AM5 Homelab for NAS, Cloud service, Server hosting and game streaming

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Hi all, for the past year I’ve had increasing issues with subscription platforms which have all gotten less reliable and more expensive. So, seeing a growing need to host things for my household, I’ve gotten more and more into the idea of building my own server instead.

I’m looking to do at least the following things:

  • Storage server for videos. With in the future hopefully allowing editing 4k/120p files in real time without offloading, though I’ll need to upgrade to 10 gig ethernet for that.
  • Storage server for high resolution raw files (100 mp+) and allowing editing in real time without offloading
  • Cloud storage server for multiple people allowing automated backups, uploading and downloading even while away from the house or abroad. Automated sorting and archival of Lightroom library, AI tagging
  • VPN server
  • Host my website and website email
  • Jellyfin/Plex and Roon server
  • Hosting online servers for 8-12 players, such as Minecraft, Valheim, etc.
  • Game streaming 1080p and 4k games (depending on the title), though this isn’t the most critical function. Alternatively this could also be handled with HDMI through UTP since usually this will just be streamed to the TV.)

I’ve been doing some research and I think AM5 might give me the performance I’ll need with a decent path towards upgradability over the next couple of years if needed. I’m also still considering AM4 as well however. I’ll be building in the Jonsbo N3 as this fits in the closet where the server will live (wiring closet with some grills for convection) while having some room to achieve good enough airflow (considering it’ll be mostly idling usually).

This is what I have currently. I’ve pasted a PCPP list but note that I live in Europe and will try to buy used as much as possible. The prices listed don’t make a ton of sense. I’m hoping to stay under €1000 before adding drives.

PCPartPicker Part List

Choices elaborated

CPU: I’m mainly after a CPU with a decent core count and decent single-core performance with some headroom. It’s overkill for NAS functionalities but combining, say, multiple dockers with game streaming I feel it might get taxed a fair bit. I chose the 7900 because it’s available at decent prices used, is very power efficient and has 12 cores but I’ll happily consider alternatives.

Motherboard: I just chose a cheap ITX motherboard with at least 2 m.2 slots so I can use an M.2 SATA connector board to mount drives. I’m not sure how to check which ITX motherboards now support ECC memory but that’s a consideration I’ll make.

Memory: Honestly just a placeholder. I’m on the lookout for some ECC UDIMMs. I found Silicon Power SP032GBLVU480F02 modules for a decent price (around EUR 80 ea). I think 64gb should be enough.

Power supply: Placeholder. I’ll consider any decent branded used SFX power supply around 500W. I would prefer one with low idle consumption but I’ve had a hard time finding solid info on which SFF PSUs offer low idle power draw so far.

GPU: I went with an NVIDIA GPU with a decent amount of VRAM because they generally have low idle power consumption and have a hardware encoder for Sunshine/Moonlight. The 3060 can encode and decode well for Jellyfin/Plex, has tensor cores for Photoprism and Immich, is a decent performer for AAA games at 1080p and older/indie games at 4k, and is plentiful on the used market. I think I’d also consider Battlemage though the GN review didn’t inspire me with confidence in the idle consumption.

Case: Jonsbo N3. I considered the Sagittarius NAS case from Aliexpress and had an order out, but after reviewing the server location (wiring closet, about 12-13" deep) the measurements are just slightly too tight to allow for any kind of decent airflow, and I didn’t want to risk jamming it in. I like the Jonsbo though even if it does limit me to SFX and ITX.

HDDs: Not listed but I’d just try to find the best TB/$ helium-filled CMR drives I can.

Let me know what you think of my parts and what you’d improve. I’m very open to suggestions though do note I’m trying to buy used as much as I can for this build.

I’d also be very happy to learn more about which distros and software you recommend. I’m a complete novice when it comes to Linux and while I ‘know’ VM’s, the idea of running everything in parallel is still quite foreign to me. I’m hoping to work with a suite that’s both feature rich but also easy to understand and program for, with a lot of resources and Q&A.

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Welcome!

I’ve got the N3 case for my mini-NAS and have been very impressed with it. It allows for the installation of a mini-DTX motherboard which could get you 2 PCIe expansion cards (although motherboard selection is limited).
Depending on the level of modding you feel like doing it’s also possible to add two 5.25" drive bays into it for further storage.

Have you decided on what m.2 to sata adapter you’re going to get? Some of them have far worse chipsets than others that could cause you problems down the road with things like ASPM and virtualization.

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Yeah good catch on the M.2 to Sata adapter. I thought it was a pretty dumb adapter but I suppose it’s more involved. I was definitely going to grab a cheap AliExpress one like this: I just found this on AliExpress:
€60,58 | 2/1PC M.2 NVME PCI-E PCIE X4 X8 X16 To 6 Port 3.0 SATA Adapter Card Riser III ASM1166 6GB/S Chassis server PC Computer Expansion
https://a.aliexpress.com/_EQcB2oM

Do you know which chipset I should be on the lookout for?

Nice tip on the Mini-DTX. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem any AM5 motherboards with it exist. Are you happy with your Jonsbo? What’s your build like.

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You can use the stock cooler, there’s no need get another one unless there’s really poor airflow or if it doesn’t fit although the one you’ve linked to seems very small so you might run into thermal issues.

The ITX board(s) will be very limiting in terms of expansion especially when you’re going to occupy the only 4+ PCIe line slot that’s available. I would highly suggest that you at least look for a mATX board instead but that requires a different case. If you’re all about size the “Sagittarius NAS Case” seems to have gotten quite good reviews for what it is but as your comment said… I would also highly recommend that you go for Intel NIC as far as built-in NICs goes.

Memory: Given your budget ECC will likely be out of reach, this ones you’ve mentioned are stock not what you’re looking for. You want “ECC UDIMM” and the most common ones are from Micron and Kingston.

Video card: No opinions although you’ll probably have termal issues in a cramped ITX case unless you have fans that’ll really push air thru the case.

Storage: I would suggest going for a Crucial (P3 Plus or better) or Solidigm SSD instead for the ease of mind and they’re overall well reviewed.

HDDs: Toshiba MG*-series are solid choices overall with a decent bang for the buck ratio.

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Thanks for the response! I need to rethink the PCPP list, it doesn’t really reflect my plan very well since most are placeholders.

Try as I might, I just can’t realistically place the Sagittarius case. There is no way I can rotate or move it and not run into something obstructing parts of the airflow so I had to cancel the order. Otherwise it would have been the perfect case. In terms of fit and feature set, the Jonsbo is really nice though and it doesn’t limit me to a 210-220mm card. But yes, ITX is quite limiting.

I think I may give up on 10 gig Ethernet anyway though as I would need to replace my router and POE switch to support it as well, possibly replace my wiring as well as add a card on the desktop. It can be done but it’s pricey and the main point of the build is self hosting.

Anyway, good note on the memory. It’s an annoying minefield out there with a ton of conflicting info by vendors, but the actually ECC sticks I see do happen to be twice as expensive regular DDR5. I may still consider it but it’s much harder to find used so it would be a major expense. Is ECC still that important for a simpler homelab build now that DDR5 has on-die correction?

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ECC isn’t a dealbreaker however it does give you an additional layer of “peace of mind”. The being said, at least ZFS will be very vocal when things go south but you still might experience some data loss.

In theory on-die should be better than previous “non ECC” variants but I haven’t seen anyone actually be able to prove that in practice.

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M2 to sata adapters suck. I would definitely go for an HBA or a motherboard that has more SATA ports. Maybe just go for an mATX or atx board? The A620 mitx is also limiting because you can’t add a 10g network card (as the gpu is already taking the one pci-e slot)

All that stuff you are doing is going to require more than 32GB of RAM. I would say the cpu is probably overkill, except for how heavy the games could get (the rest runs easily on an old 4 core).

Take into acount that you probably want about 20GB just for zfs caching depending on how many users access the storage and what they do with it. As for storage, you probably want to add large ssd storage as well for working with lots of photos at the same time, the game servers and running the games off of. A hard drive array might not be that bad, but if multiple applications are doing random writes/reads at the same time, it can get tricky.

I don’t know how large the closet is, but i would suggest going for an matx board and something like a fractal node 304. THe case is cheaper than the jonsbo, you get more pci-e connectivity from an matx board and you can save money on the power supply. There are multiple options but the bequiet 12M 550W is pretty efficient for 93 euro.

You should also switch to looking at prices in your country or where you are buying, prices can vary quite a lot.

What you want to do is really ambitious for not having worked with linux or vms before. The main options is to run Truenas and build VM’s inside of that, or run proxmox (and with proxmox you can pass an HBA to a truenas vm or just run zfs inside of proxmox)

How i would set this up:
Install proxmox on a 2x2TB or 2x4TB nvme ssd zfs mirror.
Add the drives to a zfs pool in proxmox.
Use an LXC container for file sharing.
Add virtual machines for the different applications you want to run.

  • LXC fileserver
  • VM for docker containers
    – Nextcloud for file storage (nfs or mounted)
    – Wireguard container for VPN
    – Plex container
    – other download services
  • VM for each game server seperately (to turn them on/off) Can also be LXC.
  • A Windows vm that you pass the gpu through to.

Passthrough of the gpu for multiple services is going to be an issue though. In that sense there are other ways to do it more easily.

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M2 to sata adapters suck. I would definitely go for an HBA or a motherboard that has more SATA ports.

Are they really this bad? I see them being used in builds on YouTube frequently and I’ve seen quite positive experiences on Reddit as well. I mean, isn’t M.2 just a smaller PCI-E lane? How bad can it be?

It’s tricky, I have about 30cm by 30cm (12"X12") of room because the wall panel takes up the middle of the closet and the other side is taken by a 10" patchbox with my networking. That is enough for the Sagittarius case but I didn’t account for the door post and panel actually blocking inserting the case into that position in the first place. So realistically I have more like 27x27cm to play with, better for airflow too. Height-wise though I have a lot of room so what I could potentially do is mount the Fractal vertically, though then I’d need to see how to best set up the fans. If anyone has an idea of other 6-8 bay mATX cases I could consider then do let me know.

No, I’m definitely aiming for 64GB at a minimum now. Usage wil likely be limited to 2-3 users at a time, having 5+ people on a server would be the rare exception.

Absolutely right and I don’t expect to have all of this running overnight. Part of this project is also to educate myself, make mistakes, troubleshoot and eventually deliver. But I really appreciate you sharing how you would get started. Thanks! And yeah, I also partially chose Ryzen so that I maybe don’t always have to pass the GPU through. For example for retro emulation streaming the iGPU would be fine.

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I found the following case which looks pretty promising. It supports full ATX and most ATX power supplies. At 230mm in width I can make it work. Only downside seems to be the 180mm restriction on the first PCIe slot (aka graphics) but this can be solved with a riser if necessary.

Link

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TBH I’m not convinced that the asmedia controllers are reliable enough yet, I’m of the opinion that it takes a “real” HBA from LSI/Broadcom/Adaptec/Microchip to get the super high reliably… I’ve had too many bad experiences with the sata-only HBAs overheating, dropping out or having buggy drivers and corrupting data.
There are also mechanical problems with using m.2>sata adapters although if you use the super thin sata cables this becomes less of a concern.
To be fair though I’ve had plenty of experience with “real” HBAs overheating and causing problems too, but this is a known issue.

I’m definitely happy with the Jonsbo N3, its about the smallest case that lets me put in a graphics card and a full-sized HBA:

IMG_20250110_174435
IMG_20250110_1744351920×2560 627 KB

The HBA cooling required:

IMG_20250110_165217
IMG_20250110_1652171920×1440 317 KB

You can see the x2 5.25" bay cutout in the bottom of the picture, I haven’t 3d printed a bezel to make it look nice yet. The bay will let me get another 3 3.5" hdds in the case for a total of 11.

@aBav.Normie-Pleb has probably the most knowledge on these m.2>sata adapters.

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I would go with a cheaper AM5 CPU, and upgrade in 1-3 years when prices fall of higher core count CPUs.

Secondly, I would go with a larger motherboard, getting stuck with the little IO and stuff of ITX if it’s your only machine is really irritating.