WiFi 7 & TrueNAS SCALE 25.04 Upgrade

“Alle guten Dinge sind drei,” as we say in Germany. All good things come in threes and for my NAS, it was time for round three. This upgrade was more than just another component swap. It was a full case overhaul and a rethink of the entire setup to accommodate better airflow, more drives, and improved thermal performance.

The Move to the Fractal Design Node 804

The Inter Tech IM-1 was my starting point. It did its job but hit a wall quickly, specifically at four hard drives. That wasn’t going to work for long-term plans. The Fractal Design Node 804 isn’t the newest case out there and a chonky boi, but it nails two things I care about: airflow and flexibility.

With a two-chamber layout and support for both 140mm and 120mm fans, the Node 804 brought airflow that made an immediate difference. It also offered drive space to scale up to 8x HDDs, finally giving the setup some breathing room.

New Drive Configuration and Storage Plans

Here’s the current lineup:

• 2x Toshiba MG Series 18TB (NAS-grade)
• 2x Seagate Barracuda 4TB (standard consumer drives)
• 2x Toshiba MG Series 22TB (re-certified NAS drives)

Totaling up to 44TB of mirrored ZFS storage, this configuration offers both capacity and redundancy. It’s reliable and ready for whatever data I throw at it.

SSD Cleanup and OS Rehousing

My previous setup had two SATA SSDs (Plextor from 2012!), but it was time for cleanup. One failed, the other was ancient. With only six SATA ports available on the board (two of which are disabled when using NVMe), I decided to streamline:

• 256GB Micron NVMe for the TrueNAS Scale OS
• 500GB AirDisk NVMe salvaged from my BMAX B5A Pro mini PC, now hosting Docker containers and app data

This switch freed up the NVMe slot for the application drive, while speeding up system and container responsiveness.

Upgraded Network and Real-World Speeds

The upgrade wasn’t limited to the box. I also added:

• A Realtek 2.5 Gbit Ethernet card
• A new TP-Link BE3600 WiFi 7 router (replaced my AX55)
• A 4x S-ATA PCIe Controller

These changes pushed my wireless transfer speeds from 110MB/s to around 180–200MB/s, a huge improvement. And with WiFi 7 MLO (Multi-Link Operation) now available on compatible devices at home, latency and throughput have improved across the board.

Cooling and Power Efficiency Gains

The Node 804’s airflow made a big difference in thermals, especially under load for my AMD 5500GT CPU. Here’s the before-and-after:

• CPU idle: 37°C to 30°C
• CPU under load (Jellyfin encoding): 59°C to 46°C
• Drive temps: 37°C to 31°C

On the power front, I pushed the voltage offset further to -0.15V and capped the PPT from 40W to 30W. This cut load power consumption from 84W to 61W. Idle power did tick up from 28W to 31W, thanks to the additional fans and drives :(

What to Expect from This Setup

This third NAS iteration brought more than just hardware improvements. It gave the entire system a longer life span, more room for expansion, better performance, and quieter operation. The Node 804 still holds its ground in 2025 and I'm happy to went with it.

And a nice addition: The Factal Design Node 804 will fit nicely into my IKEA Kallax :D