New home server build, my first server could use some help (updated)

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Hello, as the titles says, I’m about to build out my first home server. I’ve picked some parts and others I’m more confused on. So I figured I would step into another forum and beg for some help.

Budget: $500-$1500
Use: documents and photo storage for multiple users, Plex, docker, VM, home assistant, and git server will be my obvious use cases. However, I will probably manage my home network from it, dump security video to it, and maybe use it as a game server at some point. I will use it for work and personal development projects that include fpga and OS design, and programming.

Parts:
Case - Silverstone CS381B: want hot swap drives, need smallish form factor, going on a shelf in my office so needs to be shorter than it is wide.

Fans - four Noctua NF-A12x25 PWM chromax fans. It will be in my office so it needs to be quit. I’ll replace the stock fans. I am also ok with modding my case to add more fans if cooling becomes an issue, as the case appears to be hit or miss on cooling

CPU fan - Noctua NH-L9a cooler

Hard drives (updated) - I added a 6th Seagate 4TB Iron wolf so that I can set up with two parity drives. I also found a great deal on two Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB drives at Microcenter for $95 each so I’m going to use those as my cache drives, mirrored. And I’ll use the 2.5 500GB SSD for my plex metadata.

In addition, I’ll have two 2.5 ssds I’ll use for read/write caching

CPU (updated) - as suggested by @Ghan , I went out and picked up an intel i5-12400. The was the best bang for the buck after doing some more research. I appreciated the suggestion. I just figured latest would be more money, so I just completely ignored 12th gen

MB (update) - so based on the cpu, I came to this [MSI PRO B660M-A DDR4 LGA 1700 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - Newegg.com](https://MSI Pro B660M LGA 1700). It has two m.2 sockets and 2.5g nic. so it seems like a reasonable choice for what I need. plus it has an extra two memory banks I can use when I eventually expand my storage pool.

Memory (updated) - I’m currently sitting on Crucial Ballastic 3200 DDR4 2x16GB kit in my amazon cart.

Power supply (updated) - Corsair sf450 80+ platinum

Expansion card for more data connections, or should I look at a sas to data adapter. I know a single sas will handle 4 drives on most cards. I know little about these. An LSI sas card runs anywhere between $60 and 700. What’s the difference

OS - I’m leaning towards unRAID.

Can I get some insight on my parts, suggestions, what am I overlooking?

I’ll use my current WD PR4100 as a back up for the most important items.

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I would strongly consider looking at the i5-12400 from the current Alder Lake generation instead. You can find a decent H670 board (or lower chipset even) for comparable price and still run cheaper DDR4 - the only issue might be finding a good one in mATX or ITX form factors. The 12400 uses less power under load and beats the 11600k in most benchmarks. This review focuses on the AMD comparisons, but the 11600k appears on most charts:

As far as ECC support, Intel still locks out ECC from most of their consumer chips, so if you want that you will either need to go AMD (it’s not officially supported on the desktop platform but generally does work) or choose an Intel server chip like a Xeon E-2176G or similar.

600W is way overkill unless you are planning to put some kind of unreasonably monstrous GPU in there later. Nothing wrong with it, but you might check out if you can get a lower wattage PSU for a lower price.

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I didn’t even consider the latest gen. That’s a great call out. Thank you. Lower power would be ideal, but taking a quick look at some comparisons it does seem to outperform the 11600k.

Thank you.

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If you want to go Intel, be sure you get the right version of the Noctua cooler (NH-L9i), as they are actually physically different designs and have different mounting hardware.

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This I actually know. I helped my father in-law build a system, amd, with the same cooler. He ordered the Intel variant, which set our build back a week.

But good call out!

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I’m running Unraid on my home server and thus far have had no issues, though mine is simply a file server at this point.

I went with that so I can use the hodge-podge of miscellaneous drives I have laying around instead of having to buy matched drives.

I’m sure I’ll be replacing drives as my old drives start to reach end of life, but thats fine.

The how-to is easy to follow and the interface is fairly easy to use, even for a luddite like me.

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I went to assemble everything yesterday, and realized they sent me the AMD one. I ordered the Intel and got the AMD. i’ve had it for over a week and I never bothered checking :frowning:

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Did you get it straightened out yet?

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