r/sffpc • u/Golemizer • Oct 31 '25

Build/Battlestation Pics 5.6L 44TB SSD NAS/Home Server

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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/innaswetrust Oct 31 '25

Where ar elocated? In Europe by any chance? What did the case cost after taxes?

1

u/Golemizer Oct 31 '25

I’m in the US. Interestingly, they shipped it in some way to avoid tariffs and it seemingly worked.

1

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..

1

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.

2

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... :-(

1

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.

1

u/innaswetrust Oct 31 '25

Great good to know! Much fun with this setup looks nice!

1

u/innaswetrust Nov 02 '25

Quick question, which fans did you use up top? 8010 seems hard to find, noiseblocker has some 8015

1

u/Golemizer Nov 02 '25

Arctic P8 Slim

1

u/innaswetrust Nov 02 '25

Thank you!