Is this the perfect Mini NAS?

Jeff Geerling April 17, 2025
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I'm mini-fying my entire Homelab, but shrinking my NAS has been a problem. Is the 4-bay NucBox G9 the perfect choice? It fits in 1U, has 4 M.2 NVMe SSD slots, an Intel N150 CPU, and dual 2.5 Gbps networking. The specs seem like they'll do great, but the proof is in the pudding... Some of the things I mentioned (some links are affiliate links): - GMKtec G9 4x NVMe N150 mini NAS: https://amzn.to/4cuGRzY - GMKtec G3 N150 mini PC: https://amzn.to/4jxb8R9 - My Pi 5 SATA NAS build: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l30sADfDiM8 - Geekbench test results: - Quiet / Linux: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/11471182 - Balanced / Windows: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/11470130 - Performance / Linux: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/11471355 *UPDATE* – I've also tested many of the suggestions in the comments to get the system to run cooler, to no avail. See my blog post (specifically the UPDATE section towards the bottom) for all the details: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/almost-perfect-mini-nas-my-mini-rack Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/geerlingguy Sponsor me on GitHub: https://github.com/sponsors/geerlingguy Merch: https://www.redshirtjeff.com 2nd Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@GeerlingEngineering 3rd Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Level2Jeff Contents: 00:00 - The need for mini 01:02 - NucBox G9 overview 01:52 - Quick teardown 02:52 - A quick boot into... Windows? 03:39 - Ah, Linux 04:16 - 4x NVMe SSD install 04:58 - Hot hot hot 05:51 - Drive and network benchmarking 06:30 - Uh oh 07:43 - Oh no 08:09 - One drive works 08:23 - Trying other SSDs 09:05 - One more trick, toaster mode! 09:57 - The perfect Mini NAS?