Mini NASes marry NVMe to Intel's efficient chip • Hacker News Board

Re: Mini NASes marry NVMe to Intel's efficient chip

#121

Post by PhilipRoman » Fri, Jul 04, 2025, 10:08 PM UTC

gorkish wrote: post #90

NVMe NAS is completely and totally pointless with such crap connectivity. What in the WORLD is preventing these systems from getting at least 10gbps interfaces? I have been waiting for years and years and years and years and the only thing on the market for small systems with good networking is weird stuff that you have to email Qotom to order direct from China and _ONE_ system from Minisforum. I'm beginning to think…

It especially sucks when even low end mini PCs have at least multiple 5Gbps USB ports, yet we are stuck with 1Gbps (or 2.5, if manufacturer is feeling generous) ethernet. Maybe IP over Thunderbolt will finally save us.

Re: Mini NASes marry NVMe to Intel's efficient chip

#122

Post by jauntywundrkind » Fri, Jul 04, 2025, 10:15 PM UTC

lostlogin wrote: post #62

geerlingguy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only the lanes, but putting through more than 6 Gbps of IO on multiple PCIe devices on the N150 bogs things down. It's only a little faster than something like a Raspberry Pi, there are a lot of little IO bottlenecks (for high speed, that is, it's great for 2.5 Gbps) if you do anything that hits CPU.

This is what baffles me - 2.5gbps. I want smaller, cooler, quieter, but isn’t the key attribute of SSDs their speed? A raid array of SSDs can surely achieve vastly better than 2.5gbps.

Even if the throughput isn't high, it sure is nice having the instant response time & amazing random access performance of a ssd.

2TB ssd are super cheap. But most systems don't have the expandability to add a bunch of them. So I fully get the incentive here, being able to add multiple drives. Even if you're not reaping additional speed.

Re: Mini NASes marry NVMe to Intel's efficient chip

#123

Post by lostlogin » Fri, Jul 04, 2025, 10:20 PM UTC

p_ing wrote: post #83

lostlogin wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what baffles me - 2.5gbps. I want smaller, cooler, quieter, but isn’t the key attribute of SSDs their speed? A raid array of SSDs can surely achieve vastly better than 2.5gbps.

A single SSD can (or at least NVMe can). You have to question whether or not you need it -- what are you doing that you would go line-speed a large portion of time that the time savings are worth it. Or it's just a toy, totally cool too. 4 7200 RPM HDDs in RAID 5 (like WD Red Pro) can saturate a 1Gbps link at ~110MBps over SMB 3. But that comes with the heat and potential reliability issues of spinning disks. I have…

My use is a bit into the cool-toy category. I like having VMs where the NAS has the VMs and the backups, and like having the server connect to the NAS to access the VMs.

Probably a silly arrangement but I like it.

Re: Mini NASes marry NVMe to Intel's efficient chip

#124

Post by UltraSane » Fri, Jul 04, 2025, 10:43 PM UTC

fnord77 wrote: post #78

sandreas wrote: post #49

While it may be tempting to go "mini" and NVMe, for a normal use case I think this is hardly cost effective. You give up so much by using an all in mini device... No Upgrades, no ECC, harder cooling, less I/O. I have had a Proxmox Server with a used Fujitsu D3417 and 64gb ecc for roughly 5 years now, paid 350 bucks for the whole thing and upgraded the storage once from 1tb to 2tb. It draws 12-14W in normal day use an…

these little boxes are perfect for my home My use case is a backup server for my macs and cold storage for movies. 6x2Tb drives will give me a 9Tb raid-5 for $809 ($100 each for the drives, $209 for the nas). Very quiet so I can have it in my living room plugged into my TV. I have no room for a big noisy server.

Storing backups and movies on NVMe ssds is just a waste of money.

Re: Mini NASes marry NVMe to Intel's efficient chip

#125

Post by dragontamer » Fri, Jul 04, 2025, 10:45 PM UTC

cyanydeez wrote: post #101

sandreas wrote: post #49

While it may be tempting to go "mini" and NVMe, for a normal use case I think this is hardly cost effective. You give up so much by using an all in mini device... No Upgrades, no ECC, harder cooling, less I/O. I have had a Proxmox Server with a used Fujitsu D3417 and 64gb ecc for roughly 5 years now, paid 350 bucks for the whole thing and upgraded the storage once from 1tb to 2tb. It draws 12-14W in normal day use an…

I've had a synology since 2015. Why, besides the drives themselves, would most home labs need to upgrade? I don't really understand the general public, or even most usages, requiring upgrade paths beyond get a new device. By the time the need to upgrade comes, the tech stack is likely faster and you're basically just talking about gutting the PC and doing everything over again, except maybe power supply.

> except maybe power supply.

Modern Power MOSFETs are cheaper and more efficient. 10 Years ago 80Gold efficiency was a bit expensive and 80Bronze was common.

Today, 80Gold is cheap and common and only 80Platinum reaches into the exotic level.

Re: Mini NASes marry NVMe to Intel's efficient chip

#126

Post by markhahn » Fri, Jul 04, 2025, 10:45 PM UTC

acranox wrote: post #120

ndiddy wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another thing is that unless you have a very specific need for SSDs (such as heavily random access focused workloads, very tight space constraints, or working in a bumpy environment), mechanical hard drives are still way more cost effective for storing lots of data than NVMe. You can get a manufacturer refurbished 12TB hard drive with a multi-year warranty for ~$120, while even an 8TB NVMe drive goes for at least $50…

Don’t forget about power. If you’re trying to build a low power NAS, those hdds idle around 5w each, while the ssd is closer to 5mw. Once you’ve got a few disks, the HDDs can account for half the power or more. The cost penalty for 2TB or 4TB ssds is still big, but not as bad as at the 8TB level.

such power claims are problematic - you're not letting the HDs spin down, for instance, and not crediting the fact that an SSD may easily dissipate more power than an HD under load. (in this thread, the host and network are slow, so it's not relevant that SSDs are far faster when active.)

Re: Mini NASes marry NVMe to Intel's efficient chip

#127

Post by varispeed » Fri, Jul 04, 2025, 11:18 PM UTC

monster_truck wrote: post #105

These are cute, I'd really like to see the "serious" version. Something like a Ryzen 7745, 128gb ecc ddr5-5200, no less than two 10gbe ports (though unrealistic given the size, if they were sfp+ that'd be incredible), drives split across two different nvme raid controllers. I don't care how expensive or loud it is or how much power it uses, I just want a coffee-cup sized cube that can handle the kind of shit you'd ty…

Best bet probably Flashstor FS6812X https://www.asustor.com/en-gb/product?p_id=91

Not the "cube" sized, but surprisingly small still. I've got one under the desk, so I don't even register it is there. Stuffed it with 4x 4TB drives for now.

Re: Mini NASes marry NVMe to Intel's efficient chip

#128

Post by philjohn » Fri, Jul 04, 2025, 11:32 PM UTC

markhahn wrote: post #126

acranox wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t forget about power. If you’re trying to build a low power NAS, those hdds idle around 5w each, while the ssd is closer to 5mw. Once you’ve got a few disks, the HDDs can account for half the power or more. The cost penalty for 2TB or 4TB ssds is still big, but not as bad as at the 8TB level.

such power claims are problematic - you're not letting the HDs spin down, for instance, and not crediting the fact that an SSD may easily dissipate more power than an HD under load. (in this thread, the host and network are slow, so it's not relevant that SSDs are far faster when active.)

There's a lot of "never let your drive spin down! They need to be running 24/7 or they'll die in no time at all!" voices in the various homelab communities sadly.

Even the lower tier IronWolf drives from Seagate specify 600k load/unload cycles (not spin down, granted, but gives an idea of the longevity).

Re: Mini NASes marry NVMe to Intel's efficient chip

#129

Post by 1over137 » Fri, Jul 04, 2025, 11:32 PM UTC

markhahn wrote: post #126

acranox wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t forget about power. If you’re trying to build a low power NAS, those hdds idle around 5w each, while the ssd is closer to 5mw. Once you’ve got a few disks, the HDDs can account for half the power or more. The cost penalty for 2TB or 4TB ssds is still big, but not as bad as at the 8TB level.

such power claims are problematic - you're not letting the HDs spin down, for instance, and not crediting the fact that an SSD may easily dissipate more power than an HD under load. (in this thread, the host and network are slow, so it's not relevant that SSDs are far faster when active.)

Letting hdds spin down is generally not advisable in a NAS, unless you access it really rarely perhaps.

Re: Mini NASes marry NVMe to Intel's efficient chip

#130

Post by zerd » Fri, Jul 04, 2025, 11:36 PM UTC

gorkish wrote: post #90

NVMe NAS is completely and totally pointless with such crap connectivity. What in the WORLD is preventing these systems from getting at least 10gbps interfaces? I have been waiting for years and years and years and years and the only thing on the market for small systems with good networking is weird stuff that you have to email Qotom to order direct from China and _ONE_ system from Minisforum. I'm beginning to think…

It's annoying, around 10 years ago 10gbps was just starting to become more and more standard on bigger NAS, and 10gbps switches were starting to get cheaper, but then 2.5GbE came out and they all switched to that.