That’s silly. A motherboard with a free pci slot (I think x8? Been awhile), a cheap hba with the associated sas cables, and literally any case that will hold the drives. You could strap them all to a board if you wanted
Obviously you’ll need cpu and ram. Make sure the power supply is beefy enough to cover the amount of drives you plan to use and preferably get a good quality one if you plan to run it 24/7. I do think it’s worthwhile to get server grade hardware as it holds up better to long term 24/7 use but it’s not necessary. It’s also absolutely fine to go entirely used; my whole build was all ewaste and was maybe $300 minus the drives (which added much more). And my build was frankly overkill for a nas but I also run VMs and do some local llm stuff. If you just want to serve files for like Jellyfin/plex you really don’t need much, an ewaste pc from like 2015 will probably do the job spec wise (though increasing ram a lot can help significantly especially if you do zfs)
I have a 15 drive nas. My drives are sata but my hba is compatible with sas drives. I use an lsi 9300-16i and I have read of people using it with sas arrays just fine. If you shop around you can get it with cables for like $40-50 used (maybe more now since inflation fucked everything and you need the less common cables). Be careful because there are lots of counterfeits.
Also be mindful of cooling, the card runs HOT. I added active cooling to mine with a 3d printed bracket. If you’re only running 3-4 drives you could also get the 9300-8i which is cheaper and runs cooler, but has half the drive lanes so you’re limited in terms of future expansion.
I dont expect to need more lanes for this nas. The drives are 12TB each and should me more than i need for what i plan to use them for.
The biggest thing i was hoping to get out of a premade enclosure was lower power draw, but you’re right that I can just get old low power equipment, which should help
A used SAS card can be found on ebay for $20-$30. You just need a PC with an open 8 lane PCIe slot and a few drive bays. An older 6gbps card is fine for a few mechanical hard drives.
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This is what i was expecting to hear, i was just hopeful someone knew something i didnt.
That’s silly. A motherboard with a free pci slot (I think x8? Been awhile), a cheap hba with the associated sas cables, and literally any case that will hold the drives. You could strap them all to a board if you wanted
Obviously you’ll need cpu and ram. Make sure the power supply is beefy enough to cover the amount of drives you plan to use and preferably get a good quality one if you plan to run it 24/7. I do think it’s worthwhile to get server grade hardware as it holds up better to long term 24/7 use but it’s not necessary. It’s also absolutely fine to go entirely used; my whole build was all ewaste and was maybe $300 minus the drives (which added much more). And my build was frankly overkill for a nas but I also run VMs and do some local llm stuff. If you just want to serve files for like Jellyfin/plex you really don’t need much, an ewaste pc from like 2015 will probably do the job spec wise (though increasing ram a lot can help significantly especially if you do zfs)
I have a 15 drive nas. My drives are sata but my hba is compatible with sas drives. I use an lsi 9300-16i and I have read of people using it with sas arrays just fine. If you shop around you can get it with cables for like $40-50 used (maybe more now since inflation fucked everything and you need the less common cables). Be careful because there are lots of counterfeits.
Also be mindful of cooling, the card runs HOT. I added active cooling to mine with a 3d printed bracket. If you’re only running 3-4 drives you could also get the 9300-8i which is cheaper and runs cooler, but has half the drive lanes so you’re limited in terms of future expansion.
I dont expect to need more lanes for this nas. The drives are 12TB each and should me more than i need for what i plan to use them for.
The biggest thing i was hoping to get out of a premade enclosure was lower power draw, but you’re right that I can just get old low power equipment, which should help
You would likely need to build a NAS with a HBA (Host Bus Adapter). I’m not aware of any low-end NAS systems that support SAS
You can robably get about any server and make a NAS out of that.
Building a NAS with SAS drives won’t be super easy or cheap. DAS, perhaps.
A used SAS card can be found on ebay for $20-$30. You just need a PC with an open 8 lane PCIe slot and a few drive bays. An older 6gbps card is fine for a few mechanical hard drives.
I would take a SAS DAS if you know of one.
An HBA with the SAS cables should run to about £50 used.