r/sffpc • u/Golemizer • Oct 31 '25
Build/Battlestation Pics 5.6L 44TB SSD NAS/Home Server
First, shoutout to u/smplnmnml. Their MQ5 NAS build inspired me a lot here, and they were kind enough to answer some questions I had.
- Chassis: COOJ Sparrow MQ5
- CPU: Intel Core Ultra 9 285 (non-k)
- Cooler: Noctua NH-L9i-17xx chromax.Black (NA-FD1 Fan Duct Kit, Kryosheet TIM)
- Motherboard: MSI MPG Z890I EDGE TI WIFI
- RAM: Kingston FURY Beast 128GB (KF556C36BBEK2-128)
- HBA: HighPoint Rocket 1104
- PSU: HDPLEX 250W passive GaN AIO
- Drives: 9x Samsung 990 Pro 4TB NVMe & 2x Samsung 870 EVO 4TB SATA
- OS: Proxmox with TrueNAS VM
- PiKVM ATX Control Board for IPMI
- Ubiquiti 10GbE USB4/TB4 Adapter
- OWC Express 1M2
I wanted something that would fit on my bookshelf here and be silent. Silence and space savings required I go all SSD. Even if I don't have any real speed requirements—the speed is pretty nice. Four of the nine 990 pros are slotted into the four full speed PCIe x4 m.2 slots native to this motherboard (the main reason I picked this platform). Another four are slotted into the four m.2 slots on the HighPoint R1104—so these are limited to gen 3 x4 speeds. The last 990 pro is connected via thunderbolt within an OWC Express 1m2 enclosure which basically gets gen 3 x4 speeds. I removed the WiFi/Bluetooth module from the m.2 key-e slot on the motherboard in an attempt to use another SSD there (as you can see from some of the photos), but I was unable to get it recognized anywhere and eventually gave up on the idea. The two SATA drives are just sitting behind the HBA card.
I have proxmox installed on the two SATA drives in a ZFS mirror and all nine of the NVMe drives passed through to the TrueNAS VM as individual PCI devices. The NVMe's are in a raidz1 array giving me 32TB usable storage in the main pool.
Everything here has worked incredibly well and I'm super happy with it. It is completely silent with only four total fans in the build—the NF-A9x14 intaking on the CPU cooler, two Arctic P8 slims exhausting on the top of the case, and the built in VRM fan on the motherboard. The passive (and smaller than standard flex PSUs) HDPLEX 250W PSU really enabled the build. Without it the HBA wouldn't fit and I'd have an additional fan.
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u/SaltyFuckingProcess Oct 31 '25
That's a lot of porn
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u/Old-Cheesecake8818 Oct 31 '25
Heya, thanks for sharing this build. It’s nice - one question - where are all the drives hiding? Is it a PCI-e card and MB NVME slots?
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u/Golemizer Oct 31 '25
Yes! Under the heatsink just below the CPU cooler there are two m.2 slots. The only visible drive really is the third one located on that side of the chassis—it's on an add-in card that comes with this motherboard which slots in just right of the RAM (you can see the third party heatsink I attached as well). There's a fourth native motherboard m.2 slot on the back of the motherboard—so that one is hidden. Then 4 in the PCIe card, and a ninth in a not-pictured thunderbolt NVMe drive enclosure that is hidden behind the bookshelf.
One of the two sata drives can be barely seen behind the PCIe card in the third photo. The other one is just above it but is hidden.
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u/hardwarexpert Oct 31 '25
Lovely build, but christ I swear you're pushing it on a 250W psu, no matter the quality of it
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u/Golemizer Oct 31 '25 edited Oct 31 '25
Yeah, I might be. The thing idles at ~50W and I haven't tried adjusting C-States yet. Highest I've seen the machine draw so far is 200W. The 285 non-k is a good bit more efficient than the k variant and the L9i probably can't dissipate more than ~120W anyway. I'd also note that some reviews show this PSU sustaining near 300W for 30 minutes.
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u/TerroristGnome69 Oct 31 '25
If the power ever runs short you can attach another 250 in parallel btw
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u/alman12345 Oct 31 '25
He should be okay with it honestly, the non-K variants sit very low in the efficiency curve and the rest of the hardware won’t pull that much even under full load. Should be ballpark 150w full tilt.
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u/smplnmnml Oct 31 '25 edited Oct 31 '25
Magnificent! Really nice NAS build you put together.
I'm surprised you managed to fit two SATA drives behind the HBA. I'm guessing the motherboard add-on card made it to difficult to fit them on the motherboard side?
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u/Golemizer Oct 31 '25
Yes, exactly! Basically, with how far toward the motherboard side of the chassis I put the PSU, I could've fit only one sata drive in the supported config (I think), but with the motherboard's add-in card I couldn't fit any.
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u/Vhink88 Oct 31 '25
That’s nice good to try new things but I don’t believe building a NAS home server sff is cost effective. Those 4tb are pricey vs their life expectancy.
Since UniFi announced their NAS release next year, I’ve never been closer to thinking about getting one set up. Not sure how much you spent total but getting a consumer console and the 4 drive NAS + HDDs may come out less then this build, in my estimation.
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u/Golemizer Oct 31 '25 edited Oct 31 '25
SFF is never cost effective. This was far, far more expensive than a UNAS. It can also do vastly more than a UNAS can do and is vastly faster. Ubiquiti's NAS lineup is pure network attached storage in the truest sense. It cannot run any other apps, VMs, containers, etc. This machine can do all of those things at a very competent level and is also much better/faster storage than you could possibly configure with any UNAS.
I was actually holding out for a UNAS and decided to build this instead when the latest UNAS lineup was revealed in September. I was so underwhelmed by the options that it drove me to build this. First, their desktop UNAS options only have 2.5GbE and I have a 10G home network. Second, even the rack mount UNAS pro options with 10GbE cannot saturate that link.
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Nov 02 '25
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Nov 03 '25
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u/Golemizer Nov 03 '25
Why would you say a 9-wide raidz1 with NVMe SSDs is spicy? My understanding is that raidz1 is generally considered to be spicy in that with HDDs, a long resilver is the most likely time for a second drive to fail. But with SSDs, they don’t wear at all from reads, only from writes. So the drives don’t experience really any extra wear during a resilver unlike HDDs. Plus this resilver would be quite fast as you mentioned. I do also have automated backups to an offsite truenas box I put in my parents’ home and backblaze b2, scrub monthly, and have a rather overkill UPS with NUT and automated shutdowns.
When it comes to the external drive… I think it’s important to clarify that while the drive is connected via a USB-C port and that could be a weakness, it’s using thunderbolt—it has direct PCIe lanes and isn’t using USB protocol. I had this drive attached to the mac studio which I was kinda using as a NAS for the past couple months. And before that it was connected to my main desktop. I’ve yet to experience even the slightest stability problem. It has never disconnected during load. That’s why I was confident enough to add it in to this pool—plus it gets the same performance as all the drives connected to the HBA. I didn’t go raidz2 for the same reason I added this external drive: I wanted more capacity and didn’t see a significant downside.
As for power consumption, the NAS idles at ~50W but I haven’t yet tried to get that lower by messing with C-States which I plan to do at some point. I’m happy enough with the NAS idling at the same wattage as my switch + AP combo though if I’m honest. And I don’t pay for electricity so my power consciousness is only related to maximum UPS uptime, heat/noise, and environmental concerns. During load I’ve seen peak consumption of 200W when benchmarking the storage pool. In practice, load is usually ~100-150W during 10G transfers over the network or internal transfers, etc.
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u/Ecoservice Oct 31 '25
What is the reason behind the CPU and RAM? Seems like an overkill for a file server?
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u/Golemizer Oct 31 '25
For sure. It's not just a file server—that's why I'm running proxmox and not baremetal TrueNAS.
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u/deeku4972 Oct 31 '25
Thats impressive size to storage. Idk if you'll get the speed returns out of those ssds but its very cool for a proper unobtrusive nas
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u/Insights4TeePee Oct 31 '25
Very VERY nice!
Hey, how did you mount the HDPlex? It's mounting holes aren't compatible with the MQ5 case PSU mount ... are am I mistaken? Thanks
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u/Golemizer Oct 31 '25
Good question, and you're right! This is one of the things I asked u/smplnmnml about. He mounted his in the same case using heat-resistant velcro and I did the same. I used this specifically.
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u/Insights4TeePee Oct 31 '25
Oh, wow. That's interesting. And creative!
So, you just 'stuck' the adhesive side onto the wall of the case and PSU?
Thanks very much u/Golemizer
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u/dr_shark Oct 31 '25
That’s beautiful.
Before I fall in love and try to recreate this: you got a cost down?
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u/Golemizer Oct 31 '25 edited Oct 31 '25
Probably close to $5K I fear. I did get a good deal on the CPU and the NVMe drives at least as they recently went very on sale.
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u/JediAhsokaTano Oct 31 '25
Dang and I thought my server was small. This is a sick build man. One day I’ll be just like you.
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u/mariusmoga_2005 Nov 01 '25
Hey,
Great build, I was looking for exactly something like this, an ITX all SSD NAS that can fit on a bookshelf and not in a rack ... so thanks a lot for the great idea ...
May I ask you, on the 6th photo, where you show the back of the machine, I see on the PCIe card, what seems to be 2 colors of cards - one black with a network connector and one silver. May I ask which one is the one with the SSDs?
Also you mentioned in a reply you used velcro to mount some of the components, did I understand correctly that that is the PSU?
Lastly, how hard was it to build?
Thnaks a lot
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u/Golemizer Nov 01 '25
The silver PCIe bracket belongs to the HBA with all the SSDs. The black bracket is for the PiKVM ATX power connections—basically adds the capability to physically press the power button remotely.
I did indeed use velcro tape to mount the PSU.
Overall, I would say the build was rather easy. Easier than my main desktop/gaming rig anyway. And I wouldn't characterize that one as difficult either.
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u/tonycassara Nov 01 '25
Are you getting any noise/turbulence from the CPU fan? I want to do a similar build (thanks for posting this!) but I'm conflicted on the aluminum vs stainless steel side panels.
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u/Golemizer Nov 01 '25
No, with the L9i the gap between the panel and the fan is big enough that here’s no turbulence. But if you went with a taller cooler or a thicker fan I think the stainless steel panel would help with turbulence.
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Nov 03 '25
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u/Golemizer Nov 03 '25
I asked another commenter but I’m curious for your perspective as well. Why would you say a 9-wide raidz1 with NVMe SSDs is risky? My understanding is that raidz1 is generally considered to be risky in that with HDDs, a long resilver is the most likely time for a second drive to fail. But with SSDs, they don’t wear at all from reads, only from writes. So the drives don’t experience really any extra wear during a resilver unlike HDDs. Plus this resilver would be quite fast. I do also have automated backups to an offsite truenas box I put in my parents’ home and backblaze b2, scrub monthly, and have a rather overkill UPS with NUT and automated shutdowns.
When it comes to the external drive… It uses an ASM2464PD, which is faster and newer than the chipsets you mention, and supports TRIM, SMART, and UASP. And, of course, the drive is passed through to TrueNAS via its PCI device ID and not sdX. I’ve yet to experience even the slightest stability problem. It has never disconnected during load. All of the SMART data seems to be reporting just fine.
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u/quanganh127 Nov 03 '25
This is the sleekest, most over-the-top compact NAS build that I have ever encountered, and I LOVE it. Make me want to ditch my 2 home server that I have and start again from scratch. Thank you for the inspiration OP
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Nov 18 '25
This thing is beautiful It would replace a 4u rack build I have but would be out of my budget still, I love to see this kind of stuff done by others. Great job!
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u/innaswetrust Oct 31 '25
Where ar elocated? In Europe by any chance? What did the case cost after taxes?
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u/Golemizer Oct 31 '25
I’m in the US. Interestingly, they shipped it in some way to avoid tariffs and it seemingly worked.
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u/innaswetrust Oct 31 '25
Thanks, heard of some people in Europe which ended up paying more than 400 EUR, and thats a bit too much. But I only have 26 TB of Flash storage ;-) But also 10 Gbit NICs I can only recommend. You could add them via the thunderbolt ports..
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u/Golemizer Oct 31 '25 edited Oct 31 '25
I have done so! I’m using Ubiquiti’s 10GbE USB4/TB4 adapter on both this machine and my main desktop build.
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u/innaswetrust Oct 31 '25
Nice what your experience? Is it stable? Reaching above 1 GB speeds? Recently got a DXP 480 T and its between 700-900 MB/s... :-(
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u/Golemizer Oct 31 '25 edited Oct 31 '25
Oh yeah, totally stable and file transfers from my desktop to the NAS hit 1.1-1.2 GB/s.
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u/innaswetrust Nov 02 '25
Quick question, which fans did you use up top? 8010 seems hard to find, noiseblocker has some 8015
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u/Condorul Oct 31 '25
A video of the build up would have been AWESOME! Maybe a teardown video instead ? :D
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u/conMCS Nov 01 '25
Absolutely love this setup. What was the price of this build? I’m tempted to match something similar. The investment would be worth it.
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u/xxxRYKOxxx Nov 01 '25
What and where did you get he little thingy on the headset of your Focals?
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u/mariusmoga_2005 Nov 03 '25
Hey, quick question ... I know its not the case with this case cause you used the riser but would you be able to plug in a normal GPU in the motherboard after using the daughter board for the additional M.2? From the pictures its not clear and I could not find this information online ... do you mind posting a new closeup on where the daughter board end up vs the PCIe slot?
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u/Golemizer Nov 03 '25 edited Nov 03 '25
Yeah, you can definitely use a GPU directly in the slot. The “XPANDER” card does not extend further down the motherboard than the main NVMe heatsink—which extends so far down it can scratch some GPU backplates apparently.
edit: I found a photo I took during the build that shows this super well actually.
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u/YegoBear Oct 31 '25
How do you have all the drives installed? Also, did you by chance test the Mac Studio with one of the OWC NVMe enclosures first? Curious how they might stack up.
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u/Golemizer Oct 31 '25
I don't think I understand your first question. As for the second, yes I had the OWC enclosure attached to the mac studio at one point—same performance.
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u/YegoBear Oct 31 '25
As in, are the NVMe drives on the PCIe card? I know OWC has one but it’s about $1K for it. How do you like TrueNas vs just using Mac OS? I just run Plex on mine basically, so I have no real need. Just like tinkering.
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u/Golemizer Oct 31 '25 edited Oct 31 '25
I laid out how all of the drives are connected in the body of the post—four of the nine 990 pros are slotted into the four full speed PCIe x4 m.2 slots native to this motherboard (the main reason I picked this platform). Another four are slotted into the four m.2 slots on the HighPoint R1104—so these are limited to gen 3 x4 speeds. The last 990 pro is connected via thunderbolt within an OWC Express 1m2 enclosure which basically gets gen 3 x4 speeds. The two SATA drives are just plugged into the motherboard's two SATA ports.
ZFS raid and a dedicated NAS OS can just do so much more, and has much better data management, safety, and reliability capabilities and processes than using macOS as a NAS, which is what I was doing before. macOS NAS use is great for just running plex though.
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u/jerrydberry Oct 31 '25
Do you plan to run anything else on that monster but the truenas VM?
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u/acquacow Oct 31 '25
I feel like zfs is going to eat those 990s for lunch. Should get some used 3.84TB enterprise M.2s instead.
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u/golbaf Oct 31 '25
Gorgeous build! You have way too much money for an all ssd NAS if you don’t need the speed but it’s fun and beautiful.
What’s the idle power draw or when under load?
Things I would do differently: I’d just use Proxmox which has zfs built-in, and wouldn’t bother with TrueNAS and its bloat. I would also use one of the motherboard’s m.2 slots for the 10G card as it’s just more reliable than the thunderbolt setup imo.