[Recommendation Picked] Advice for first media server

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Hello, new to the forum, lmk if I mess anything up and sorry if I do.

I’m looking to make a mostly media focused server, I think right now just running jellyfin, and at least 2.5Gbe. Max budget I have to work with now is ~$1.2k. I likely wont be getting drives till next year, and I would prefer to keep it low power where possible. Something on the MATX/SFF scale, and likely just 4-6 bays*. I have some spare parts from a old pc I could maybe use to have something set up in the meantime.

CPU : i7-6700k
MOBO : Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming 7
RAM : G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-2400 CL15

After a week of research on my own and seeing what some LLMs had to say out of curiosity, I haven’t leaned towards anything yet. If I reuse these I’m going to try and replace that system ASAP. The form factor is way to large for where I’m putting this and I still think too old to get any other compatible smaller motherboard that would be worth the money, even if I find a decent small case I would reuse for the replacement system also.

The one mostly prebuilt solution I found that looks appealing is the Aoostar WTR PRO 4.

The cons here are that I would vastly prefer building my own instead of buying a prebuilt, that’s just how I am, and I’m hesitant to trust mini pc’s in general since AceMagic showed at least one person out there is putting stuff on some of them that should never be there. Aoostar gives me more confidence since they don’t even have their own NAS software on them and encourage you to use what you want.

I’m open to any considerations, especially new builds. The one crazy Idea I have is to try and mix both above options right now. Instead of a case I would just get a big enough test bench or even just a motherboard tray and use that to try out things I want to get into eventually like virtualization. The WTRP4 would be my 24/7 system till I build my own with better knowledge on exact features I want to use, and I would either sell the WTRP4 later, maybe at a minimal loss, or use it for as a remote backup.

*…in regards to HDD’s. I’m still out of the loop so are small-medium size nvme NAS systems on latest consumer boards with ecc possible now or viable if so? I saw a couple of builds through youtube comments with price, including 4 drives, at less than $1k. However useable storage was only around 6TB (was using raidz1-2 can’t remember details) and it was a dual xeon, they maxed out the drives later. Is there any sort of AM5 build or something that could match this? I don’t think ill be going a nvme route I’m just curious if we are there yet.

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how much data do you need to store?

6th gen is too old to invest in, but great to setup TrueNAS Scale and get a feel for it.

If you accidentally wipe out the pool or lock the permissions you can start over, as well as learn how to restore pools.

Worth setting up now.

As for new hardware:
You threw out a ton of ideas with little direction.

NVME makes sense if you’re hosting VM’s, but not movies.
Vice versa with HDD’s or SATA SSD’s.

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It depends on the use case.

If all you need is like maximum 20 TB of storage with a single 60Hz 4k TV stream then I am partial to the $449 Asustor Flashstor 6 or $799 Asustor Flashstor 12 Pro. While the Asustor is great for that use case (and serving files ofc), it is not great for running a ton of VMs and homelabbing.

A DIY prebuilt would cost you quite a bit more money, but here is the parts list to one such machine with current-gen hardware, that could fit your needs. If you add $200 for a 7900 instead of 7600, it’s a monster VM, too.

PCPartPicker Part List

Type Item Price
CPU AMD Ryzen 5 7600 $188.00
Motherboard ASRock B650I Lightning Wifi $179.99
Memory TEAMGROUP T-Create Expert 2x16 GB DDR5-6000 CL30 $88.99
Storage Kingston Fury Renegade 500 GB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 $59.99
Case Jonsbo N3 $158.00
Power Supply Silverstone SX700-PT 700 W 80+ Platinum Fully Modular $108.00
SATA Expansion Sintech M.2 to 6xSATA3 Ports, ASM1166 With Smart LED $28.09
Total $811.06

Note that you would still need to purchase the drives for this 8-bay solution. This one does not have ECC RAM support as that is at least another $100 to get ECC supported.

It is possible to shave ~$200 if you go with an AM4 system instead, and you could trade money for volume by going bigger. So, realistically speaking, we could go down to $500 if you are willing to do a bunch of tradeoffs.

Power consumption is a big questionmark here, the Flashstor units draws below 20W or 35W on average, while the AM5 system draws somewhere around 45-50W average. Add to that 8 disks fully populated and you may hit averages of 70W or more.

Every Watt in a 24/7 appliance will cost you 8.7 kWh per year, so saving 35W would mean a savings of 304.5 kWh per year. That is at least $40 saved per year.

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Around 10TB, so would 20-30TB be decent headroom? Most advice I’ve read says to double or triple afterwards.

Apologies, unlike gaming systems I have no real gauge for how demanding server services are, not even fully sure what I currently own is capable of. Conceptually I understand virtualizing everything and would like to get to that extreme point, but baby steps first.

What else exactly would you need so this can branch into specific parts? Other services I’m looking into are pihole, samba, a vpn and other things for torrenting.

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I should have specified, with drives I’m trying to draw no more than 50W. How exactly do you guesstimate how strong of a PSU will be needed? I don’t plan to maximize storage but want to get into VM usage eventually. I don’t foresee myself going near 40TB for a while (this will age well I’m sure)

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Need help building server - #5 by diizzy ?

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This, again, depends. Do you plan on doing AI, in that case you need at least a 4070 Super, which means a 600W PSU. If not, you can comfortably get away with 300W for the build above. Reason why I recommended a Platinum PSU here is because this one was $110, and the cheapest SFX PSU is something like $75, and modular cabling is a god send when working in small spaces.

For the NAS system above, 150W would be the maximum power draw with that CPU and 8 drives fully populated. 50W with 8 drives is unrealistic, but 50W with two drives, less so.

Also, you really do not require a separate beefy homelab machine anymore… WSL is capable enough to take care of all your virtual machine stuff, and Raspberry Pi can take care of bare-metal tinkering. Between the two having a dedicated machine for $600-$1000 is more like a luxury.

Of course, YMMV :slight_smile:

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If you already have a used Mobo/CPU/RAM that’s where I would start first. I read good advice on here to install TrueNAS Scale on this and start learning first before buying anything else - it really pays dividends to invest a little time in figuring out pools, permissions, etc. My initial test setup was on a throwaway 256GB boot SSD with two venerable 1TB HDD I had in a box as a test pool. That’s how I learned VDEVs, SMB configuration, etc.

^ If all/any of that sounds too much, uninteresting, etc. I would recommend Unraid - it is also a lovely piece of software, but it’s commercial so that impacts your costs. However compared to TrueNAS Scale I believe many newcomers will find its ease of use worth the price of admission if you find the CLI too frustrating/intimidating. Best of luck with your build regardless of which path you take!

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