briancmoses

I think this is a valid approach, especially for the audience of Hackernews.

But I'd be a bit worried about the availability of drivers for much of the hardware found on this particular motherboard.

I wrote this blog and I completely agree with you both!

This listing should be as close to a sure thing as you can get on AliExpress. But even then, dealing with AliExpress when things go sideways isn't always all that great.

I have purchased this motherboard from this link, I'd do it again in a heartbeat if I needed to, and I wouldn't fault anyone for avoiding AliExpress either.

If somebody wants to buy from a different vendor, it's sometimes possible to find resellers on Amazon or eBay (myself included). The prices might be a bit more expensive, but some folks might think it's worth it.

I talk about it in the blog, it's my understanding that there's shortages of the Intel CPUs which I would expect to drive up the pricing.

You're entirely right about this kind of content and the people who create it festers cynicism. But in the end, I am powerless to do anything to counter said cynics. Unfortunately anything that I write otherwise will just invoke more cynicism and I'm sure in the eyes of the cynics, it's justified.

These DIY NAS build blogs have a bit of formula: Here's my criteria, here are the parts that I chose to meet that criteria, and here's what I think after I've built and tested it to the best of my ability.

If I had my choice, my blog would inspire people to understand their own criteria and give them the confidence to go build something unique that meets that same criteria. This absolutely happens, but it's the exception rather than the rule. The rule is that people choose to replicate these DIY NAS builds part-for-part.

I'm as confident in this DIY NAS as I've been for the ones I created in the past. The times there were issues with these builds (eg: the defective C255X/C275X CPUs from Intel), I've updated those blogs with all the details I can muster about those issues.

You should give me the benefit of the doubt when it comes to understanding the audience! I've got at least fourteen years of writing these blogs and then interacting with the people who engage with them. I think I have a decent understanding with what resonates with the audience. I've found that audience to be large enough that I'd rather focus my efforts on creating content this audience continues to find useful. An engaged audience is far more interesting to create content for than a wider audience.

The audience does want something that they can set and forget, which they've been doing for about as long as I've been writing these blogs. The few recipients of these actual DIY NAS builds (via raffles, giveaways, auctions, etc) have used them for years. For years, people have been telling me about how they used one of my previous DIY NAS buids as inspiration years ago and have told me how they have worked for them over the years. I expect in the not-to-distant future, someone will be telling me the same about this particular NAS. Despite disbelief and insistence otherwise, I'm insanely confident that this DIY NAS will be reliable for years to come.

Somebody else shared this, but I'm the blog's author. I think you're asking good questions, but they're not from the point-of-view of the people who actually benefit from these blogs.

I've answered the "You build one every year?" question quite a few times over the years.

These blogs have a shelf life. After about a year, newer hardware is available that's a better a better value. And after 2-3 years, it starts to get difficult to even find the many of the parts.

I don't replace my NAS every year, but every now and then I do keep my yearly NAS for my own purposes, but 2026 won't be one of those years.

> How does one establish the reliability of the hardware...?

One guy on the Internet is--and always will be--an anecdote, I could use this NAS until its hardware was obsolete and I'd still be unable to establish any kind of actual reliability for the hardware. Unfortunately, I don't have the time or money required to elevate beyond being a piece of anecdotal data.

However, there's a sizable audience out there who have realized that they need some kind of storage beyond what they already have, but haven't implemented a solution yet. I think if you put yourself in their shoes, you'll realize that anything is better than nothing in regards to their important data. My hope is that these blogs move that audience along towards finding that solution.

At the price Raspberry Pis are being sold (scalped) for it's discouraging and disappointing to see content creators continually going to that well.

You can buy a travel router like the GL.iNet GL-SFT1200 (Opal) for $39.99. All of Gl.iNet's devices run OpenWRT already. Setting up Wireguard on OpenWRT is easy, and using Tailscale is even easier!

Edit: Jeff's been creating awesome Raspberry Pi content for a long time and I'm glad that he's not stopping given the current circumstances. I hope that his audience has an abundant supply of unused RPis looking to be utilized.

In Jeff's shoes I'd want to speak to those in his audience who DON'T have a Raspberry Pi and save them from paying scalpers prices until things return to normal--assuming that they ever do.