Let’s start with the first two. The point of this is to strike a balance, anyone can throw money at a box or rack and get it to do what they want. Maybe
- NAS
- NAS + media server
- NAS + virtualization Host
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Arbitrary “No but ur rong”
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This, are we going for as budget friendly as possible? Or is it just the best Price/preformance? Because streaming with services like freenas requires some power 
NAS
CPU - Dual Core Processor with ECC Support
RAM - 16GB ECC
Motherboard - Anything with Intel LAN would be great but at least a few pci express slots for things like adding an intel NIC, LSI HBA. ECC Support.
Power Supply - 500w or less
Hard Drives - I have ran seagate for a long time but I know most people recommend HGST.
NAS media server
CPU - Quad Core
NAS with Virtualization
RAM - 32GB
I guess for people starting out we could just recommend ECC RAM but state that it is not necessary.
Really only difference between NAS and the other two is stepping up the Processor and RAM.
I am not sure on what to recommend for a case other than something that holds a at least 6-8 hard drives with fans in front cooling them. Right now my rig is a dell T20 with e3-1221v3 and 32gb RAM running Fedora 26 with ZFS and using containers for all my virtualization. One Windows 10 in a VM running and Empyrion Game Server. Also a hot swap cage sitting beside my Dell holding my drives.
Ryzen with its ECC support and the appropriate boards that support this in my opinion will be the overall winner for price/performance needs.
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Price/performance. AKA “Right size, Right Price”
Get the essentials to a T, don’t pay for anything you don’t need.
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Thank you for your contribution, waiting for some other crowd-sourced info to come in, but this is very helpful.
If we are going to end up recommending ryzen we also may need a reliable source of what boards support ecc properly. For those that want to use ecc.
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For the NAS systems we probably aren’t. Ryzen is overkill
You could use Phenoms for NAS machines. People have been eating them up. PRices went from 35 to 100 recently because of the demand, though recently here means mid last year.
This one is hard to say for me because my current haswell i3 setup will do 4k30 without a problem but the second you throw on some HEVC it stutters, while 4k YouTube will do just fine. I installed an old 750ti I had laying around and got 4k60 but still still struggle with HEVC since the 750ti doesnt decode it. IMO you could run a pentium (or equivalent AMD) and just throw a newer GPU at it and have all the power you’d really need unless you want it to transcode or some other bs. I’m seriously considering a 1050 for my current setup, it seems to hit all the marks for my use.
Not sure what exactly you’re asking for on this one.
I’m not hip with these kinds of things these days.
Let me know if you find one that doesnt break the bank. I have given up and gone with this. I also used this for a time but I found the range to be garbage for me, otherwise it was pretty good.
My setup is pretty basic really.
- i3 4170
- 8GB Avexir DDR3 1600
- GTX750ti
- This god awful case.
- Synology ds216j with 2 4TB HGST drives
I just run wandows 10 and play things off the NAS via VLC and if its struggling I might use MPC. Chrome for the rest of it. My ideal setup is at least a 900 series GTX. Thats the minimum for native HEVC decoding.
Intel G4400 would be great for the Simple NAS
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Wish I would have thought of this earlier but for freenas we should be recommending intel for now until ryzen gets settled in.
which is why they’re off the table.
Methodology for part picking will generally skew towards buying new. The extra you’re paying for is warrantly and support, and not having to sift through ebay and craigslist for ages trying to find the parts we recommend.
As in, are there specific TV tuners or capture card setups that work for DVR in X application but not Y application, is Z remote just plain incompatible with Plex or Kodi, etc.
OK, looked into it. 900 series is earliest GPU to support it, Carrizo APUs earliest AMD chip, Skylake earliest intel parts, Fiji first AMD GPU to support it.
We should probably target skylake/kabylake igpu or an earlier low end chip and a 1030 depending on what empirical evidence I can find. Hold off on APUs until the ryzen based line arrives.
Yeah, already said ryzen was probably a non-starter for now.
I just want to say that local shops have them and don’t care what they’re worth online. I can get 6 Phen X4 950’s for free right now that work because a local shop doesn’t care. They’re too old and they don’t want to sell them. A lot of the stuff people want to do they can scrap for.
I will soon have a post about scrapping for parts.
That’s great. I’m sure we’re all happy for you. It has nothing to do with this thread.
Kindly only post here if you have something of relevance to contribute or would like to discuss the merits of the posted builds.
I’ll get something together. Currently at work, need to stop dicking around on the internet. working so gosh darn hard.
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Mid-Tier Performance NAS
Also, what I have lol
Use Cases:
- Backups (Clients)
- SMB and/or NFS
- Quick Access of Large Files (25GiB+)
- Virtual Machines
Hardware
Dell R710 = Ranges $150 - $220
- (2x) Intel Xeon CPU’s 8c/16t
- 32 GiB 1333 ECC RAM
- (4x) Gigabit NICs
HDD
(8x) 10k RPM SAS Drives = $400
Note: we could do SATA but we sqeeze a bit more performance with these since they are higher RPM, and SSD is still too expensive for this price range.
Mounting Gear
- (used )Rails (used get for usually $50)
- (new) Rails (>=$100)
- 2/4 post rack, or data cabinet
(used) racks are very cheap (>=$50)
(new) racks are cheap (<=$100)
(used) data cabinets not so cheap (>=$300), unless you find a steal (rare) only go for it if you can pick up locally, shipping will cost you more than what you pay for the thing; trust me I know first hand!
(new) data cabinets, hella dosh (>=$1200)
Software
FreeNAS 11
ZFS filesystem
RAIDZ2 configuration, best middle ground for redundancy and performance.
Totals
Lower Total: $600 (used dell + new hdd + used rack)
Upper Total: $920 (used dell + new hdd + used data cabinet)
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There are people who are really into HTPC’s, and their sites have allot of info on on iGPU capabilities. On gaming forums you really see phrases like “The Skylake igpu is soooo much faster!” 
HTPC sites also have info on fanless cpu coolers and making sytems really quiet.
If you like the dollar menu at the drive through the Raspberry is an option.
We’re targeting 4k30 and home theater audio. Basically the first set of features that cordcutting boxes can’t deliver but you can still find media for (UHD BLU-RAY, Netflix, etc.)
I doubt the raspberry pi 6 will support this featureset.