Home Server/NAS setup

Hardware Hub Build a PC
, ,
1

Hi there LevelOneTechs,
Im trying to decide on an efficent Server/NAS setup for my home, I’ve been going around in circles and finaly I’ve decided I need to engage others with more experience than myself.

My goal is to host SMB shares, Plex, Sonar, Radar, Jellyseer and Home assistant OS. Currently im running all of these off my Desktop (AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 64GB, RTX3090) through HypeV. Needless to say this isnt energy efficent, uptime is an issue and I seem to be running into networking issues and I’m hoping to share these services with family once i sort out a more stable situation.

Im tossing up between a either a monolithic setup or mini pc + atx/matx machine with x4 3.5 sata drives. targeting around $1000-1500 AUD. Juggling Plex’s transcoding hardware requirements and the *arr’s needing to be VPN’d are the points that are confusing me about the whole setup.

Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated.

2

I went with Fedora 42 server with Cockpit installed. I run Plex on it as well.
Cockpit had a few addins that let you setup file sharing and drive management. I have it setup it automatically install updates at 2am and do any reboots it needs at that time.

1 Like
3

I do a split. TrueNAS server for storage and *arr apps. Mini PC hypervisor for my VMs.

I have a VPN tunnel configured on my Unifi router. A firewall rule routes all internet traffic from the TrueNAS box through the VPN.

1 Like
4

Some good threads already worth a read are here and here

I would personally say go the mini itx, micro atx or better full size atx, yes its more pricey but at least you have so much more headroom with future proof, reliability and performance with going the fuller PC route always.

5

Dispite starting off on CentOS I’m a big fan of Debian these days, But Cockpit looks interesting, I’ll have to spin something up to give it a go. Thank you

6

This sort of setup is what i was thinking but im worried my 1gbe would become an issue between the storage box and mini pc.

Also good to know about the Unifi being able to route traffic for a single device through a VPN, I’ve been looking at replacing my ISP gear with a router and AP from Ubiquiti and this could help simplify my *arr VM

7

This is why i was leaning towards a “monolithic” setup, But I think AMD is out of the running purely down to requirements of Plex hardware transcode on linux, Which is frustraiting because i have it setup and working with igpu on my windows desktop.

8

Intel chips going down in price cause no one wants em might actually be helpful. Oddly the new 235,245 and 265 K’s are going on sale occasionally for a little over $250 in the US. I haven’t looked too hard at combos but it seems like the price is gonna go down in sales so they can dump them so maybe you get a deal on a good motherboard. Not sure what that costs where you are but a lot of 12th gen cpus are getting cheap now too and can probably do what you need it to do. I’m not sure how much better the Xe gps is compared to the old intel one but might be worth considering. You would need to set power limits but pretty much any 12gen or newer can probably work.

Plus, the new ultra 2 series claims ecc support as do some motherboards not sure how tested that is though. The one thing in the other thread that was linked is those motherboards probably have quite a high power draw for the W880 chipset so z890 is probably more efficient unless you actually need ECC or something else specific. I’m not sure I’ve seen any hard numbers yet tho.

I’m personally looking at it for something similar because the z890 chipset looks like it would serve as a nas/jellyfin and have enough m.2 and pcie slots on ATX to future proof it for a while. And it wouldn’t cost too much more than a 12th gen system and more efficient than 13/14th and cost just a bit more. If you go for non ecc RAM it’s pretty cheap now too.

Edit rn in the US 225 non-K is $260 and the 265k is $280 with the 245k and 235k between :man_shrugging: so motherboard might be harder to decide on than cpu

9

check out the @wendell video Beelink me mini if i had money, would insta buy it, 0 power usage, 0 heat output and much versatility [doge_meme]

Edit:
keep in mind i’m using amd a8-5600k apu with 4g ddr3 ram and nvidia gt710 + 2 x500gb zfs_raid_mirror in my attic with hdmi cable to my tv, running stock debian with docker:jellyfin, portainer, nextcloud, transmission, nfs (point of story: everything is doable if u’re persistant enough, truenas_scale is better but 4g ram cant keep up, debian can, otherwise truenas it would be)