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Hopefully this means passively-cooled SoC Mini-ITX boards that don't cost an arm and a leg. I've been speccing out a new home NAS and had hopes for something along those lines, but both the SuperMicro (A2SDi-4C-HLN4F, ~$350) and ASRock (EPYC3251D4I-2T, ~$880) options I found struck me as overpriced.

For comparison, when I did this five years ago, I was able to get an Athlon 5250+motherboard for $137. It's a little surprising that I can't seem to do any better after all this time.

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I've replaced the case of my NUC with a passively cooled one from Akasa. I forgot what I paid for it, seems the one I had sold for 50 EUR (old NUC I bought around 2015/2016). The NUC itself was 150 EUR or so. The highest temperature I can get it to is 50 Celsius or so. It was really easy to switch the case, though you did need external antenna's for that (bought them from Aliexpress).

I really want to switch it over to something equivalent from AMD. Unfortunately it seems that equivalent silent boards are mostly intended for specialized businesses. Meaning, the prices are high.

Even with a newer NUC I'd probably still pay something like 150 EUR for the NUC and 50 EUR for a passively cooled Akasa case. All the AMD options I've found are way more expensive than this unfortunately. Sometimes I cannot even find a seller for some of the options.

Edit: I'd prefer if the case is small. NUC is already small. It could be a bit bigger than a NUC but ideally not.

What would be a proper way to attach something like 4 x 3.5" SATA HDD to NUC form-factor?

I actually did just this.

There are two main ways I considered:

1. Buy a 4-bay USB enclosure.

2. Put a HBA in a Thunderbolt 3 -> PCIe enclosure, put the SATA disks in a standard PC case with a SAS port expander, connect the SATA disks to the port expander with A SATA breakout cable and connect the newly created DAS to the HBA with a standard SAS cable.

I ended up going the first way. I bought two of them that have USB 3.1 Gen 2 UASP interfaces and filled them with shucked 12TB disks. They're attached to the NUC using regular A->C USB 3.1 Gen 2 cables while the Thunderbolt port is connected to a Thunderbolt -> 10GbE adapter. It works surprisingly well as the backup server it's intended to be, the main issue being that under very high I/O loads, the USB interfaces completely die for some reason I've been unable to ascertain and can't be recovered without rebooting.

I believe the second option would have been much more stable but also bulkier and more expensive.

There's also a third option: install an M2 to PCIe riser in the NUC and connect a HBA to the NUC directly. using a process like this [0]. This is a bit too frankenstein for me.

However I want to emphasise very strongly that I don't recommend doing this. There are tons of much better options around. HP's MicroServer line in particular is definitely worth thinking about but also you can stack ODROID HC2s if you're interested in Ceph or GlusterFS and there are plenty of small PC cases that can hold 4 3.5" drives and a motherboard.

[0]: https://ganon.club/index.php/2019/04/04/getting-10gbps-on-a-...

Thanks! I'm using HP Microserver right now, but for various reasons I'm thinking to get something else. They released 10 Plus version, so I'm comparing alternatives. Your second variant definitely sounds very interesting as it should be possible to upgrade NUC independently. I wonder if USB or Thunderbolt connections are considered reliable for 24/7 use.

> I wonder if USB or Thunderbolt connections are considered reliable for 24/7 use.

I think Thunderbolt should be fine since it's essentially PCIe. USB so far has been okay as long as you don't push it too hard. When the throughput gets too high it dies.

> there are plenty of small PC cases that can hold 4 3.5" drives and a motherboard.

Can you recommend one? In a quick newegg search [1], I see the Fractal Design Node 304 for $90 + whatever a PSU costs. Anything cheaper? I also see a 3-bay COOLER MASTER Elite 110 for $50.

I've been writing NVR software [2] and am trying to put together hardware recommendations for a small, inexpensive machine.

* The ultra low budget option is a Raspberry Pi + a 2-bay USB SATA dock. It works surprisingly well most of the time, but cheap USB-attached storage is a little sketchy. I've had corruption a couple times and suspect the dock.

* I'd like something a step or two up that has the drives in the main case. The Helios64 looks attractive but I'd like to see what comparable x86_64-based options there are. The MicroServer you mentioned looks interesting also - not as pretty as the Helios64, not hot-swappable, a little pricier, but a lot more powerful.

edit: this page [3] lists some nice cases also. More bays than I'm looking for but nice anyway.

[1] https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100007583%20600030561%20600030...

[2] https://github.com/scottlamb/moonfire-nvr

[3] https://butterwhat.com/2019/06/16/brians-top-three-diy-nas-c...

I've had a Fractal Design Node 304 for the last five years and it's been terrific. I put a Corsair PSU in it that only turns on its fan under load, so it runs silently just about all the time. I kept it under my TV for a while and it was completely inaudible while looking like it belonged there, and then after I moved it went into a corner of the bedroom (for wired access to the router) where it's been similarly unnoticeable.

The "canonical" options are the Fractal Design Node 304 and the Silverstone DS380B. If you're willing to go bigger and want more drives, take a look at this thread [0].

[0]: https://forums.serverbuilds.net/t/guide-nas-killer-4-0-fast-...

Hmm, I'd try something like http://www.iocrest.com/en/product_details594.html + eSATA to external enclosure (probably custom 3d printed).

These adapters are based on Marvell chips from what I remember and are quite reliable but tend to get warm.

https://www.marvell.com/content/dam/marvell/en/public-collat...

Have you considered the Helios64? Modest CPU (6-core ARM: 2 Cortex-A72s, 4 Cortex-A53s) but a nice enclosure, a 2.5 Gbps port + 1 Gbps port, and an excellent price: only $285 for everything but the drives.

In that price range, I'd far rather get an Udoo bolt V3 for $330. Dual Ryzen cores (4 threads, 3.2GHz) and way better IO along with the option for way more RAM. Case and charger add another $45, but total performance is way higher. The quad core (8 thread, 3.6GHz) version with an 8CU GPU runs about $420.

Going from $300 to $380 or $500 with a similar form factor and many times more performance seems like a good deal for a lot of tasks.

Very nice find, thanks, I checked it can do 32GB ECC - however, for mass storage it only seems to have 1x NVME, while some quick mental math tells me there should be enough lanes for 2x NVME or Pci-e X4 Gen 3

Do you know something similar to the Udoo that would have at least 2x NVME + 1x SATA 2.5?

From the Udoo specs: > 32gb Emmc 5.0 High Speed Drive > Ssd Sata Module Slot M.2 Socket Key B 2260 (Featured Also Pci-e X2) > Nvme Module Slot M.2 Socket Key M 2280 (Pci-e X4 Gen 3 Interface) > Sata 3.0 6 Gbit/s Standard Connector

There are "commercial" boards, but they price by appointment only and probably cost 3-10x as much.

Here's an IO comparison

Udoo Bolt

* 1 sata 3 port

* 1 m.2 type B (2x PCIe 2 lanes)

* 1 NVME drive (over 4x PCIe 3 lanes)

* 1 eMMC 5 (32gb soldered -- a mistake IMO, but one could potentially solder on a different chip)

Rockchip rk3399 (raw specs)

* 1 eMMC 5.1

* 2 SD/MMC 4.5

* 4x PCIe 2.1 lanes

The Helios64 is stretching all their SATA across those 4x PCIe 2.1 lanes. The single m.2 type B on the udoo has that much bandwidth by itself (and the NVME has the equivalent of 8x additional PCIe 2 lanes). If you really wanted, you could probably find an adapter that could turn the NVME into PCIe and then into quite a few SATA lanes as that's basically all they're doing anyway with the helios.

Thanks a lot! For what I do, I'd need to add a key-B NVME drive (not SATA, because of the IOPS) to the "normal" NVME if I understand correctly.

Do you know any such drive having at least 512G and working in NVME (not SATA)? Or can I just plug a 2260 B+M keyed drive and hope it doesn't default to SATA?

Their docs claim either NVME or SATA work.

https://www.udoo.org/docs-bolt/Hardware_References/M.2_Conne...

ink_13 was talking about NASs, so I recommended a machine for that use case. Are you talking about a NAS as well? If so, what comparable enclosure can you find for $45? You need more SATA ports also—an expansion card or port multiplier or some such.

The Udoo is a much more powerful little machine, but the Helios64 seems more practical as a low-budget NAS.

> SoC Mini-ITX boards that don't cost an arm and a leg

It really depends on your requirements. If you can generalize "Mini-ITX board" to "Small Form Factor x86", then the ODROID H2 fits the bill for less than 200$ (2x1Gbps ethernet, 2xSATA, 1xM.2), unless you require ECC (which admittedly, is an interesting offer of the Ryzen boards of the article).

There are certainly other ARM boards meeting NAS requiremens in a way or another, but I personally prefer, for simplicity (due to compatibility), x86.

Gotta second the ODroid H2 recommendation... Much more cost effective then then NUC/NUC-clones. Also awesome for small home lab - kubernetes clusters, etc.

It most probably will cost an arm and a leg since it's not designed to be a Raspberry PI competitor but a device that will be used in MRI scanners, large digital signage displays, touchscreen industrial controllers, ATMs and other expensive low volume hardware.

Why would you use such a ultra low power SOC in a MRI scanner?

And noise is really not a problem, not just power I guess.

Yeah.... I really wish AMD packaged these for their AM2 socket so we could use commodity boards for them. Sure at that TDP your run of the mill mainboard is a significant power draw, but the other all system is still less than the 35w CPU I ended up with.

(I just finally replaced my core2duo with a low power AMD because the price was so wildly better than the intel open and I could actually order the AMD one from retailers rather than shady eBay second hand cpus)

What did you end up with?

That was exactly my thought -- my desktop is currently a Ryzen 3 APU anyway, and I'd love to go with a cooler-and-quieter option, as long as it's socketed so I can drop in a new chip in a few years as my needs change. (Also hello from the D!)

You can have a quad-core AMD board with dual (or triple) gigabit for a hundred euro https://www.pcengines.ch/apu2.htm

These are GX-412TC Jaguar CPUs, they are very old. Introduction date: June 6, 2014

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Puma/AMD-G-Series%20GX-412TC.h...

They are still dual-issue out-of-order x86-64 cores. Same architecture as in Xbox One. Plenty of power for the TDP.

I use one of these (running OpenBSD) as a router. 100% uptime, excluding OS upgrades and power failures.

It’s fast enough to run small VMs, and is passively cooled.

PC Engines has a nice business model. They put out board revisions infrequently, but then sell them unchanged (other than errata) for decades. This lets OS vendors provide rock solid support over time, and also makes them appropriate for use cases where you want to be able to buy an identical replacement years from now.

As Moore’s Law ends, I hope more hardware vendors go this way.

Hopefully PC Engines will issue a new Ryzen based APU line sometime soon (since the article says these will be produced by AMD for 10 years).

(Edit: they support boards for about one decade. Not multiple decades)

I've been actually wondering what they might use if they want to keep 4 cores. V1500B looks nice but it is rated 12-25W.

https://www.amd.com/en/product/8496

I have one as my home router and got an additional two to run as GlusterFS nodes and couldn't be happier (well, Gluster performance is really unsatisfactory with ~50MB/s from these two running in replicated on 1 LUKS-encrypted SSD each, but I've realized now that probably I shouldn't expect much more with this kind of setup and you really need to run distributed on larger number of smaller nodes to make Gluster performant, so can't blame the APUs).

Now I'm having a hard time to decide what I should go for for additional worker nodes in my cluster - go all-in on PCEngines APUs, Odroid H2, Udoo Bolt or a larger number of some incarnation of RK3399 SBC (Khadas VIM3/NanoPi M4/Rock Pi) or even Raspberry Pi4s - or if it's better to wait a bit for some of these new AMD SFFs.

If power-consumption, space and noise wouldn't be a factor it'd be a no-brainer to get two or more 19" rack servers, but that's a no-go.

I have a feeling that the playing field for small-form-factor, power-efficient and quiet compute clusters is going to change dramatically soon with new products based on AMD and ARM, but also not sure if it's worth waiting if I want things up and running by this summer.

What sort of requirements do you have? Maybe something like a HP Microserver would work for you?

https://www.servethehome.com/hpe-proliant-microserver-gen10-...

Yes, even if they're a tad bit on the large side of what I'm looking for they're still looking quite compelling - unfortunately relevant models are not on sale in my region and the pricing becomes less attractive after shipping and import duties.

I already went far, far down that rabbit-hole for a max capacity 3.5" HDD + ZIL SSDs + L2ARC SSDs FreeNas 4U 10 GbE NAS on Supermicro/ASRock Rack DIY and Dell, HP, Lenovo and iXSystems. For home use, you're better off buying a used 2U-4U Supermicro or Dell box with an old Xeon or two. They're so cheap, buying new is like throwing money away on a new car with instant depreciation. In the Bay Area, you can even order up and swing by UNIX Surplus for some deals, although sometimes they're higher than the usual sources.

I was going to get some of the WD HGST HC530 14 TB self-encrypting drives until they came out to ~$600 each. (Ouch.) The regular ones are <$400, similar to the ones BackBlaze uses.

> For home use, you're better off buying a used 2U-4U Supermicro or Dell box with an old Xeon or two.

But these are not passive-cooled at all and are very, very, VERY noisy in a home environment.

And also the electricity cost over the lifetime (say 10 years 24/7) is quite substantial. It makes no difference for a powerful server but for a small low power thing it can be quite a chunk of the total cost.

Uhm, those things sounds like a damn jet engine. The post above asked for a passively cooled part.

I've been speccing something like this recently and you will definitely get a nice server for not much money. However the CPU performance may not be great compared to specifying a new low cost Ryzen with ECC Ram. And the power consumption will probably not be great either. Ryzen has made some great home server configurations quite affordable with its great performance, low cost, and ECC support.

I was considering getting one, but it's a much louder, larger and hotter running equipment than I want in my house.

For my purposes it's much better to keep a dedicated Synology Nas for my data, and a couple low-power NUCs / compact pcs as a kubernetes cluster for actual hosting / experiments.

>For comparison, when I did this five years ago,....

That is because Intel 14nm was first launched in 2014/2015. And we haven't had any node improvement since then. 5 years later 10nm is barely out. Without competition we have a stagnant improvement.

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