NAS, Part 2: Assembly and Installation
Welcome back! This is part 2 of a series of posts about my new NAS (network attached storage) device I'm building. If you haven't read it yet, I recommend you go back and read part 1, in which I talk about the hardware I'm using.
Since the Fractal Design Node 804 case came first, I was able to install the parts into it as they arrived. First up was the motherboard (an ASUS PRIME B450M-A) and CPU (an AMD Athlon 3000G).
The motherboard was a pain. As I read, the middle panel of the case has some flex in it, so you've got to hold it in place with one hand we you're screwing the motherboard in. This in and of itself wasn't an issue at all, but the screws for the motherboard were really stiff. I think this was just the motherboard, but it was annoying.
Thankfully I managed it though, and then set to work installing the CPU. This went well - the CPU came with thermal paste on top already, so I didn't need to buy my own. The installation process for the stock CPU heatsink + fan was unfamiliar, which took me a moment to decipher how the mechanism worked.
Following this, I connected the front ports from the case up to the motherboard (consulting my motherboard's documentation showed me where I needed to plug these in - I remember this being something I struggled with when I last built an (old) PC when doing some IT technician work experience some years ago). The RAM - while a little stiff (to be expected) - went in fine too. I might buy another stick later if I run into memory pressure, but I thought a single 8GB stick would be a good place to start.
The case came with a dedicated fan controller board that has a high / medium / low switch on the back too, so I wired up the 3 included Noctua case fans to this instead of the slots on the motherboard. The CPU fan (nothing special yet - just the stock fan that came with the CPU) went into the motherboard though, as the fan controller didn't have room - and I thought that the motherboard would be better placed to control the speed of that one.
(Above: The inside of the 2 sides of the case. Left: The 'hot' side, Right: The 'cold' side.)
The case is split into 2 sides: 1 for 'hot' components (e.g. the motherboard and CPU), and another for 'cold' components (e.g. the HDDs and PSU). Next up were the hard disks - so I mounted the SSD for the operating system to the base of the case in the 'hot' side, as the carriage in the cold side fits only 3.5 inch disks, and my SSD is a 2.5 inch disk. While this made the cabling slightly awkward, it all worked out in the end.
For the 3.5 inch HDDs (for data storage), I found I was unable to mount them with the included pieces of bracket metal that allow you to put screws into the bottom set of holes - as the screws wouldn't fit through the top holes. I just left the metal bracket pieces out and mounted the HDDs directly into the carriage, and it seems to have worked well so far.
The PSU was uneventful too. It fit nicely into the space provided, and the semi-modular nature of the cables provided helped tremendously to avoid a mess of cables all over the place as I could remove the cables I didn't need.
Finally, the DVD writer had some stiff screws, but it seemed to mount well enough (just a note: I've been having an issue I need to investigate with this DVD drive whereby I can't take a copy of a disk - e.g. the documentation CD that came with my motherboard - with dd, as it reports an IO error. I need to investigate this further, so more on that in a later post).
The installation of the DVD drive completed the assembly process. To start it up for the first time, I connected my new NAS to my television temporarily so that I could see the screen. The machine booted fine, and I dove straight into the BIOS.
(Above: The BIOS that comes with the ASUS motherboard, before the clock was set by Ubuntu Server 20.04 - which I had yet to install)
Unlike my new laptop, the BIOS that comes with the ASUS motherboard is positively delightful. It has all the features you'd need, laid out in a friendly interface. I observed some minor input lag, but considering this is a BIOS we're talking about here I can definitely overlook that. It even has an online update feature, where you can plug in an Ethernet cable and download + install BIOS updates from the Internet.
I tweaked a few settings here, and then rebooted into my flash drive - onto which I loaded an Ubuntu Server 20.04 ISO. It booted into this without complaint (unlike a certain laptop I'm rather unhappy with at the moment), and then I selected the appropriate ISO and got to work installing the operating system (want your own multiboot flash drive? I've blogged about that already! :D).
In the next post, I'm going to talk about the filesystem I ultimately chose. I'm also going to show and discuss some performance tests I ran using fio following this Ars Technica guide.