Building a Low‑Cost Raspberry Pi 5 NAS
Key Points
- The creator recounts past Raspberry Pi NAS builds that struggled with speed and reliability, especially on Pi 4 and Compute Module 4, prompting a search for a better solution.
- With the newly released Pi 5’s faster CPU, PCIe support, and broader availability, they aim to assemble a sub‑$150, 4‑bay NAS using a $45 “penta‑SATA” HAT, a 12 V power supply, a fan, and a micro‑SD card.
- They note potential bottlenecks—Pi 5 still caps at 1 GbE while some commercial NAS units offer 2.5 GbE and hot‑swap drive bays—yet expect fewer compromises than their earlier DIY attempts.
- Power delivery is addressed by feeding 12 V directly into the HAT’s barrel jack (or an ATX‑style supply), which then supplies the Pi 5’s 5 V rail, and the board uses an FFC connector to link the Pi’s PCIe lane to the SATA controller.
Sections
- Low‑Cost Pi 5 NAS Build - The presenter assembles a sub‑$150 Raspberry Pi 5‑based NAS with a SATA HAT, power supply, fan, and SD card to evaluate if the newer Pi’s PCIe and faster CPU can overcome the Pi 4’s network bottlenecks and deliver respectable performance.
- Enabling PCIe Gen3 on Pi5 - The speaker walks through enabling PCI Express Gen 3 for a JMicron SATA controller on a Pi 5, verifies link speeds with lspci, and plans performance benchmarks.
- High-Speed File Transfer & OpenSauce Invite - The presenter shows a 100‑GB copy at 110 MB/s, notes the need for chip cooling, and plugs the June 15‑16 OpenSauce maker event in San Francisco, urging viewers to attend or exhibit.
- Setting Up ZFS RAID‑Z1 in OMV - User navigates OpenMediaVault’s storage interface, discovers the lack of traditional RAID tools, and instead creates a RAID‑Z1 ZFS pool across three 8‑TB drives, applying the pending configuration.
- Power‑Efficient NAS Performance Review - The speaker evaluates a custom ZFS NAS, highlighting respectable read speeds, slower write speeds limited by a 2.5 Gb network, and a notably low 15‑16 W power draw compared to typical pre‑built NAS devices.
Full Transcript
# Building a Low‑Cost Raspberry Pi 5 NAS **Source:** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l30sADfDiM8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l30sADfDiM8) **Duration:** 00:32:15 ## Summary - The creator recounts past Raspberry Pi NAS builds that struggled with speed and reliability, especially on Pi 4 and Compute Module 4, prompting a search for a better solution. - With the newly released Pi 5’s faster CPU, PCIe support, and broader availability, they aim to assemble a sub‑$150, 4‑bay NAS using a $45 “penta‑SATA” HAT, a 12 V power supply, a fan, and a micro‑SD card. - They note potential bottlenecks—Pi 5 still caps at 1 GbE while some commercial NAS units offer 2.5 GbE and hot‑swap drive bays—yet expect fewer compromises than their earlier DIY attempts. - Power delivery is addressed by feeding 12 V directly into the HAT’s barrel jack (or an ATX‑style supply), which then supplies the Pi 5’s 5 V rail, and the board uses an FFC connector to link the Pi’s PCIe lane to the SATA controller. ## Sections - [00:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l30sADfDiM8&t=0s) **Low‑Cost Pi 5 NAS Build** - The presenter assembles a sub‑$150 Raspberry Pi 5‑based NAS with a SATA HAT, power supply, fan, and SD card to evaluate if the newer Pi’s PCIe and faster CPU can overcome the Pi 4’s network bottlenecks and deliver respectable performance. - [00:10:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l30sADfDiM8&t=656s) **Enabling PCIe Gen3 on Pi5** - The speaker walks through enabling PCI Express Gen 3 for a JMicron SATA controller on a Pi 5, verifies link speeds with lspci, and plans performance benchmarks. - [00:16:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l30sADfDiM8&t=968s) **High-Speed File Transfer & OpenSauce Invite** - The presenter shows a 100‑GB copy at 110 MB/s, notes the need for chip cooling, and plugs the June 15‑16 OpenSauce maker event in San Francisco, urging viewers to attend or exhibit. - [00:24:22](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l30sADfDiM8&t=1462s) **Setting Up ZFS RAID‑Z1 in OMV** - User navigates OpenMediaVault’s storage interface, discovers the lack of traditional RAID tools, and instead creates a RAID‑Z1 ZFS pool across three 8‑TB drives, applying the pending configuration. - [00:27:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l30sADfDiM8&t=1649s) **Power‑Efficient NAS Performance Review** - The speaker evaluates a custom ZFS NAS, highlighting respectable read speeds, slower write speeds limited by a 2.5 Gb network, and a notably low 15‑16 W power draw compared to typical pre‑built NAS devices. ## Full Transcript
I've built a bunch of Raspberry Pi nases
from a little tiny all SSD Nas to the
biggest one on earth the petabyte Pi
Project but the pi4 and compute module 4
were just barely adequate I could never
get even 100 megabytes per second over
the network even with ssds the two most
promising projects the wire truste SATA
board and radas taco were both dead in
the water they launched right before the
great P shortages when you couldn't get
a Raspberry Pi For Love or Money but the
Raspberry Pi 5 is here now it's faster
it has PCI Express and best of all you
can actually get one yeah it's a little
more expensive than the pi4 but with
off-the-shelf 4bay nases costing 300
bucks and up could we actually build a
pine nass for less and would it be any
good well today I'm going to see and to
do it I'll use this tiny SATA hat that
RADS Us in this costs 45 bucks and it's
already shipping add a 12volt power
supply a Raspberry Pi 5 a fan and micro
SD card and we have a tiny Nas for less
than 150 bucks but will bottlenecks kill
this thing like they did with the pi 4 I
mean the pi five only gets a gigabit
those other nasas can do 2.5 and they
have hot swap drive base and vendor
support so yeah comparing just on price
alone is silly there's always going to
be tradeoffs when you go DIY but this
thing should have a lot fewer
compromises than the jankier builds I
did in the past at least I hope and 2.5
gig networking I might have a fix for
that I'm going to put this thing
together and see if it could be the
Ultimate Raspberry Pi 5 Nas I do not
know exactly what tools will be required
and I don't know what's in the box
hopefully it includes everything I need
uh but uh rans usually does a pretty
good job including all the little bits
and Bobs you need for this looks like it
includes this extra cable this is after
all the penta SATA hat so five SATA
connections I have four drives here uh
but you can add on another one using
this strange external I guess this might
be eeta or something uh but it has SATA
and power from this port something
important to uh think about is how
you're going to supply power to it uh I
know some people in comments have
mentioned oh you need to supply power to
the pi and this board but no uh I
believe that you can just power this
board through the 12volt barrel Jack or
through an ATX MX power supply here so
if you have have it in a PC case or
something you could do it that way and
this will power to the pi5 through the
GPI opens uh this should be able to
provide adequate power as long as the
power circuitry on here is good enough
to take that 12volt signal and give a
clean um you know 3 to 5 amps on the
Pi's 5vt rail now this doesn't have the
normal PCI Express
connector that you see on the
pi5 so the pi5 has this little this
little guy here uh this has a much
larger
connector with more pins that could be
an interesting thing uh I believe that
they have an adapter for it though so
yeah here it is so this is called an FFC
or flat flat flexible circuit board and
it looks like they've included two which
is nice because these uh these these
little connectors are a little bit
delicate you can see how thin they are
they're kind of you know they're kind of
like paper thin uh but these are flat
flexible circuit boards or ffc's and
they connect from the Pi's PCI Express
connector here over to this guy here and
the GPO pins over here are going to
provide power to the pi at least that's
my hope there is a getting started guide
on here but uh I you know I'm going to
YOLO this thing and see what happens one
important thing whenever you're doing
these is make sure you get the connector
seated all the way and it should go in
pretty easy if you're pushing hard then
you're going to break the cable so don't
do that if you're pushing hard you might
need to pull this little connection up
and always do it on both sides so that
it doesn't come off because if it comes
off it might break and then you would
not have a way to hold the cable down
you push down on this
little top part and uh this cable is now
a fixed to the pi very well and then I'm
going to plug it into here so it looks
like it goes like this the funny thing
is these these kind of connectors are
often used inside of of you know cameras
and and other things that are put
together at factories and uh they
they're very careful they have their
methodologies they even have tools to
help with it uh when you give these
things to people in in the general
public like you and me we tend to break
our first one so I guess it is a really
good idea that they included a second
one here uh they probably have some
screws too let's check yeah there's
little Kit full of screws here there's
uh some standoffs and
things
and then now I'm going to put this in
I'm going to carefully put this
over and plug in the GPO pins that
provide Power uh but that fits nicely
together uh there is a connector here
for an OLED and fan control board that
sits on top of the hard drives at the
top they don't have that available yet I
I think they used to make it I don't
know um if they needed to revise it for
this or what but uh I asked about it and
it's not yet available so it' be nice to
have that especially these are not that
hot of drives but if you use hard drives
if you use 2.5 in hard drives and those
can get pretty toasty and it's nice to
have a fan blowing air over them um I
just realized I don't have any fan on
the pie itself and I probably should do
that because it could get pretty hot and
toasty inside here let's get our little
active cooler here I hope this will fit
I I don't know if there was a warning
against using this but uh the pie does
need some sort of cooling whether it's a
heat sink or a fan and there's uh
there's no fan built into this it' be
cool if there was a little fan under
here or an option for one but it doesn't
seem like that's the case okay please
still
fit looks like it will fit oh no you
know
what the uh the barrel plug is
just just
touching on the top of the top of the
heat sink there's there's literally
uh it's just three three of the fins on
the heat sink you know what I might do
might see if I can bend those off take
this back off
again I'm going to pull this connection
off this is a terrible idea I would not
recommend doing it just bending this
back and forth there's
one shouldn't affect the performance
that
badly I removed the middle portion from
from the Middle Point up of these three
little fins on the heat
sink and uh there's a side view of it
you can kind of make it out it's kind of
hard to make out sorry about that but
let's get this all back together now and
see if it fits okay this
time if I go down it can go down all the
way and look at that
that's just enough clearance as long as
it works in the end it's all
good I use this huge huge guy just give
these a little
snug generally I'd use a nut driver for
this but this works in a pinch literally
my topown recorder decided to corrupt
the rest of the video so I lost all that
footage but in that footage I mentioned
the board uses the jmbb 585 pcie gen 3x2
controller which means even if we upate
the pi 5's bus to gen3 from its normal
Gen 2 will miss out on a little
bandwidth and also the kit comes with
two side supports that hold all the 2.5
in Drives together though there may be a
case available at some point in the
future they actually had one in the past
when it was sold for the rock four or
the pi4 I think but I'm guessing that
they'll have to make another batch if
they get enough interest in this new
version of the pent SATA hat okay so
everything is put together now it's all
looking nice and I I think there will be
enough air flow uh there's holes in the
sides holes in the middle so enough air
will conve through for these drives at
least and I have a 5 amp 12 volt power
supply this should be adequate for these
drives and the Raspberry Pi 5 I'd budget
maybe 3 to 5 watts per drive or if you
have 3.5 in drives maybe a little more
and you might want to get an 8 Amp or
maybe even 10 or 12 amp power supply uh
but definitely don't use like a 2 amp
power supply and expect this to work
it's going to have all kinds of issues I
also have raspberry pios uh 64-bit light
version and I might try open media Vault
I'm going to take the micro SD card and
put it into the slot and then I'll grab
this power adapter now one another
reason why I'm over at the desk is I
have my little this is a zigg third
reality zigg outlet that has power
measurement built in which is very handy
for testing I'll go ahead and bring that
up on here if I go to home assistant and
then go to Power you can see that right
now there's zero Watts because there's
nothing plugged into it power is going
to come in looks like they they wanted
to align the power with the USBC Port
not that that matters uh first I'm going
to plug in network and I'll plug in
power and we'll see what happens
hopefully no
sparks all right I have a green light on
the board and the pi is booting up power
usage is up to 14.2 Watts at
boot and now the pi is doing its reboot
so it's going to reboot a couple times
this first time that I I turn it on uh
because it expands the file system to
fill up the S the micro SD card all that
kind of stuff so we'll fast forward a
bit until it's all booted up and then we
can log into it on the network and see
if it's actually working I don't see any
lights there's just one green LED on the
board over here but I don't see any
other lights so I don't know if there's
lights per hard drive so I'm going to
log into it and we'll see what we can
see sshp at pi-
n.l there it is and if I say lsblk hope
hopefully we see those hard drives no
we're not seeing them let's try
lspci and I'm not seeing the device at
all I don't see any errors in here let's
go to uh the the URL on this box and see
if there's any other tips that we're
missing rock.
sh Penta hat pent
hat so we did that we did that
oh so maybe I should actually do that
let's try
that go in
here you'd think it would do it
automatically but it does
not so we're going to enable PCI Express
save and reboot so save that and reboot
so let's check
again there we go we have 1 2 3 four
hard drives and if I Say LSP
I can see the J Micron SATA controller
now uh right now it should be PCI
Express Gen 2 we can check that with uh
pseudo
lspci - vvvv this is going to give us
all the information about PCI Express
devices and if I go up to here this is
ahci that's the kernel module for the uh
SATA controller and we can go up to the
top section see it's j Micron jmbb 585
and if I go down
to link capabilities it says Speed 8 gig
transfers per second width by two that's
pcie gen 3x two but the status says it's
5 Giga transfers by one so definitely
less bandwidth than the chip is capable
of so I'm going to try PCI gen 3 and I
can do that following my own guide if I
go down here turn that on like
this and reboot and we'll see if it
gives us gen 3 speeds instead of and two
speeds which would give us the maximum
performance that we can get on the pi5 I
have four drives that have nothing on
them uh I'm going to try we should
probably just Benchmark the drives first
in like RAID 10 just to see what the
maximum speed is or maybe even raid zero
so let's let's do that that'll take a
couple minutes and uh we have blinking
so you can see that the the LEDs
actually do work I didn't see those when
I was looking earlier but it has some
LEDs and you can see them blinking when
the dri or access so nice job uh I
should check it does feel a little bit
hot uh in infray I found them at uh CES
and they actually sent me home with a
couple goodies uh this is the P2 and
it's uh the reason why I wanted them to
send me home with one to test was uh it
has this Snap-on macro lens that you can
see individual resistors or things on
your PCB very closeup which is kind of
cool uh but their software is a little
bit little bit bit iffy um not the best
software that I've used for IR cameras
uh but the camera itself is really good
quality and works better than my old
seek thermal but let's check the
temperatures on here and it looks like
the drives themselves well they're a
little bit reflective so we might not be
seeing the actual Drive value but the
board the board is up to
50° or so the uh sta controller is down
there it looks like it's the hot part of
this thing and it is getting up there to
60° C so it might be good to have at
least an active fan blowing down on top
there's the cold soda can 16° C and
there's the hot SATA chip so I'm going
to put this cover on and see up nice and
close if I get in
there yeah we can see that the chip
itself is 60°
C so it's pretty toasty in there
yeah I would definitely do a fan or heat
sink on this if you're going to deploy
this long term another fun thing with
the thermal imaging is you can see all
kinds of fun details like you can see
that this is where my my hand was
resting and if I just put my hand on the
table and take it off there's a
handprint and apparently this little
this little screen on here also
generates a teeny tiny bit of heat and
now it has my fingerprint on it which is
also warm looks like the formatting is
finished and what's our next step Here
Mount the
array okay Mount raid zero so now let's
do a disc Benchmark on it and we'll run
the dis benchmarks and see how fast this
array can go okay here goes fio hey
that's not bad at all 87 850 to 60
megabytes per second and that's
megabytes so let's see how fast it was
in
megabytes uh almost 900 megabytes per
second across all four drives in rate
zero of course uh but uh random reads of
687 megabytes per second and random
rights of
758 and then we have 4K block size uh 44
Megs read and 152 Megs write at 4K which
is not bad at all um I'm interested in
seeing I think what I'll do is I'll just
put an a samb share on this and we'll
see if we can saturate a 1 gig
connection continuously restart
Samba and create a password now I should
be able to connect on my Mac py.
local uh we'll do the shared directory
here it is so I'm going to copy over a
folder with all of the footage of the
build that's 100
gigs and let's check this out let's see
how fast it
is that is line Speed 110 megabytes per
second is pretty typical let's see if it
can keep keep up that data rate I can
smell that like slight off gassing here
so I I do think that I would put some
sort of cooling on here just for that
jmbb 585 chip on my other NASA over 1 GB
you can just hammer it and it'll stay
110 15 megabytes the entire time this is
a lot faster than the pi4 nasas I've set
up before though and we'll just let the
screen recorder keep going at 18 minutes
and we'll just keep moving while that's
copying I want to take a brief
opportunity to tell you about Open sauce
Open sauce is going to be June 15 to 16
in San Francisco and I'll be there I'll
be there along with a ton of other
creators in the maker areas Electronics
hacking all kinds of fun things if you
want to go there's a way that you can
get in for free and you can come to the
party that's beforehand where all the
other YouTubers and everyone will be
present uh if you want to do that you
can apply to be an exhibitor they have
tons of space for exhibits this year
it'd be really cool to see your project
so if you want to do that go to opens
sauce.com and apply to be an exhibitor
otherwise you can also come as just a
normal person who's not exhibiting
things too so hopefully I'll see you
there June 15 to 16 if not I will
definitely be posting some things on
Twitter and maybe something on YouTube I
don't know so make sure you're
subscribed it copied everything over to
the pi now let's check the read speed
I'm going to copy it back into a
different folder on my local
computer and we'll we'll see if it can
give me 110 megabytes per second oh look
at that it's giv me
122 which is a little faster than the
right speed and you can see that the
drives are reading uh pretty much flat
out right now I don't know if that'll
fill up the cache but you can see that
the the data is Flowing a lot more
smoothly coming off the P than riding to
it so there are some bottlenecks I don't
think it's Samba and I don't think it's
the drives themselves I think there's a
bottleneck somewhere in the Pi's kernel
or something when it's riding through
because I had that problem on the pi4
but on the pi4 it wouldn't even hit like
120 megabytes per second all the time uh
but reading that's not an issue at all
here we're we're cranking at 120
megabytes per
second I deleted everything off of there
and uh it looks like obviously read
speeds are much more consistent than
right speeds uh but I'm going to try
something else that uh I mentioned at
the beginning of this video what about
2.5 gig networking now Pineberry Pi it
makes the hatn net
2.5g this is a 2.5 GB hat for the
Raspberry Pi 5 uh but you'll probably
already notice there's a problem it has
one PCI Express input there's only one
PCI Express connector on the Raspberry
Pi 5 how do we solve this problem
because this needs that and I want to
put it on here too to see if I can get
2.5 gig networking well I can try the
Hat brick Commander from Pineberry pi
and yes they sent me these things I
would be buying them myself anyway but
I'm going to disclose that radza sent me
this and Pineberry piie sent me this I'm
testing these things out to see if they
can work together and do some crazy
things uh but Pineberry also sent me all
of these extra cables of varying lengths
one thing that can be a problem with
when you start connecting multiple
things together is the PCI Express
signaling so I'm going to try to use the
shortest cables I can for these
experiments but I'm going to basically
put this which is a PCX Express Gen 2
switch off of the Pi's bus and then
connect one connector to the SATA drives
and the other connector to the the Hat
net 2.5g the downside is this is going
to make everything be PCI Express Gen 2
speed inste instead of three so I
wouldn't be able to get 800 megabytes
per second on these hard drives but uh
on the flip side this is 2.5 gig
networking and if we say let's say 2
gigs for networking and 2 gbits for the
hard drives we might be able to do that
to almost saturate 2.5 gig network if
the pi5 can support that I don't know if
it can or not I don't think it will be
able to but we'll see uh if any of this
even works it might also not have enough
power I don't know uh but I'm going to
unplug
this okay we got that connector out of
here there is some risk here if we are
mixing these cables from different
vendors and connections
there's a little risk that Uh
something's going to go wrong but
hopefully that doesn't
happen it's it's definitely not my
finest
work there's an LED on
here and I see a light on the switch and
there's a power LED on the hat brick
commander and there's lights on here
let's see if this is actually going to
work
lspci hey look at that so we have the
switch here we have the SATA controller
here and we have the 2.5 gig controller
here let's do uh
IPA and we have an IP address on that so
let's do a I perf test now we're getting
2 GBS it's not 2.5 gbits but it's not
nothing so coming back only 1.6 gbits
that's not horrible it's still more than
a gab this is probably going to get 2.5
GB if you connect it straight to the pi
I think that some of the overhead comes
out of that packet switching uh that is
running to the drives as well so if I
say lsblk we still have the drives and
they're mounted so we'll see if we get
any faster right
speeds it's doing 110 117 that's about
the same as what we were seeing before
so we're not getting faster than a
gigabit over the 2.5 gig connection at
least for rights I do see a few Peaks up
to about 125 megabytes per second so
better than a gigabit and it it's
interesting the uh the overall rate
seems a little steadier with the 2.5 gig
I maybe the Pi's internal controller is
a little funky but I don't know um but
it is giving it's giving us a little bit
more on the right speeds I'm really
interested to see the read speeds though
hopefully we can get more than one gabit
let's check there we go 217 megabytes
250 megabytes per second that's more
what I'm uh what I'm expecting out of a
a 2.5 gig connection so this can put
through that data it's it's interesting
I think it's pulling from Ram because I
don't see the drives blinking at all
here uh it's probably copying all this
data from RAM and now it's hitting the
drives and you can see it dips a tiny
bit there so down to 230 megabytes per
second so Linux usually caches files in
the ram as it's copying them back and
forth so that if you have a file that
you're accessing a lot it's a lot faster
uh but now that it's hitting the drives
it only dipped down 10 megabytes per
second so that's not bad at all so for a
read heavy nass this this isn't looking
like that bad of a setup now that I know
that uh everything is going to work on
here Hardware wise I think it's time to
put omv on here and see how that runs I
haven't used omv 7 yet so this will be
new for me I don't think it's that much
different than omv 5 and six but uh let
me grab this script and go over here and
this hopefully will just work I'm going
SSH into the pi and just paste in their
script the installer and here it goes
let's check power consumption so during
the install it was using between 8 to 10
watts and it looks like the Baseline for
this build is 8 watts with the 2.5 gig
network adapter and everything else uh
but let's go to past.
local and does this
work maybe I have to use the IP address
let's try
that
well there it is I guess it was still
booting up okay so that was not the
problem there so admin and open media
Vault are the
password logging in there it is there's
no dashboard that's okay storage is
where we should see our diss they should
show up yep 1 2 3 4 all of them are 8
terabytes and uh I want to create an
array
file systems is this where we create
create and mount a file system
ext4 but I want to create a raid array
how do I create a raate
array am I totally missing
something I thought there was a thing
over here for creating raid but I don't
see it
anymore uh what does this
say See this has raid management but I'm
not seeing raid management anywhere do
you see raid management anywhere we
could try ZFS instead of raid but that's
instead of like MD admin raid so we can
try it out on open Medi Vault I've never
tried it on on omv before uh but we'll
see how it works
here I like this little uh end of line
here I guess a nod back to Tron the 1974
version and we'll do raid Z1 since we
have three drives uh a raid Z1 will use
one drive the equivalent of that for
parody data that way I could lose one of
these four drives and all the data would
be intact but here we go it says pending
changes 21 terabytes available let's
apply this so now the tank should exist
compression is on I don't know if I
would need compression
on but I'm not going to mess with any of
that right now uh if we go to pools is
there anything else I can do tools what
do we got so you can scrub it I don't
know if it automatically scrubs in here
but it gives us the uh pool
information that's nice so this is a
it's a good interface it's it's not the
maybe not the best thing ever and it I
don't know if it comes with schedules
and Things by default but it'd be nice
to have a scheduled snapshot and uh pool
scrubbing scheduled that might be
something that you can figure under
scheduled
tasks yeah so you'd have to you'd have
to do some of these things you'd have to
add your own scheduled tab tasks it' be
cool if that added some things by
default but I I can see why they don't
as well uh but now let's add a file
system so we have one tank ZFS I'll add
uh
shared under tank
shared and we'll just set everyone read
right right now save turn on
SBA
enabled 10.
0.221
okay so it wants me to use the
IP and there's our shared volume so
let's uh I'm going to copy some stuff
over to it I have uh this this folder
has 100 gigabytes so I'll do that and
here it goes so it seems similar to the
uh the copies that we were getting with
raid zero uh it is it it's interesting
it it it goes a little bit faster
sometimes than those copies were so I'm
wondering if ZF is caching is actually
helping here so far I'm pretty impressed
um I think read speeds are where this
wins uh right speeds are where this
loses a little bit because you're not
going to be able to get full 2.5 gigb
networking on that but uh but it's
better than I was expecting and the big
win for me besides the fact that this
can be made smaller if we kind of
reconfigure these boards uh the big win
is the power efficiency because right
now uh we're using 15 or 16 Watts
typically the other nasas that I've
built uh using you know pre-built nasas
they use they use 10 to 20 watts idle
and they use 25 to 30 Watts when they're
doing a lot of stuff so this little guy
is only using 16 Watts doing the same
amount of work uh which is probably
about half of what most uh pre-built
nases would use on the flip side if you
build a Nas with the RK 3588 chip you
could probably get even more efficient
and more speed so there's a couple
boards out there that are interesting uh
that I might take a look at at some
point but uh the nice thing is all of
this this is all really well supported
like the software just clicks some
buttons and you have everything working
I haven't always had that same uh kind
of experience when I'm using the rock
chip boards uh some of them are getting
pretty good though I'm going to go ahead
and let this right finish and then I'm
going to do a full read of that 100 gigs
of data and uh we'll see where we end
up at the end of the uh copy it looks
like the the system used 22 Watts for a
little while while it was doing some
sort of processing I don't know what ZFS
was doing there maybe maybe that was
part of the compression I don't know
it's a lot of power to use at the end
there uh the actual performance was
interesting after that initial part uh
where it was faster than raid zero it
actually slowed down to a tiny bit
slower than raid zero over that long
rest of the copy and that's why it's
good to use a large large file to test
the actual performance of your system
because especially with CFS it's going
to cash a lot in the beginning in Ram
and that throws off how fast your actual
disc array is uh but the CPU usage was
not too bad uh power consumption was
down around you know 8 to 16 Watts
throughout the whole copy uh but in the
end the file copy uh was 74 megabytes
per second with CFS in raid Z1 and it
was almost 100 megabytes per second in
raid zero now that's for the writing uh
which is is going to be a little bit
slower with a setup like this uh read
speeds for both are practically the same
it's just basically line speed it's it's
not hard at all to do the reads so this
is a little embarrassing all those
conclusions I have are based on the fact
I was benchmarking this all on a Mac and
uh I switched to my Windows PC and I was
able to get almost line speed for 1 gbit
uh file copies writing to the pi and 150
megabytes per second writing over the
2.5 gig Network so that's uh that
changes my perspective a little bit on
it and I think the biggest takeaway is
don't use a Mac for benchmarking Network
file copies even if it has 10 GB
networking and everything else on it
seems to be fine uh Mac OS for some
reason is not great with file copies and
I have a whole blog post and I have more
details in the GitHub issue linked below
but let's get back to the video it's not
inconceivable to build a system like
this Allin this one is still under 200
bucks total including all these extra
boards and things so uh but but it
always goes back to DIY means you're
responsible for the software you're
responsible for maintenance and updates
and all that kind of stuff anyway uh
that was a fun experiment and I plan on
doing some other fun experiments now
that I have this little this little
board here that lets me uh split up PCI
Express Lanes and uh we'll see how we
can bend the pi 5's PCI Express Bus it
would be really cool to see a compute
module 5 expose even more but we'll see
what happens whenever that comes out um
I know that that was a big change from
the pi4 to the compute module for it
gave us PCI Express now we have it on
the pi5 but I think we might be able to
do more in a compute module form factor
but we'll see until next time I'm Jeff
Garling