I wish to help out a friend and build a NAS to get a high performing system that will work well with i.e. 4k content, created by go pro, and Plex Media Server.
I’ve built many systems before, but sometimes there are hidden caveats that come to bite you, more on that later. So if anyone can spot a potential issue with my recommendation I would appreciate that a lot if you chipped in your 2c.
The price tag is around the mark of DS918+, so I’ve based my build around that budget.
Case: Lian Li PC-Q25
Memory: Ballistix Sport LT DDR4 4GB (2666MHz) x2
Motherboard: ASROCK Z390M-ITX/ac
PSU: Corsair VS550 550W
CPU: Intel Core i5-9400
Boot disk: Transcend MTS800 32GB SSD M.2 2280
*Link to the products at the end
This compares about equal price vice to DS918+ or AS6404T which my friend was looking at.
Both motherboard and CPU supports Intel Quick Sync Video, thus it should be able to provide plexmediaserver with hw accelerated video decoding/encoding.
When it comes to performance though…
"GPU" CPU System Passmark
Intel UHD Graphics 630 Intel Core i5-9400 DIY 12453
Intel HD Graphics 500 Intel Celeron J3455 DiskStation DS918+ 2131
Intel HD Graphics 500 Intel Celeron J3455 AS6404T 2131
…the DIY system is miles ahead of the pre-built systems, which evidently has the same (slow) cpu.
Pros and cons, well, they all cost about the same.
DIY does not have external hotswap bays which could be considered a con, but frankly, how often do you expect to replace disks in the system? It does however have 5 internal hotswap 3.5 slots, which is 1 one than the 4 the pre-built systems offer.
DIY has a major pro when it comes to performance, while OS is a bit depending on the eye of the beholder. Some would say that no OS ready to go pre-installed is a con, while some would say the flexibility and freedom to select what you want is a pro as well.
When it comes to the OS, I’m deliberating two options
- FreeNAS zfs + plexmediaserver plugin.
- Ubuntu + mdadm + owncloud + plexmediaserver.
Option 2 is a bit more work to set up, but as of time of writing, mdadm is much more flexible than zfs when it comes to expanding, adding new disks. Yes, I’m aware that it can be done with zfs also, but not one by one disk like mdadm can, or even remove and reconfigure. This is coming to zfs as I understand, but as of right now mdadm is much more flexible.
Owncloud also has better apps for android/iphone to access your files on the go. Say you have some documents you want to access, it’s as easy as opening the app and browsing to them. Sure you can set up OpenVPN, and use smb over vpn to reach your FreeNAS files, but I would give advantage owncloud on that one. (There may be solutions I don’t know about, hence the brainstorming here). With owncloud you can also use rclone on the client side to set up a mount point on windows/mac/linux. It performs a lot better than smb, and also works very well with great performance across WAN, again no vpn required for that.
And last but certainly not least, plexmediaserver. I have experience with running plexmediaserver on Ubuntu, using Intel Quick Sync Video for hw acceleration, and it works great, as long as the hardware actually supports it. I had a case where I thought I had support, but it turned out the motherboard did not enable usage of the Quick Sync features of the cpu, so no. I have certainly checked that both motherboard and cpu supports quick sync video, so I’m fairly confident hw acceleration will work with option 2, please correct me if I missed something here.
But I don’t have any experience with option 1 (FreeNAS). Should I expect hw acceleration to work in this setup?
All building, installation and setup aside, my general first impression is that FreeNAS is the more user friendly option.
Imagine my friend wants to increase the capacity of the NAS.
With option 1 I would for sure be required to help with mdadm cli commands and such, while with option 2, as long as you add the same VDEV config as before, it’s just a few clicks in the web interface of FreeNAS to increase the pool, and more flexibility is coming in the future according to the devs of zfs.
Option 1 has webmin…but…no, I wouldn’t trust expanding mdadm array with that.
So, that was a lot of brainstorming from me, if you’re still with me, respect! 
Now I would love to hear from you experts out there, what are your thoughts?
Did I mess up something major in the hw configuration?
What OS options would you go for and why? 1 or 2? Perhaps something different altogether?
Or would you go with one of the pre-built systems?
Important to emphasis that reliable 4k streaming is an important requirement for the build.
Links to all the pars in the build:
http://www.lian-li.com/pc-q25/
https://www.crucial.com/usa/en/bls4g4d26bfsb
https://www.asrock.com/MB/Intel/Z390M-ITXac/index.asp
https://www.corsair.com/ca/en/Categories/Products/Power-Supply-Units/vs-series-config-2018/p/CP-9020171-NA
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/134898/intel-core-i5-9400-processor-9m-cache-up-to-4-10-ghz.html
https://www.transcend-info.com/Products/No-644
