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This is such a common yet niche ask - silent fanless(light on cpu capacity) but more IO capabilities (NVMe slots, SATA ports, and NICs) for those seeking to mak

This is such a common yet niche ask - silent fanless(light on cpu capacity) but more IO capabilities (NVMe slots, SATA ports, and NICs) for those seeking to make their own NAS. Why aren’t companies like Asus, Gigabyte, etc sell such kits and win the market share? It’s always - here is a ITX motherboard, but it lacks proper storage. Or here is a SOC board with nice storage options but crippled NIC etc. If someone made a product with little to no compromise, and gain the recommendation of the self hosting crowd, more and more newcomers will start buying stuff instead of Raspberry Pis which are way too underpowered for such use cases.

theodric 3y ago
I'm with you, but I don't find the Raspberry Pi underpowered. I'm running 5 Alpine VMs and a Nextcloud snap on top of Debian on a Pi CM4 8GB, with a (now)8 port SATA controller with 6 SSDs and USB3 controller with 2 hard drives attached through a PCIe switch, and it's absolutely fine and pulls around 13-17W idle-ish and spun down. It doesn't max out gigE on long writes, but it matches my friend's 8 bay Synology at around 900Mbps. Perhaps I'd need more CPU if I were transcoding, but I have no requirement for that. I suspect a Pi CM5, with its more and faster PCIe lanes, will kick off some really interesting opportunities in this space.
- Saris 3y ago
  It's wild that a Pi now uses more power than a box with a U/T sku Intel CPU! Combined with the high prices it has pushed me completely away from the Pi.
  - wtallis 3y ago
    The PCIe switch, SATA controller and USB3 controller all add a fair bit of power compared to having those functions integrated into an SoC built on a better process. But that also means it's not entirely fair to say the Pi is using more power; it's the system as a whole using more power because of all the extra parts needed to overcome the Pi's limitations.
    - Saris 3y ago
      Sure, but an x86 box has all of those built in already.
      - wtallis 3y ago
        Yes, that was my point. An x86 box has lots of built-in (and power-efficient) IO capabilities that are not part of the Raspberry Pi. When adding a bunch of IO-expanding peripherals to a Pi-based system, you should properly attribute the power consumption instead of making it sound like the Pi itself has a serious idle power problem.
        theodric 3y ago
        That power footprint also includes the 6 SSDs. Are there mini PCs with 8 SATA ports that fit in a 13-17W power envelope including 6 disks?
        Saris 3y ago
        SSDs idle at like 0.2W IIRC, so 6 of those shouldn't have much impact on overall power. Not sure on 8 SATA ports as most only have 3-4, but I'd be using NVMe SSDs if I could these days anyways, main boot drive in the motherboard and some more on a PCIe addon adapter.
        theodric 3y ago
        8TB NVMe SSDs are rather expensive, and I'm running 3x 8TB SSDs in addition to 2x 2TB and a 512GB boot volume. Cost was not a major constraint on this build, but paying 1199.- vs 399.- for an 8TB SSD felt a bit comical. I also can't make any use of NVMe performance benefits when a SATA SSD can more than fill a 1Gb Ethernet pipe, or even a 2.5Gb or 5Gb pipe. Only a 10GbE system would benefit from being able to push more than 550MB/sec, and even that could be met by multiple SATA SSDs in parallel.

theodric 3y ago

I'm with you, but I don't find the Raspberry Pi underpowered. I'm running 5 Alpine VMs and a Nextcloud snap on top of Debian on a Pi CM4 8GB, with a (now)8 port SATA controller with 6 SSDs and USB3 controller with 2 hard drives attached through a PCIe switch, and it's absolutely fine and pulls around 13-17W idle-ish and spun down. It doesn't max out gigE on long writes, but it matches my friend's 8 bay Synology at around 900Mbps. Perhaps I'd need more CPU if I were transcoding, but I have no requirement for that. I suspect a Pi CM5, with its more and faster PCIe lanes, will kick off some really interesting opportunities in this space.

Saris 3y ago
It's wild that a Pi now uses more power than a box with a U/T sku Intel CPU! Combined with the high prices it has pushed me completely away from the Pi.
- wtallis 3y ago
  The PCIe switch, SATA controller and USB3 controller all add a fair bit of power compared to having those functions integrated into an SoC built on a better process. But that also means it's not entirely fair to say the Pi is using more power; it's the system as a whole using more power because of all the extra parts needed to overcome the Pi's limitations.
  - Saris 3y ago
    Sure, but an x86 box has all of those built in already.
    - wtallis 3y ago
      Yes, that was my point. An x86 box has lots of built-in (and power-efficient) IO capabilities that are not part of the Raspberry Pi. When adding a bunch of IO-expanding peripherals to a Pi-based system, you should properly attribute the power consumption instead of making it sound like the Pi itself has a serious idle power problem.
      - theodric 3y ago
        That power footprint also includes the 6 SSDs. Are there mini PCs with 8 SATA ports that fit in a 13-17W power envelope including 6 disks?
        Saris 3y ago
        SSDs idle at like 0.2W IIRC, so 6 of those shouldn't have much impact on overall power. Not sure on 8 SATA ports as most only have 3-4, but I'd be using NVMe SSDs if I could these days anyways, main boot drive in the motherboard and some more on a PCIe addon adapter.
        theodric 3y ago
        8TB NVMe SSDs are rather expensive, and I'm running 3x 8TB SSDs in addition to 2x 2TB and a 512GB boot volume. Cost was not a major constraint on this build, but paying 1199.- vs 399.- for an 8TB SSD felt a bit comical. I also can't make any use of NVMe performance benefits when a SATA SSD can more than fill a 1Gb Ethernet pipe, or even a 2.5Gb or 5Gb pipe. Only a 10GbE system would benefit from being able to push more than 550MB/sec, and even that could be met by multiple SATA SSDs in parallel.