I am looking at building my next NAS. My current will move to offsite, and the new will be primary. I previously used this motherboard, and was planning to go with that again. Then I saw this one, which seems like a better option. It has a slightly better CPU and a PCIe slot, but can only have 32GB memory max compared with 64GB max on my current.
Am I missing anything or is this a no-brainer to switch to the N100 board?
What software are you planning on running? The N100 is a pretty stout chip for my router. Not all file systems need insane amounts of ram like ZFS
That said you may want a full sized pcie slot depending on what hard drives you're running. At work our raid controllers are gimped by their PCIe interface. Even with regular ass hard drives they will out pace pcie 2.0@x1 speeds since most cheap HBAs are PCIe 2 or maybe 3.
I will be running Truenas scale with ZFS, so will be installing 32GB of memory.
I realize a full size PCI slot would be better, but not really necessary for my application. Both have 6 SATA and two M.2s. I could put a 6 SATA/M.2 adapter in when I need more HDs. I'm really just comparing these two, and I don't really see any disadvantages to the N100 board.