Where to start for a Homersever/NAS / What parts to pick up this boxing day sales

Hardware Hub Build a PC
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Hi everyone,

I’ve outgrown the level of storage I have in my desktop PC (8TB HDD, 1TB SSD) and am looking to expand out into a NAS with atleast 18TB if not more of HDD’s in either RAID 4 or 5. I’d like to also use it for plex, Home assistant and possibly other services to tinker with. I’m more interested in a DIY solution as I value user serviceability and am a tinkerer with linux/CLI experience. Power efficient hardware would be better, and looking less jank is better for the Wife Approval Factor.
I’m asking for help as I don’t understand the naming/features/values of miniPC/homeserver Hardwares. Wendell’s video on Homesever out of a miniPC was very interesting but I know that USB enclosures attached to miniPC’s are still jank currently.
I get the feeling computer prices /storage are going back up currently, so especially wondering if there’s anything to definetly purchase during upcoming Boxing day deals. I’m in Australia, so this will be the last major day for specials for quite a while. It’s not a hard budget, but <$1500 AUD would be good.

I’m in Australia and not a hard budget, but <$1500AUD would be good.

I have some super old laptops with bad I/O laying around, a raspberry 4 not doing anything, a standalone intel celeron pfsense router if these would be useufl / could be repurposed.

Any help is appreciated, cheers.

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Welcome to the forum!

Normally, I’d just recommend the ThinkPenguin 4 Bay NAS which I’m using (they ship to AU), but it’ll probably come around 8 or 900 AUD, leaving you with not a lot of HDDs (if those are part of the total price, it’ll be a tough build).

Something like a Thermaltake Core X9 could fit the bill. Find a celeron board like the Asrock J3455M that I own (very satisfied with it), or better off a newer model, like an Asrock N100M (it’s a 6w alder lake quad core, way more powerful than the previous gemini / jasper lake cpus), or if you can find it for way cheaper, Asrock J4125M. Slap 16GB of RAM and a SATA (or SAS) card, a 300W PSU and the cheapest and smallest sata ssd you can find (as a boot drive) and you’re done. Should come in pretty cheap, if all you’re looking for is a NAS.

I’d get 5 HDDs of the highest capacity I can get in RAID-Z, because it offers the biggest usable capacity at what I consider to be the sweet spot between redundancy and risk. Not sure how much are HDDs in AU, but I’d think 18TB ones aren’t going to be anything less than 400 AUD. That’ll put you at 2000 AUD just for the drives and maybe 3 to 500 AUD for the PC itself.

You might be able to reuse the pfsense mobo to cut off some costs. But the HDDs will be by far the costliest, at 4x more than the rest of the hardware combined.

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I like suggesting X79 era servers. No, not the best for power efficiency, but cheap enough compared to new that the cost difference for power likely wouldn’t matter, even long term. Those CPUs and DDR3 are dirt cheap now. There are sub $100 board options that use standard ATX PSUs. If you happen to get one that doesn’t allow JBOD through most of it’s SATA ports, an add-in card can of course solve that. Those reproduced X79 boards are also a thing; a single E5 2667 V2 (8 core, higher clock speed) or E5 2697 V2 (12 core, lower clock speed) could each handle a NAS and additional tinkering. If you want higher end, there are bundles for older Epyc CPU+board+RAM for like $500-600.
Both of those eras of hardware can be had with a bunch of slots for whatever add-in hardware you might want to tinker with.

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Well, if this was 2021 I would, without a doubt, recommend you a 4 bay NAS and fill it with 2x18TB mirrored drives to start with, and expand this as time permits.

And if this was 2025 I would recommend you a full blown m.2 all NAS storage unit with four 8TB SSDs.

Thing is, we are at the end of 2023 where it still makes sense to go all-in on full SSD, but it will cost you a premium over full HDDs.

So, with that in mind, let’s start with your options. I have included a rough sketch of what seems to be available in Australia, but I am by no means an expert here and I definitely do not like those HDD pricing options on Amazon - surely one could do better? Feel free to hunt in your local market. Anything is replaceable.

Option 1: All SSD NAS featuring the Asustor Flashstor 6

Yes, as SSD flash storage continue to fall in price and increase in capacity, this prospect becomes more and more interesting. The Flashstor sports only 4GB of RAM, but can easily be upgraded to a 2x8 kit of DDR4 SO-DIMMs. The relatively “weak” specs are, believe it or not, still enough to deliver a Plex experience with 4k streams, but you do not have to try very hard to reach the capacity limits of this thing. The power draw of maximum 23W is also great. Price wise this will be expensive, but you could start with two or even three drives and expand as required. Below is a rough build draft.

Pros: Insanely good value, future proof, low power, insanely reliable
Cons: Weak hardware, 4TB m.2 drives are still expensive

Here is a rough sketch using Aussie Amazon for a 12TB non-redundant setup (for now).

Part Model Price (AUD)
Base Unit Asustor Flashtor FS6706T $760.00
Storage Crucial P3 4TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 $309.00
Storage Crucial P3 4TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 $309.00
Storage Crucial P3 4TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 $309.00
Total $1687.00

Option 2: Mirrored 4 bay NAS featuring QNAP TS-433

Like I said before… If this was 2021, I would recommend this without missing a beat. Now, it feels like recommending a petrol car after driving a Tesla for three years. Not great, but it’s old, tried, reliable and no one ever got fired for buying spinning rust storage, amirite?

Pros: Cheap storage, Cheap base units, tried and tested technology, relatively low power draw
Cons: CPUs might still not be good enough, no m.2 storage, HDD tech most probably will never grow beyond 50 TB drives

Part Model Price (AUD)
Base Unit QNAP TS-433 $654.00
Storage Seagate Ironwolf Pro 22TB 7200 RPM CMR $557.76
Storage Seagate Ironwolf Pro 22TB 7200 RPM CMR $557.76
Total $1769,52

Option 3: The DIY HDD NAS

Allright, so while the Asustor and QNAP options might be interesting… What about ten years down the line, when those CPUs are completely outdated yet you still want a freakin’ decent server for your 8k VR streams? Let’s look at the DIY route. There are a lot of things that appeal here, not in the least that you can update to any configuration you want to. Me, personally, I prefer my NAS be a NAS and then do decoding on a different server, but to each their own.

Pros: Full flexibility, system can be kept current for your current needs
Cons: Requires a lot more tinkering, usually has a 5x power draw, often more expensive in the low end

PCPartPicker Part List

Type Item Price
CPU AMD Ryzen 5 7600 $335.00
Motherboard Asus PRIME B650M-A WIFI II $214.00
Memory G.Skill Trident Z5 2x16 GB DDR5-6000 CL36 $149.00
Storage Kingston A2000 250 GB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 $42.00
Power Supply Silverstone FX600 Platinum 600W Flex ATX $288.45
Case Euromicron N8B (found at Alibaba) $229.99
Total $1258.44

Worth noting here is that I recommend a solid 8-bay case if doing DIY, with mATX support. These can be found on sites like Alibaba for cheap. If that feels sketchy to you, I completely understand.

The thing I want you to understand here, is that DIY is more expensive in terms of what you can get if “all you want is a bloody NAS”, but at the same time, you get a lot more for your money. I did pick a motherboard that supports ECC, but you can go for a proper AM5 server motherboard too. With drives, however, we’re still talking about a $2.5k AUD investment.

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Thank you for the information.
What about the ThinkPenguin 4 bay NAS recomends it over other seemingly turnkey solutions like Synology or QNAP? (I know these will all be diskless)
The Thermaltake Core X9 is a biggg beefy boy ha, my desktop is in a Fractal Design Meshify C but the girth of the thermtake makes it seem bigger.
Shippings a pain outside capital cities in Australia, the X9 isnt even available. Looking around, I see on au pcpartpicker ones like " Fractal Design Node 304" and " Cooler Master QUBE 500" are reasonably priced (<$200 delivered). There’s also a 2nd hand Jonsbo N1 for $100 locally. These cases seem to be M ATX or M ITX, is this the sweet spot to focus on for smaller systems with enough space for 3.5" HDD’s?
I’m seeing things like IronWolf NAS 6TB for $269, WD Red plus 8TB for $285, etc.I’m understanding better now the full cost of filling out the HDD’s. I’ve heard Unraid lets you expand out as you purchase more drive, is it the only common software that allows that? To not have to buy all drive up front? The target 18+TB of storage was meant as total for the system, not per drive. I’d only targeted 1 disk failable before, so that would be RAID Z1 if I understand right?
Is purchasing the motherboards+CPU’s from aliexpress considered safe? I’m used to purchasing many electronics from them, just not sure where to get this “class” of products from, they’re not on our dedicated computer parts websites… Ebay is mostly just aliexpress listing cross posted in Australia, I swear.

(Just saw there’s more posts since I started writing this, reading and will reply thank you.

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I can tell you put a decent amount of thought into your reply, thank you.
I definetly understand the 2021 vs 2025 option you presented, I’d put this off for as long as I could hoping for more value for less $.

What do you mean by it making sense to go all in on SSD’s ? Their improved performance, reduced dimensions, power budget and noise being more valuable to you / in general? (I don’t see this needing to be a high endurance NAS if that’s important, many more reads than writes)

The Asustor and all SSD wasnt an option I’d even considered, tyvm. Especially good value compared to the DIY option you present later. Limited, yes by CPU and the prices of available m.2 SSD modules. I can’t
For the QNAP / Synology-like option, is there some sort of open source soft/firmware you can flash to these things? Like the opensource firmware you can get for routers?

In an Ideal world, my storage would be seperate to compute yes, but I don’t have a strong need for compute away from my desktop. So I’m looking for “some” compute, on a always online, efficient platform, so combined with a NAS in this case.

I’m confident enough with aliexpress, less alibaba (aren’t they all minimum orders of more than 1?). But yeah, the DIY option is using parts and language I’m familiar enough with to understand. I’ll have a think, thank you.

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Seems like these kind of builds are getting really popular! Take a look at my build if you need some ideas: https://forum.level1techs.com/t/build-log-silent-night-my-own-take-on-quiet-and-power-efficient-nas

tl;dr AsRock N100M, single stick 32GB 3200MHz, 7L case, 6x4TB SSDs, external power brick.

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Free Software tested. Maybe not something important for most, but you know you’re going to be able to run a distro, even with linux-libre and not have to bother with drivers. And I also like the size, it’s about 1.5x bigger than my RockPro64 official metal case (and way more powerful) and that is really small. But it doesn’t support 5 HDDs, unless you go with a picoPSU and do some custom 3.5" bay in the PSU tray. And the case can be used in the future with other ITX motherboards (like whatever asrock releases with atom-based celerons, like today’s intel n100-itx boards).

But for the price of it and the use-case, I think it’ll be too powerful (meaning you’ll be wasting your money if it’s going to be mostly idling).

I picked the core x9 because it was a case with 6x 3.5" bays. Pick whatever you can purchase in whatever size you prefer. I could’ve suggested a mATX tower with 4x 3.5" bays and 1x 5.25" bay that could be retrofitted with 1 more drive, but that’ll add a bit to the cost for the dvd hdd adapter. As mentioned before, 5 drives is the sweet spot.

The lower capacity HDDs are way overpriced per TB, just buy the 10TB+ ones if you can afford it. The prices of lower capacity HDDs look like they never came down.

Yes, RAID-z1 is equivalent of RAID5 (1 disk size for redundancy). Also best with 3 or 5 drives (which is why I’m pushing for 5 drives, for the capacity).

Typically yes. You don’t need enterprise gear though, stick with consumer grade stuff (for right now). Maybe in a few years, you’ll be interested in enterprise gear, but those tend to use more power (although depending where you live, negligible, if your power is cheap). Intel N100 is a really good CPU for starters, it’s cheap and decently powerful and sips power. That’s why I suggested the motherboards with the built-in CPU. Although you should be able to find this on more reputable sites.

The reason I didn’t suggest a full-on desktop-class hardware (like the thinkpenguin 4 bay NAS or a DIY version with intel i3 or ryzen 3 or 5, but a lower-end platform) is because you mentioned you’ve been running you media from your desktop. From that I’m guessing you don’t have a use for a hypervisor type build. All you seem to need is a “dumb storage box with networking,” a.k.a. a NAS. And the N100 is more than powerful enough for those kind of needs. No need to invest a third of your money on the hardware if you’re not going to make use of it.

TrueNAS Core will run just fine on this. So will OpenMediaVault. Both easy to use and to get into. I don’t think the FreeBSD version of TrueNAS (the Core one) has a jellyfin plugin, but the SCALE one should have (as scale runs on Debian and it supports docker). OpenMediaVault is also “just debian” and you can slap something like portainer on it and run jellyfin.

But for just basic data, no server-side organization and encoding on-the-fly, just a bare basic Samba or NFS server, all 3 of the above would do (I tend to have people stay a bit away from TrueNAS Scale, since I never used it and cannot vouch for it).

Haha, nice! Another +1 for the Asrock N100M.

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Well, the TLDR is that the market is already moving that direction. SSDs are much more reliable (especially for mostly read ops), takes up less volume and are quiet. Speed doesn’t really matter in NAS yet and while HDDs still have the capacity crown for now, they only make sense in a SOHO NAS that requires large (50TB+) storage capacity now. Big ops prefer SSD infrastructure for the space and power savings, and if you only need a few TB, there is no reason not to go for SSDs today.

The long read: The market is ditching HDDs. There is a reason you are starting to see flash sales of 8TB HDDs and below, HDD shelfs, and other HDD infrastructure.

In the server room, HDDs have pretty much no market left. There are companies that still utilize HDD infrastructure, but almost all rack ops are switching over to SSD. Why? Because you can now populate 1 rack with what used to require 7 racks. And that is before you even begin to consider faster infrastructure. So, how would you like it if I told you you could cut 85% of your real estate costs and 85% of your power costs?

For SOHO, there really is nothing left to hoard. Yes, you have surveillance videos, you have blue ray rips, and so on. All of this video can easily fit on 100 TB of storage since 100TB can store 3000 or so Bluerays easily. Unless your name is Linus Sebastian and your homegrown company edit hundreds of videos each month, you will not reach these capacities. Smaller channels like Jays2Cents does just fine with something like 40 TB of storage.

So, for the same price now, you can buy an 8TB or 10TB HDD, or a 4TB SSD. Soon a 4TB SSD will be at the same price parity as a 6TB HDD, and an 8TB SSD will be the same as a 12TB HDD.

Then, let us have a look at capacity and speed. HDDs are fundamentally limited by SATA and their RPM. HDDs cannot reach faster than ~300MB/s throughput while a PCIe 5.0 drive can easily reach 10x that, if not 20x. As for capacity, there are new, expensive drives coming out with this newfangled HAMR / MAMR technology. Only problem is, new tech is expensive. HAMR drives will cost twice as much as CMR drives, which brings the drives to a per-TB price parity with… Yes… SSDs. What brings the cost of new tech down? Sales. If HAMR drives cannot compete with SSD on price there is no point.

Without HAMR, HDDs cannot reach above 24TB without great difficulty. SSDs are talking about 256TB and beyond, coming out next year. Samsung has stated they hope to be first to the market with the first 1PB (1000TB) drive, and they have a pretty good shot at it.

So, SSDs are now more reliable than HDDs (in fact, so reliable you almost don’t need redundancy for uptime reasons; you still want it for preventing data corruption). They are faster. They have more capacity. And costs? Well, it is probably inevitable that costs will come crashing down eventually, too.

So, from my perspective full SSD storage is now as inevitable as the shift from IDE to SATA was inevitable.

Now, here is what I do not know; will SSD form factors stay the same? I think it is obvious that we will have m.2 and 2.5" on consumer for a while longer. Most consumer PCs today are ditching SATA in favor of m.2 slots anyway, but there are other ways to hook a drive up, like u.2 for instance.

I do not know if there will ever be 64 TB m.2 SSDs, I think it is more likely than not, like a 60-70% certainty, but it is possible a new form factor will be required for high capacity SSDs. I think it is very likely 32TB m.2 will exist, and maybe they can squeeze in 64TB on a stick like that. Beyond 64TB, however, most probably requires a new type of transistor.

So, let’s assume Flashstor max capacity is 32TB per drive, that is 160TB of redundant storage. Far more than what a 4Bay HDD NAS is likely to ever give you (~72TB of redundant storage, if you are lucky). I see no reason why you should wait for HDDs to die off when you can invest in m.2 infrastructure today. That is just me though, and I could very well be a bigger delusional fool than the flat earthers :stuck_out_tongue:

Yes, there is, but do remember they are best left alone. All of the prebuilts come with their own “firmware” OS. Reflashing them just because things should be open is one of the dumbest things you can do, from a functionality standpoint; it will break some features. If you want things to just work, don’t do it. If you love tinkering though, foot, meet gun. Fire away! :grin:

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Here’s what I did several years ago, and what I would do again today for a ballin’ NAS on a budget.

I started with a Node 804 and threw whatever I had that was cheap inside of it, and watch it grow based on budget/availability. Initially it was my old Haswell i5, and now it’s a Ryzen9 3900 (bought used) on a Asrockrack motherboard. Started with a Sata expansion card, and now a LSI hba adapter.

I started by using TrueNAS (at the time FreeNAS) and has since switched to Unraid (supports parity protection on differently sized disks). As with everything there are tradeoffs, but if your goal is mainly Plex database then you’re fine. Make sure you have a couple of SSDs to run your dockers and VMs off of, and you’re off to the races!

Also, having room for only 10 3.5" mechanical drives isn’t a bug, it’s a feature! It keeps me replacing older, smaller drives every 4 years or so with newer, larger ones. This way nothing ever gets too old where I have to worry about age related failures.

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The QNAP QVL For hard drives is an excellent resource for making sure your HDD Choices are valid (and supported) before you buy. Non-QVL drives may work, but cause unforeseen issues. Other vendors also have similar QVL and it’s well worth a visit before spending any cash.

Compatibility List - QNAP

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Ok, thank you guys. I have a much better Idea of the types of cases/mobo/cpu to look for. I’ll see what I can do when things are on sale, will probably go 2x 18tb or similiar high capacity mirrored to start with. The N100 also looks about right for me. The all SSD is just a bit on the premium side for me atm, and wendell’s recent review of the asustor ssd box didnt highlight anything that would change my mind.

On expanding out storage as it becomes available, I know Unraid allows the unequal HDD’s, how would it work for TrueNAS/ZFS? Different pools? (If I’m getting the language right)
What’s people opinions on refurbished or recertified-new drives from OEM’s / ebay?

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You can do a 2-way mirrored pool, then add 2 more disks and stripe them (basically making RAID-10). If 18TB is enough, then I don’t think you need to go over RAID1. Note that the when you expand a zpool, the data on the disks won’t balance unless the data is recopied (meaning you’ll still be seeing mirror performance even though you’re running stripped mirrors). But same applies to (mostly) anything else if you don’t copy the data out and back in.

TBH, if I understood you only needed 18TB, I would’ve suggested you just get something like an Odroid HC4 or RockPro64 (although ARM SBCs are a bit more difficult to set up, but OpenMediaVault should install just fine I think).

If you need a bit more oomph, Odroid H3 (intel-based) can run whatever (truenas, omv, proxmox, you name it). With a type-1 case, it’s better (albeit more expensive) than the rockpro64.

Sheesh, $1500 for a 2 disks NAS is insane, even in aussie dollars. It shouldn’t cost you even half. I personally wouldn’t look to future-proof your first NAS build. When time comes, build a new one with more capacity and convert your old NAS into a backup box (although you shouldn’t run without backups - the HC4 is my dedicated backup box).

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I really didnt have context for an appriate budget. I’m very glad I can achieve this for <$1500.
18TB is the minimum, My data hoarding habits have been constricted for a long time by not wanting to go more than 8tb without a “project” like a DIY NAS. 18tb 2 bay mirrored RAID 1 probably would be a good “starter” NAS possibly transitioning to a 2nd backup device I suppose.

The Odroid H3 looks very interesting as well now that I see it.
Ameridroid Is showing 230 for the board, 37.02 AUD for the type 1 case. Not sure what it would be + shipping + memory + power supply (seemingly only NA power supplies visible) but that seems compelling. Would it be able to handle the plex server and light home assistant duties? Googling doesnt show anything specific to the H3/H3+.

Current good harddisk prices seem to be 15-20 $/TB AUD. Some Seagate EXOS CMR 16tb for 320, 18tb for 380 in upcoming sales.

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For 2x HDDs, I suggest the official 15v 4A PSU. It shouldn’t go above $400 (maybe less if you get used laptop memory, 16GB should be more than plenty).

More than plenty, the intel gpu should handle the transcoding. Also, it’s just an intel board, this one you can install anything that’ll run on any PC (like truenas core). I wouldn’t recommend the hc4 or rockpro64 for plex or jellyfin, but the h3 (non-plus) should be good enough. Only get the h3+ for desktop use, otherwise, not worth the extra frequency, since it’ll be mostly idling as a NAS and video streaming server (and idk about homeassistant, but it should be pretty lightweight, that thing can run on raspberry pis).

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Given the amount of CPU related vulns you very likely want to run an up to date bios which Odroid seems to do a pretty good job of. Not a fan of the Realtek (crab) NICs and keep in mind that Jasper Lake lacks support for AV1 decoding which may be of interest and uses a rather dated GT1.5 arch from what I can tell. I would also look for a better Delta/Chicony/Meanwell PSU than the one on the linked site.

It’s a pity that the UP boards dont usually come with 2 SATA ports OOTB if you’re looking at x86

This might be an option (newer SoC) and pop in a ASM1164/ASM1166/JMB585 card? ASM1166 boards might need a firmware update though afaik.

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There’s some 4TB SATA Samsung 870 QVO for $210 AUD I’m hemming and hawing over. Either 1 for a bulk game storage for existing desktop or 4-5 and going for a all SSD build in the end. Doesnt seem to have limited redemption for now. Thinking about it, not sure this would be too much better than the Crucial P3 4TB for 309 AUD for a NAS? Just a different connector/form factor in the end?

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If you want to build your self. make sure to pick hardware that can go to C6 powerstate reliable and wake up again. The motherboard will still be ok, when you can buy the 8tb SSD cheap.

Look at boards with Occulink, If i think of that video with Wendel and Gamers Nexus. that is somthing you want in the board.

Also those icydocks are cool. to put all the storage.

The Toshiba 10tb+ disks are reasanable priced. And quick 250 mb/s ish

for procesor on this moment, go old epyc or xeon if you want to go big with ssd storage. then the oculink options will be posile. but then you are looing in the second hand corner. If you want to go new take a look at the Intel Core i3-12100T lice low tdp. only 20 pci expres lanes. but more pci lanes is simply not in your budget new.

for motherboard if you want to go 10gbe look at the pro art of asus. but you can also put that in a expantion slot.

For Austalia Because it might be on the other side of the world, Its still in the English Dominion. So i heard that computer component prices can be a bit crazy sometimes. That some people fly to Japan to get there gear. (its a nice weekend out)

And raid isn’t a backup. And my personal opinion it also shouldn’t be used to storing a backup. 250 mb saturate’s a 2.5 gb network connection not to talk about nvme ssd’s, the nice thing if you don’t go for exotic partion table’s you can always reach your data… Rebuilding raids with the curent size harddisks. I think is torture. Raid was there to fix a problem, That is fixed by normal progress.

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RAID isn’t a backup. Nothing grabbed me by the throat and screamed “BUY ME NOW” storage wise, other than thinking I could get 22TB WD RED PRO for <$500 but realising it was USD at checkout… (Referred from australia pc part picker to US newegg…)
I’m now reconsidering 2x huge drives because of their resilvering time if needed. Truly a different game when you’re not spending “productive” money to ease decision making ha

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So lots more research with everyone here’s help and starting advice led me to a Wolfgang Video that roughly matches what I believe I’m looking for.

He goes for a N5015 which seems to be the prior generation N100. I’ve specced this out with the N100, but what would be the most similiar to a N100 that supports ECC Ram? Similiar meaning igpu, low idle power, decent performance, perhaps supports x265 / AC1 Decode/Encode?

After further researching and pricing (all in AUD for this post), it’s looking something like this for a TrueNAS, ZFS server for Jellyfin/plex useage

MOBO + CPU+cooler: 6xSata port, 4x2.5gb NIC, N100 $317.86+tax
RAM: 32gb DDR5 $140ish shipped for either crucial or kingston kits
Case: Fractal Design Node 304 $190 shipped
PSU: Not decided yet, but whatever ATX PSU I can find for cheap (I believe any will realistically provide enouhg power) or a pico PSU that Wolfgang mentions. They do seem hard to find in australia though. This is the best I can find, unless anybody knows a particuarly good aliexpress merchant for picoPSU’s?
Some power and SATA cables from aliexpress

For storage, I’m tossing and turning between bulk 4tb 2.5" SSD’s or a few 6tb 3.5" HDD’s. Part of choosing the node 304 case it the flexibility to use either 2.5" or 3.5". In the video Wolfgang 3d prints a 6x2.5" SSD mount to replace one of the Node 304’s 2x3.5" HDD mounts.
If I do go for the 2.5" SSD’s, I’ll still have the option to expand out with a pcie/m.2 SATA expansion board + 4 more 3.5" HDD bays. I’d go for 6tb HDD’s rather than 2 mirrored high (16tb+) capacity drives so resilvering wouldn’t take days, assuming similiar $/tb

Is using DRAMless 2.5" SSD’s a bad idea for this scenario? I know SSD’s will obviously have their limits to read/write cycles, but this will really be a storage server, more read than writes. Good HDD prices have been $20-$30/tb, and the best SSD sales I’ve seen have been $50/tb for the 4tb samsung QVO’s. I know the samsung’s have DRAM, but that sale ended for now and similarly priced 4tb QLC SSD’s are DRAMless.
I only seriously started considering SSD’s when I saw it was only 2.5ish times more, as I’d value their silent operation and lower power draw.

I’d have gone with a Jonsbo N1 or N2 case if I was only considering 3.5" HDD’s as well.
The Topton 2-Bay NAS R1 PRO 12th Gen Intel N100 Mini PC also look convincing if I were interested in the 2x high capacity drives route.