the motherboard bundle I ordered. I could just go with them and not get anything extra.

However, I figured I would prefer to know what thermal compound is used, and that it has been applied generously and properly. It will leave me no doubt about the thermal management efficacy for the rest of the life of this NAS. I only needed something basic, so I went with the Arctic MX-4. 20 grams is plenty.

For RAM, I got 2 sticks of 32 GB Crucial DDR5 SODIMM, for a total capacity of 64 GB. This sounds plenty but it is for good reasons. First, ZFS needs lots of RAM. Then, consider all the RAM needed to run multiple VMs.

I expect to have a Windows VM with 16 GB RAM, one mid-sized Linux VM with 8 GB, RAM and maybe two small Linux VM each with 4 GB RAM. That adds up to 32 GB RAM for VMs alone. If you want your server to be both a NAS and host multiple VMs, 32 GB is going to be a bare minimum for RAM, and 64 GB will be more comfortable to work with.

You may notice these SODIMMs are just 4800 MHz. This only saves a few bucks compared with 5600 MHz ones. Nevertheless, 4800 MHz is just fine since the Pentium Gold 8505 maxes out at this speed.

The CWWK Pentium 8505 NAS Motherboard supports a max of 6 SATA drives. To use all the drive bays on the Jonsbo N3, I got the LSI 9240-8i 6Gbps SAS HBA. LSI SAS HBAs are well supported and and popular, and they do connect SATA drives despite being a SAS HBA. This model I got has 2x SFF-8087 ports with each one breaking out into 4x SATA connectors, thus supporting a total of 8 SATA disks, which more than I need. I can probably even run one SFF-8087 cable out of the case to connect a stack of external drives in the future.

Do take note to order HBAs with “IT mode”, often denoted by an i at the end of the model name. These HBA are passthrough with no RAID function, exactly what is preferred when running TrueNAS.

I found some bargain-priced PCIe 3.0 NVMe storage modules. They cost only $30 for 512 GB. These aren’t blazingly fast, but they are faster than conventional hard disk drives, which makes them ideal for a mirrored zpool dedicated to storing VM images. This Bestoss branded NVME is actually made by MAXIO. You can read about older MAXIO NVMe from AnandTech. The Bestoss modules I have use a newer MAP1202 controller with 4x NAND channels, sequential read/write speeds up to 3500/3200 MB/s, and read/write IOPS up to 600K.

Let me digress a little to discuss my boot drive and drive connections. TrueNAS discourages using USB flash drives for the boot drive. You could use these NVMe modules. Although I have 2x NVMe slots onboard and 4 more via an expansion board, only the onboard ones are visible to the BIOS. The NVMe slots on the expansion boards cannot be used for booting. The onboard slots comprise one PCIe 4.0 x4, and another PCIe 3.0 x1. Since a mirrored zpool is recommended for boot, giving up one PCIe 4.0 x4 for boot seems wasteful.

I setup my drives as follows:

• 2x onboard SATA ports are used for two 2.5-inch SSD disks (Crucial M500) I already have from a long time ago.
• The motherboard’s SFF-8643 to 4x SATA serve four of the hot-swap disks in the Jonsbo N3 case.
• One of the SFF-8087 to 4x SATA from the LSI HBA serve the other four of the hot-swap disks in the Jonsbo N3 case. (This still leaves me one free SFF-8087 to 4x SATA for some future use.)
• The NVMe expansion board would be used for a zpool to serve VM images. (Or, I can also use them for a SLOG vdev.)
• The onboard NVMe slots are currently free. I am considering using the PCIe 4.0 x4 for an L2ARC.

Interestingly, I found the SLOG, using the Bestoss NVMe, did not improve the performance of my 6-wide raidz2 pool that uses 6 TB hard disk drives. Given the amount of RAM I have, and considering that my home NAS isn’t really all that busy, I’m also doubtful if an L2ARC would be necessary.

Let’s talk about power consumption. For a system that is going to run 24×7 all year round, one might be concerned about its power efficiency. I was initially disappointed with the overall power consumption measured at the wall plug, but after investigation, it seems not too unreasonable. I do have a fair number of disks, and they do draw a lot of power in totality. I also found a specific component that draws more power than I would like.

First, the basic NAS build itself is pretty good. The CWWK Pentium 8505 NAS Motherboard, RAM, PSU, one Curicial M500 SSD, CPU fan, but no case fans, draws just 20.5 W. With all four Arctic case fans (2x 80 mm, 2x 92 mm) and two Crucial M500 SSDs, the power draw is 26.1 W.

The LSI SAS HBA on its own is responsible for 6.9 W of power! I wonder if there is a more efficient alternative.

The NVMe expansion board adds a very nominal 0.5 W. The Bestoss NVMe modules each draw about 0.5 W.

The hard disk drives have a wide variance of power consumption. This is because I have a random mix of 5400 RPM to 7200 RPM drives, some of prosumer grade and some of enterprise grade. Idle power draw ranges from 4.3 W (IronWolf) to 8.5 W (EXOS).

Right now, I’m running with all the components covered above, plus the following storages:

• 2x Bestoss NVMe 512 GB
• 1x Intel Optane 16 GB module
• 2x Crucial M500 240 GB SATA SSD
• 2x Western Digital 6 TB Ultrastar DC HC310 SATA HDD
• 3x Seagate IronWolf NAS 6 TB SATA HDD
• 1x Western Digital WD60EFRX Red 6 TB SATA HDD

All of that has an average (with actual light use) power consumption of 68 W.

Consumer/prosumer grade hard disk drives should consume roughly 5 W at idle. With 6 of them, at the minimum you should expect 30 W going just to the hard disk drives. 5400 RPM drives consume less power than 7200 RPM ones, and enterprise drives also tend to draw more power.

Here’s the full BOM (not including storage) with approximate cost:

• Jonsbo N3 Case: S$167
• CWWK Pentium 8505 NAS Motherboard with all options (cables, cooler, NVMe expansion board): S$386
• Metalfish SFX-500W PSU: S$77
• LSI 9240-8i 6Bps SAS HBA: S$33
• 2x 32 GB Crucial DDR5 SODIMM: S$187
• 2x Bestoss NVMe 512 GB modules: S$62
• 2x Arctic 92 mm fans, and 2x Arctic 80 mm fans: S$47
• Arctic MX-4 20 grams thermal compound: S$14

Total damage is S$973. Those are the prices now; they may be lower when you catch them on sale. You don’t have to go crazy on fans or redo thermal compound like I did. You shouldn’t count the Bestoss NVMe modules either, but you would need some sort of boot disk, ideally mirrored, so I’ll factor them in to get a bootable NAS system.

Compare this DIY NAS with 8-bay NAS appliances from other brands:

• UGREEN NASync DXP8800 Plus: US$1,3499.99 (S$1795)
• Synology DiskStation DS1821+: S$1,521
• QNAP TS-873A-8G: S$1,545

The Synology and QNAP boxes are far less powerful despite costing so much more. The UGREEN one uses the same processor as mine but has only 8 GB of RAM.

This is a really cool home lab server. Even though I only run a 6-wide raidz2 pool, the 8-bay case is useful for connecting extra drives from time to time to transfer data. The NVMe expansion board offered with the motherboard allows me to add an extra zpool comprising NVMe modules, which is great for storing VM images.

TrueNAS runs perfectly on this system. Everything works. Do take note that only the onboard SATA ports and onboard NVMe slots are seen by BIOS and can be used to boot. (You can boot via USB too if you really need to get that to work; there is an internal USB port on the CWWK motherboard.)

If you’re looking to build a new home lab server to serve as your NAS as well as to host several VMs, I hope you’ll find this build guide useful.