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Does anyone have recommendation for a mini PC with min 2 sata ports for two 3.5” HDDs, min 2 NVMe for ssd storage, one ssd or eMMC for OS, and 64GB of RAM, with

by aborsy 1y ago

Does anyone have recommendation for a mini PC with min 2 sata ports for two 3.5” HDDs, min 2 NVMe for ssd storage, one ssd or eMMC for OS, and 64GB of RAM, with the ability to power up the HDDs from the miniPC (not requiring external power source)? The HDDs are installed in a case externally. An external PCIe slot to support those 4 mixed drives via an adapter would work too. I tend to avoid usb HDDs enclosures, since usb connection doesn’t work well with ZFS. That would be a cool ZFS NAS.

Havoc 1y ago
You do get ones with up to 6 nvme slots, but they'll be running at reduced speed. Generally X1 gen3
- aborsy 1y ago
  Yeah I know, like Beelink 6 NVMe. But NVMe storage is not affordable at high capacities. So, I want two +14 TB HDDs for cold slow storage, and two 4 TB for fast warm storage for VMs, containers, databases, and applications. I also need a lot of RAM for proxmox VMs and containers. The CPU in my experience need not have many cores. I mean truenas itself virtualized demands 8GB of RAM.
  - Havoc 1y ago
    If you want lots of nvme, lots of sata, lots of ram and lots of ability to power drives then you're not looking at a minipc anymore. Would suggest you do the same I did - climb onto ebay and look at the AM4 systems that gamers are dumping. AM4 is aging out of gaming space but for NAS/proxmox duty they're aging like fine wine. Look for one that has is X570 and has bifuraction support on the X16
goosedragons 1y ago
That's a NAS. Just get a 2 bay NAS.
- aborsy 1y ago
  But a two bay NAS is typically maxed out at 16 GB of RAM, see UGREEN or QNAP. The CPUs are also dog slow for non-NAS tasks, like running VMs and containers. Zimaboards come close. Two sata ports and 1-2 NVMe via PCIe. I heard the board may not be able to power all these drives. RAM is limited to 8-16 GB. I guess I should separate HDD storage in a proper NAS and use a miniPC for VMs and containers only.
  - neogodless 1y ago
    https://www.reddit.com/r/UgreenNASync/comments/1dm4iiu/is_the_dxp2800_nas_ram_upgradable/ https://www.reddit.com/r/UgreenNASync/comments/1dm4iiu/is_th... Apparently you can upgrade the Ugreen 2-bay DXP2800 to 32GB.
dontlaugh 1y ago
A bunch of the mini pc manufacturers make 2 bay NAS variants, notably Aoostar and Ugreen. I recently looked into this to get a 4 bay variant.
- aborsy 1y ago
  Thanks! AOOSTAR 2-bay AMD R7 5825U mini PC seems to check the boxes, for an entry-level storage + virtualization miniPC host. The CPU is similar to AMD R7 5800H in a Beelink SER5 Pro miniPC which runs proxmox very well. It has a cpu with 8C/16T, up to 4.5GHz, and supports max 2x32gb DDR4 3200Mhz RAM, 2x4T PCIe 3.0 M.2 NVMes and 2x2.5G NICs.

by aborsy 1y ago

Havoc 1y ago

You do get ones with up to 6 nvme slots, but they'll be running at reduced speed. Generally X1 gen3

aborsy 1y ago
Yeah I know, like Beelink 6 NVMe. But NVMe storage is not affordable at high capacities. So, I want two +14 TB HDDs for cold slow storage, and two 4 TB for fast warm storage for VMs, containers, databases, and applications. I also need a lot of RAM for proxmox VMs and containers. The CPU in my experience need not have many cores. I mean truenas itself virtualized demands 8GB of RAM.
- Havoc 1y ago
  If you want lots of nvme, lots of sata, lots of ram and lots of ability to power drives then you're not looking at a minipc anymore. Would suggest you do the same I did - climb onto ebay and look at the AM4 systems that gamers are dumping. AM4 is aging out of gaming space but for NAS/proxmox duty they're aging like fine wine. Look for one that has is X570 and has bifuraction support on the X16

goosedragons 1y ago

That's a NAS. Just get a 2 bay NAS.

aborsy 1y ago
But a two bay NAS is typically maxed out at 16 GB of RAM, see UGREEN or QNAP. The CPUs are also dog slow for non-NAS tasks, like running VMs and containers. Zimaboards come close. Two sata ports and 1-2 NVMe via PCIe. I heard the board may not be able to power all these drives. RAM is limited to 8-16 GB. I guess I should separate HDD storage in a proper NAS and use a miniPC for VMs and containers only.
- neogodless 1y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/UgreenNASync/comments/1dm4iiu/is_the_dxp2800_nas_ram_upgradable/ https://www.reddit.com/r/UgreenNASync/comments/1dm4iiu/is_th... Apparently you can upgrade the Ugreen 2-bay DXP2800 to 32GB.

dontlaugh 1y ago

A bunch of the mini pc manufacturers make 2 bay NAS variants, notably Aoostar and Ugreen. I recently looked into this to get a 4 bay variant.

aborsy 1y ago
Thanks! AOOSTAR 2-bay AMD R7 5825U mini PC seems to check the boxes, for an entry-level storage + virtualization miniPC host. The CPU is similar to AMD R7 5800H in a Beelink SER5 Pro miniPC which runs proxmox very well. It has a cpu with 8C/16T, up to 4.5GHz, and supports max 2x32gb DDR4 3200Mhz RAM, 2x4T PCIe 3.0 M.2 NVMes and 2x2.5G NICs.