Trying to build a home NAS and need some help [Solved]

That’s exactly what I was going to bring up. We all wish we could have our servers do everything, but somtimes it’s just worth it to build or buy a separate box.

Also no matter the OS you should be using ZFS and ECC memory. highly recommend getting some kind of UPS as well. Too many scares with power outages for me.

I am thinking that NAS box will have both but in a separate box is making more sense.

Its like all projects: you have to compromise between momentary cost, sunk time/sanity cost, and performance efficiency. Strike the best compromise that you can live with and get started; planning only goes so far until it becomes faffing.

So here is what I am thinking: If I were to get the Server listed above I would want to throw in at least 32 GB of memory (2x 16 GB sticks) 1 SSD for the OS, and some sort of graphics card for hardware trans-coding.

I could put more in that but for a MVP style server with just Plex I think that would be ideal. The next question is the OS, granted I live in a windows world but heard that Ubutntu’s implementation of plex is really good, the question then becomes is it worth throwing Linux on there to squeeze blood from the stone or just stick with what you know.

Dell t30 is terrible for hard drive cooling and a pain to add fans and such. I have a t20 and was my NAS until I built a white box one. It now is my esxi host with one SSD for boot and all my VM over 10gb iscsi to my freenas

Hi all was a bit busy with life but had an idea I came across from this:

In short instead of having two devices to handle each item, just build a big desktop PC with the budget I had. I did a little digging and found this case:

https://www.coolermaster.com/catalog/cases/full-tower/stryker-se/

10 Internal Hard Drives and 4 SSD slots without a need of another cage is looking really appealing, the style of the case is bleh but since I have not been able to find anything to hit this mark its the tentative case for it.

Now I am thinking of going with an Unraid box with a VM for the plex and by putting in an ok Graphics card I think it would fit my needs nicely.

I did manage to scoop an Samsung EVO 860 500 GB while it was on sale and thinking of having that as the main unit. Open for hardware solutions if anyone has any recommendations.

Recently stumbled upon this case: https://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=668

The CS280 house up to eight drives, hot-swappable. You still need to add your PSU, CPU, Motherboard and so on. I would go for a 3400G Ryzen, B450 or even B350 mini-ITX motherboard, 32GB RAM and an 120GB NVMe drive for the OS. It should be good enough to handle all your tasks adequately.

Of course, a really big box would also solve your problems. :slight_smile:

Nice find I found a review of the case on a random blog

https://smallformfactor.net/reviews/silverstone-cs280-reviewed-diy-nas-made-easier/

In short they liked it but with no integrated graphics support and buying about $50 of their own sata cables to utilize the space it is definitely up for consideration

The Silverstone DS380B is a really nice Tiny NAS case

Pretty compact case for 8 hotswap 3.5" drives and 4 2.5" non hotswap drive slots

I am learning towards the larger case, easier for with to work with and suited better for user the desk usage. While searching for ideas I came across this:

https://www.newegg.com/supermicro-mbd-h11ssl-i251-ma015-o-single-amd-epyc-7000-series-processor/p/N82E16813183678?Item=N82E16813183678&Description=PPSSRULTGNOZEI&cm_re=PPSSRULTGNOZEI--13-183-678--Product

I think this is overkill for my needs but will definitely get the job done. So going off my search I would need a 600W power Supply, this combo of a motherboard/CPU, 1 M.2 for the OS (I will use the SSD for sale as Cache), 64 GB of ECC memory, 1 10 TB drive for the Redundancy, UnRaid license, and as many large drives I can afford.

Minor Note: Everyone who does a video on building a NAS is always sponsored by a hard drive company who donates 10 hard drives to them. How the hell can I get on that mailing list, and what insignia can I put on my case to make it happen. Please let me know.

Anyone see anything that I am missing in this build? Might do a part picker to get an estimate and budget the cost of getting all these parts, I can already tell this is going to be over a year before I get it fully operational.

This is so true and annoying. Video title building a low cost unraid server… Hi all, this video is sponsored by Seagate who sent me ten 14TB ironwolf pro drives. Sigh

You should be able to get a 12-16 core Threadripper + mobo for that price.

I’d go much bigger on the PSU, in case you want to go nuts with GPUs down the road.

Ok so after MUCH pain and cross refering I think I found a price list to go off of.

This should take care of getting myself started while leaving room for me to scale up in the future. Please point out any dumb mistakes I missed.

A Small update, while I was asking for a look over in the NAS build someone pointed me to this:

Definitely worth considering as an alternative to some of my ideas and will review for consideration.

Hi all sorry to reserect this thread but managed to finally get the pieces to the beast together, the plan is later this week to show off my final build for those that were using this thread as a starting point. In the mean time I came across this beast:

http://www.onda.cn/MotherBoard_Specifications.aspx?id=406

Now the chances of me getting this and making a NAS extension out of this is low…but holy heck is it really temping to do so. I am not sure if I am crazy to think this would work, or if this is a vaporware that would be a bad idea. Thought to share

… wtf is it?

Link doesn’t open for me, just times out.

+1 on unraid, been running it for about 3 and a half years now and its been rock solid. Running plex in a docker and it handles VM’s just fine

Ok my server is going through the initial hard drive setup, so I have about 20 hours to kill, so since some of you wanted to know what I did here is a quick brain dump with some pictures!

That list is pretty much all my parts, I dropped the CPU fan for something a local shop had since it was too large so if you are going to duplicate the build find a medium profile CPU fan.

The motherboard had a small issue with where the memory was located so Natucha is out with their general wide design.

Now if you want to do a set it and forget it for trans-coding (e.g. video file that you can watch on your phone without any pre-planning) a good graphic card is a must. I went with the P2000 card for the fact that it is unlocked from the jump, had a TON of community support and testing to validate that it was able to get the job done, and the single slot allows me to rewire some cables so it all fits without any interference. Not bad for a max of a 23 simultaneous stream support.

The SSDs were a pain to get them installed, sure I could have velcroed them to the case and called it a day but I wanted something a little more secure and not as bodgy. Enter the small laptop parts a supply store had for spare, thankfully the holes in the case lined up perfectly for two of them to be installed in case I wanted to do a dual Cache (not planning on it but future proofed it to make sure the option was there).

Now the fans I thought could have been replaced due to noise, thankfully they are great. I heard quieter and louder, the slight hum I get is something that would blend in with my computer. Once I find its permanent home under my desk, should not be an issue. Also I bought an internal USB cable to stick a memory stick there due to Unraid wanting to boot from the device. As long as it is inside the case no chance it will be accidentally pulled out and crash the array.

The main reason for this case: hot swap-able drives. Yes you can upgrade bays to be hot swap-able but at $20 bucks a bay I chose to get the built in option. Also 12 bays should be more than enough. Grand total for the box is 12 HDD+2 SSD+1 NVME+1 USB = 16 hard drives. Also the hard drive is a shucked drive from a WD EZ Store External Hard drive. Its a brand that goes on sale fairly often and the communities validated it. Got 2 12 TB and one 4 TB for now.

I had another 10 TB that died due to a power failure on my PSU’s cable, since I was a tad foolish on my first shuck I was unable to RMA the drive, so if you are going down this route, shuck it carefully and keep the parts in the closet for a moment like this. Thankfully my 3 2 TB drives I got earlier was able to be RMAed and waiting to get them back.

That is pretty much it, still setting up Unraid by re-watching all of Spaceinvader One’s tutorials, most of them still holds up but a few have some outdated information since they were posted a few years ago.

In case you did not see it here is the one Wendel did with Gamers’ Nexus.

Thank you all for your help in the process, I wanted to pass along the end result in case someone else was thinking of doing this project and sharing notes so you do not take 5 months of research on what to actually get.

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Spaceinvaderone does seem pretty good for Unraid vids, from what I’ve seen.
Oh, and I really like the side routing of the grey sata cables- very slick and professional