Recommendation on these specs

ell_grips

New member
Hey there,

I'm building a file server for my girlfriends freelance photography business but I'm not very experienced with this sort of thing.

Are these specs something you guys would recommend? If not what should I change?

Case
InWIN IW-MS04 MINI SERVER CHASSIS
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i5 Six Core Processor i5-9400 (2.9GHz) 9MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS P11C-I (DDR4 RDIMM, Dual LAN)
Memory (RAM)
8GB Kingston DDR4 2666MHz (1 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
ASPEED INTEGRATED GRAPHICS ACCELERATOR (GPU)
1st Storage Drive
4TB SEAGATE IRONWOLF PRO 3.5", 7200 RPM 128MB CACHE
1st Storage Drive
4TB SEAGATE IRONWOLF PRO 3.5", 7200 RPM 128MB CACHE
RAID
RAID 1 (MIRRORED VOLUME - 2 x same size & model HDD / SSD)
Power Supply
INWIN 265W FLEX ATX 80+ BRONZE POWER SUPPLY
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
STANDARD LGA-1151 CPU COOLER
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Network Card
Intel Gigabit Pro 1000CT PCI-E CARD (1 x RJ45)
Operating System
Windows 11 Professional for Workstation 64 Bit - inc. Licence (≤6 Core
 

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
Yeah exactly that, it'll be for her pictures as she's running out of room on external hardrives and having to delete older stuff.
Cool, what's your max budget for it?

Not to deny a sale to PCS, but I'd strongly recommend a NAS drive instead of a server.

NAS stands for Network Attached Storage, they've taken over from old File Servers both in the home and corporations.

They are basically a dedicated micro server, and you can configure them in the same way you would a server with RAM, CPU and drive bays.

Then so long as you've got enough RAM and enough power on the CPU, you can basically set it up to do a host of different things including Media Servers, VPN Servers, FTP, you name it, they're incredibly powerful, and scalable as well so you can start off with 4 drives, and just bolt on more storage cages if you end up needing more space.

The good ones come with a custom Linux OS, and then you have a nice GUI where you can just select what modules you want to configure on it, and it's all very user friendly, far more so that a server.

If you let me know budget, I'll suggest some options.
 

ell_grips

New member
Cool, what's your max budget for it?

Not to deny a sale to PCS, but I'd strongly recommend a NAS drive instead of a server.

NAS stands for Network Attached Storage, they've taken over from old File Servers both in the home and corporations.

They are basically a dedicated micro server, and you can configure them in the same way you would a server with RAM, CPU and drive bays.

Then so long as you've got enough RAM and enough power on the CPU, you can basically set it up to do a host of different things including Media Servers, VPN Servers, FTP, you name it, they're incredibly powerful, and scalable as well so you can start off with 4 drives, and just bolt on more storage cages if you end up needing more space.

The good ones come with a custom Linux OS, and then you have a nice GUI where you can just select what modules you want to configure on it, and it's all very user friendly, far more so that a server.

If you let me know budget, I'll suggest some options.
Thanks so much for the advice. My budget is max £1000.
 

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
Thanks so much for the advice. My budget is max £1000.
That's a healthy budget, you'll get far more with a NAS.

The makes to go for in no particular order:

Synology
QNAP
Asustor

Synology are really good, but at the moment they haven't got any decent new options in the 4 bay area that keep up with modern networking.

As such I'd recommend this one from QNAP, it's currently £660 from Box which appears to be the cheapest.

This is WITHOUT Disks, so you have to factor those on top. You could start off with the same 2 x 4TB Seagate Ironwolf Pro's which you had configured above (which are great drives) from Box again at £128 each and it would still be under budget.


It's a quad core AMD processor with multithreading, so will be far better for multicore work than an Intel equivalent.

Any kind of RAID is supported as you like.

It's got 1x8Gb ECC (Enterprise class error correcting memory) upgradeable to 64Gb (note that ECC RAM is more expensive than normal desktop RAM, probably about double the cost). Normally they come with 4Gb as standard, but I would always recommend 8Gb.

It's also got spare PCIe slots so you can add on further modules.

It's got 2 NVME M2 slots, so you can put configure an M2 drive as a cache to speed up writes.

It's got 2 2.5Gb network ports, one for redundancy which you likely won't need, but is handy anyway, and the 2.5Gb is better future proofing, a lot of newer Routers now have 2.5Gb ports.

It's got management apps you can install on any mobile app, even if you're remote, just access it over the internet.

Plus it comes with 3 year warranty included, but you can increase that to 5 years.


Sales page is here: https://www.qnap.com/en-uk/product/ts-473a

Reviews here: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/qnap-ts-473-4g/17.html

Note, the long boot time they mention in this review is largely irrelevant as it's permanently on, it's only when you're configuring it that that's an issue.

The idea with these is that you plug them directly into your router via LAN cable. Then you can set up exposure to the web very easily through the interface so it becomes a personal cloud server you can access from anywhere, if you wanted. Or you can just have it setup as a normal file server over the local network.

It's an amazing bit of kit for the price, quite fantastic.
 

ell_grips

New member
That's a healthy budget, you'll get far more with a NAS.

The makes to go for in no particular order:

Synology
QNAP
Asustor

Synology are really good, but at the moment they haven't got any decent new options in the 4 bay area that keep up with modern networking.

As such I'd recommend this one from QNAP, it's currently £660 from Box which appears to be the cheapest.

This is WITHOUT Disks, so you have to factor those on top. You could start off with the same 2 x 4TB Seagate Ironwolf Pro's which you had configured above (which are great drives) from Box again at £128 each and it would still be under budget.


It's a quad core AMD processor with multithreading, so will be far better for multicore work than an Intel equivalent.

Any kind of RAID is supported as you like.

It's got 1x8Gb ECC (Enterprise class error correcting memory) upgradeable to 64Gb (note that ECC RAM is more expensive than normal desktop RAM, probably about double the cost). Normally they come with 4Gb as standard, but I would always recommend 8Gb.

It's also got spare PCIe slots so you can add on further modules.

It's got 2 NVME M2 slots, so you can put configure an M2 drive as a cache to speed up writes.

It's got 2 2.5Gb network ports, one for redundancy which you likely won't need, but is handy anyway, and the 2.5Gb is better future proofing, a lot of newer Routers now have 2.5Gb ports.

It's got management apps you can install on any mobile app, even if you're remote, just access it over the internet.

Plus it comes with 3 year warranty included, but you can increase that to 5 years.


Sales page is here: https://www.qnap.com/en-uk/product/ts-473a

Reviews here: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/qnap-ts-473-4g/17.html

Note, the long boot time they mention in this review is largely irrelevant as it's permanently on, it's only when you're configuring it that that's an issue.

The idea with these is that you plug them directly into your router via LAN cable. Then you can set up exposure to the web very easily through the interface so it becomes a personal cloud server you can access from anywhere, if you wanted. Or you can just have it setup as a normal file server over the local network.

It's an amazing bit of kit for the price, quite fantastic.
Thank you so much SpyderTracks you're an absolute legend. I'll have a look at the links you posted and get the right option for her. Thanks again
 
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