Upgrading my home NAS (2025 update)
I originally wrote this in 2023, sharing my journey transitioning to a DIY NAS. Since then, the landscape has shifted and so has my setup. Let's get into it.
I've been running various NAS devices for over a decade now. I started doing this because I always had PCs lying around, whether it was my last-gen desktop PC, or some old system I'd acquired from work. I think NAS's in the home are underrated, as they're so helpful for various projects. Whether it's providing fast access to family videos for editing, storing your favourite TV & movies to stream to devices, or just needing somewhere safe for all your backups.
When I moved from the UK to Canada in 2021, I downsized from several Dell PowerEdge 720s, uploaded my data to GSuite Business (thanks to Google ignoring storage capacity limits for several years), and took a single 16TB disk with me on my travels. When I arrived in Canada, I wanted a low-maintenance NAS, with the ability to run containers, stream and transcode media, and was small enough to be moved easily. Having used Synology products before, I bought a Synology DiskStation DS720+, added a second 16TB NAS disk, increased the memory with an 8GB RAM module, and installed 2xM.2 drives for caching
Life was good! Until the day Google emailed and informed me they were starting to enforce storage capacity limits in my GSuite account. I had 30 days to meet the paltry limit or pay a hefty monthly cost. So, after doing some math[s], I figured, "why not buy a new NAS, increase my local storage capacity, and reduce my cloud spend".
Build vs Buy is always a factor when choosing technology, and I was leaning towards another, larger Synology. Apart from the lack of bays, the biggest disappointment of the Synology DS720+ was the 2x 1GbE ports.
Synology's 2025 Plus Series NAS devices introduced a controversial policy: only Synology-branded or certified third-party hard drives are fully supported. This move restricts features like storage pooling and drive lifespan analysis for non-approved drives. The community's response was swift and critical. A Reddit poll indicated that approximately 80% of users considered moving away from Synology due to this policy change. While Synology cites improved reliability and reduced support issues as reasons, many view it as a vendor lock-in strategy.
Combined with a lack-lustre hardware line-up for 2025, Synology is no longer the easy recommendation it once was. With hindsight, I'm glad I made the choice to abandon Synology.
Requirements
- Small form factor
- Passively-cooled CPU, or very quiet fans for near-silent operation
- Capacity for 5 drives
- Enough CPU/GPU for media transcoding
- Power efficient
Motherboard and CPU
I first heard about the Topton N5105 "NAS" motherboard on Reddit. The reviews were generally positive, and the specs looked to be a great fit for my requirements. Searching for "N5105 NAS motherboard" on Aliexpress results in several variations. I eventually bought the BKHD version, with these specs:
- Integrated Intel Celeron N5105 (Jasper Lake) CPU 2Ghz TDP 10W
- 1x M.2 NVMe (PCIe 3.0 x1) 2280
- 6x SATA 3.0 ports
- 4x Intel i226-V 2.5Gbps network interfaces
- 2x SO-DIMM DDR4 (2933Mhz) slots, 64GB max
- 1x PCI-E slot
- HDMI and Display Port
- Onboard sound
- Mini-ITX form factor
The board is PERFECT for my needs, especially as the Celeron N5105 has an Intel UHD i915 GPU with video encoding/decoding built-in. For the price (C$189/$140/£110), the board is excellent value too. (I did consider the Celeron J6412, but its newer chipset is less well-supported and, in several ways, a weaker version of the N5105). Shipping took a month thanks to a delay at customs, but BKHD customer support was helpful and responsive.
(2025) I was concerned whether the N5015 motherboard would be under-powered, but two years on, I'm happy to report it performs well and handles 4K transcoding and running several Docker containers with ease.
Case and power supply
Good NAS cases can be hard to come by, and I'm not sure if it was due to the pandemic, but I had a tough time finding one at the right price point. But, I did! A coworker recommended a Jonsbo N1, and while it looked great from the outside, it was a mess internally and he admitted that putting all together had been a delicate affair. Then I noticed the Jonsbo N2 on their website. ITX form factor? Check! 5+1 bays? Check! Priced sensibly? Check!
I paired the Jonsbo N2 with a Corsair SF750 modular PSU which fits snuggly and has all the necessary connections. While the case has a front-panel with cables for USB-C and audio, the motherboard doesn't have the corresponding headers, so I zip-tied the cables out of the way. Right-angle connectors on the SATA cables were essential, as it's a tight fit between the drive backplane and the rear fan. Speaking of the rear fan (a generic 120x15 fan), it was louder than I could tolerate - so I replaced it with the Noctua equivalent, and now I can barely hear it all.
RAM
The N5105 motherboard has two DDR4 SO-DIMM slots, which I maxed out with 64GB non-ECC 3200Mhz RAM from Crucial. Yes, it's non-ECC, not ideal, but I have other mitigations to avoid data corruption.
Storage
There's two types of storage in my NAS; the boot drive and data storage drives. I installed a 1TB NVMe drive as my boot drive, partitioned into a 64GB boot partition with TrueNAS SCALE installed, and the remaining space for apps, swap, etc. 1TB was probably overkill, but I had one spare from a previous project.
I originally installed 3 IronWolf Pro NAS hard drives, but quickly realized I needed more space for all the drone footage I capture. I bought two more disks from ServerPartDeals.com - who absolutely have the best deals on server components. All drives are still going strong, zero complaints.
Costs
| Component | Price |
|---|---|
| Motherboard | C$189 |
| Case | C$134 |
| PSU | C$188 |
| Memory | C$164 |
| Fan + SATA cables | C$38 |
| TOTAL | C$713/$534/£420 |
TrueNAS SCALE
My biggest concern was moving away from Synology DSM. Having previously run TrueNAS Core (FreeNAS), I know it's a solid NAS OS, but it's no DSM. I was also never that fond of FreeBSD and jails in TrueNAS Core. My interest was immediately piqued when I heard about TrueNAS SCALE, a new offering based on Debian with K3s (now Docker).
In my opinion, TrueNAS SCALE is a great option, and while there's certainly a learning curve the first time around, once running, it's pretty close to DSM in terms of ease of use. The TrueNAS forum and subreddit were particularly helpful.
I partitioned the NVMe boot drive, installed TrueNAS SCALE, setup my disk pools, vdevs, and sharing services.
Initially, TrueNAS SCALE's integration with Kubernetes and TrueCharts was a game-changer. Deploying apps like Plex and Nextcloud was straightforward. However, with the release of version 24.10 ("Electric Eel"), iXsystems transitioned from Kubernetes to a Docker-based backend for simplicity, stability, and performance. This shift meant that TrueCharts (a community-driven project), which relied on Helm charts compatible with Kubernetes, could no longer function natively on SCALE.
The transition wasn't without drama. TrueCharts, upon learning of the impending removal of Kubernetes support, abruptly deprecated their app catalog on TrueNAS SCALE, leaving users without updates or migration paths. This move was perceived by many as a retaliatory "stunt" (myself included) that put the TrueNAS team in a difficult position and left users scrambling for alternatives. In response, TrueCharts began developing "ClusterTool," aiming to help users set up Kubernetes clusters on Talos VMs, allowing continued use of their Helm charts. A solution that nobody wanted.
iXsystems remained professional throughout, advising users to use the built-in Docker Apps framework or wait for SCALE-native charts. As of mid-2025, the relationship between the two projects remains strained, and most users either migrated to native Docker apps or abandoned TrueCharts entirely.
What do I think of the NAS?
It's still exactly what I set out to build; a power-efficient, fast, easy-to-use NAS with plenty of options to expand storage.
The case has been a joy to work with, and I'd use it again for a different mini build (with a quieter fan, of course). It saturates my home network, and I love working with it for video editing. With an embedded CPU on the motherboard, I won't be upgrading it, but that's not an issue for me. I expect I'll get at least 3-4 years of use from this NAS, maybe longer, who knows.
Lastly, this build was not expensive. A Synology 4-bay DS920+ without any disks retails for C$1,399—my build was around half the cost!
What's changed since the original build?
Upgrading TrueNAS
I've gone through several TrueNAS upgrades, all without issue. Despite my concerns, upgrading to 24.10 and replacing Kubernetes with Docker was seamless - my apps were migrated automatically and everything just worked after a restart. Huge respect for iXsystems, and the effort they put into making upgrades stable and easy.
Load-balanced ethernet
After some experimentation, I decided to bind all four of my NAS's ethernet ports into a single load-balanced interface, each link using using 2.5GbE. This setup, known as link aggregation or LACP, isn't about doubling speed for a single client—each session still caps at the speed of one link—but it shines when multiple devices are accessing the NAS simultaneously. In my case, it ensures that backups, media streams, and file transfers can occur concurrently without bottlenecks.
TrueNAS SCALE handles this configuration smoothly, and with the right switch, it's a set-it-and-forget-it solution. The added redundancy is a bonus; if one cable or port fails, the others keep the network humming. Why didn't I jump straight to 10GbE? That's a network and cabling upgrade for next year...
Maintenance docker container
To avoid customizing TrueNAS which may present upgrade issues later, I bundled all my maintenance scripts and tooling into a single Docker container and run it nightly via TrueNAS SCALE’s built-in scheduler. It keeps everything isolated—no messing about with cron or installing apt packages on the host. I use it for sync jobs, cleanup tasks, and anything else I want ticking over in the background. It’s one of those conveniences that makes the whole NAS feel more like a proper platform than just a snowflake server.