Sacred_G

That... is a good point actually... Why would I turn the NAS off? I feel silly hearing/seeing these things said out loud but these are exactly the kinds of things I overlook. There's no reason to turn off the NAS, at least no regular reason. No reason things need to start together because they never stop in the first place. Thank you! I appreciate you helping walk a complete n00b through these, what must feel like painfully obvious lessons!

What is this, and why does it need to run under truenas or unraid? Its an application that allows a PS3 with custom firmware running on it to see network folders containing game backups, whether they be in ISO or file/folder format, and play them over the network. Except for ps2 games, but it allows you to see those and them copy them to the ps3's HDD to play. I don't know if it needs to run under truenas/unraid or not, being completely honest. I do know that I would like the NAS to be visible to the PS3 at all times, which would mean anytime the NAS is up, ps3netsrv would need to be up. I figured running it under Truenas/unraid would be the easiest way to accomplish that. Having no experience with doing things like this, I don't know what is possible and what is not. I don't know, what I don't know lol. Is it possible to link 2 VMs together, so that they always start and stop together? If so then I guess I probably don't need it running under the NAS itself. Oh my. This is something I even knew about and let completely slip under my radar. I remember that video and the WAN show discussion about it. Big oops. Bigger thank you. I must admit this gave me a good laugh when I got home today. The angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. This community is awesome. Yeah I/we kind ruled out SSDs based on network bottlenecks. Currently at 1Gb which wouldn't even fully saturate a theoretically max speed HDD over the network. 2.5Gb in the future will help, and would make SSDs a little more desirable. But I can't lie. Knowing that I wouldn't be able to take advantage, FULL advantage of an all nvme SSD NAS, or even an all SATA SSD nas, without 10Gb (or min 5Gb I guess but that's niche) It kinda crushed my desire to do it. I might be an idiot, and I might waste money, but that doesn't mean I like to do it. lol. Doesn't mean I won't try to avoid it. Also let me be clear, I don't think people who build all SSDs NASes without 10Gb are idiots, I just think in my situation, I'd be an idiot to do it. ESPECIALLY once you consider 2 of the clients (ps3s) using this NAS, possibly 3 in the future if the PS4 ever gets another jailbreak, are locked to 1Gb LAN. There's absolutely no need to go SSDs for me when half of the clients can't keep up with a HDD. lol. Ouch. Thank you. I needed to hear that. But I'm not gonna lie a little part of me just died hearing "yeah its actually more cost efficient for your build to just leave that free.99 part out of it" Like, damn that's just sad.

Sounds like you have been doing this for awhile. I've watched a few hours worth of videos on YouTube and already my brain wants to waive the white flag. I don't find anything to be too complicated per se, but there's so many new terms... I basically need 4th grade style vocabulary lesson, except they didn't stick in 4th grade so I'm sure I'd be screwed now. Eventually, it'll stick and I'll learn, but it will definitely take time. Jokes aside, I was playing on PCpartpicker with the 2nd build you recommended and made a few changes. I think they're all reasonable changes, but can I ask you to sanity check me? (too lazy to edit all my grammar but, I worded this in a past tense like I already bought everything. I haven't bought anything yet) I found WD Red drives for the same price. (Thanks google ad tracking) Figured those are made for this use case right? Not that I had anything against the barracudas. I honestly just figured both seagate and WD have different branding for NAS drives, so it can't all be marketing, though I assume some of it is just that, marketing. I added a 5th HDD because not all file systems support adding drives "on the fly." Those 5 HDDs+the optical drive take up all the SATA ports so.. I went back to a WD Black M.2 for the boot drive. However, I did get 2 SSDs, with the intention of mirroring the drives for redundancy. Maybe not necessary but it's $30 I'm willing to spend. WD again ended up being the cheapest reputable brand. Doubled the ram up to 32GB, as I've seen online that Truenas, which is likely one of the pieces of software I will use, likes having at least a GB of ram per TB of storage, and can/will use any leftover ram as a cache. I also think I will virtualize it under proxmox. 16GB might still be fine, but I feel like it doesn't leave as much wiggle room for the future. I may not have many plans for this server now, but of course, I know I will find things I want to do with it in the future, after I have it setup and running. I changed my mind on the case again, using a different one from the closet. One with less dust, and a couple USB 3.0 connectors on the front, instead of all USB 2. Added in the GPU and BD-Drive I own (hopefully I copied the right thing from PCpartpicker) PCPartPicker Part List CPU: Intel Core i3-12100 3.3 GHz Quad-Core Processor ($114.99 @ Amazon) CPU Cooler: be quiet! Pure Rock 2 CPU Cooler ($39.90 @ Amazon) Motherboard: ASRock B660 Steel Legend ATX LGA1700 Motherboard ($119.99 @ Newegg) Memory: Silicon Power GAMING 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory ($29.97 @ Amazon) Memory: Silicon Power GAMING 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory ($29.97 @ Amazon) Storage: Western Digital Black SN770 250 GB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($27.99 @ Amazon) Storage: Western Digital Black SN770 250 GB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($27.99 @ Amazon) Storage: Western Digital Red 4 TB 3.5" 5400 RPM Internal Hard Drive ($65.98 @ Amazon) Storage: Western Digital Red 4 TB 3.5" 5400 RPM Internal Hard Drive ($65.98 @ Amazon) Storage: Western Digital Red 4 TB 3.5" 5400 RPM Internal Hard Drive ($65.98 @ Amazon) Storage: Western Digital Red 4 TB 3.5" 5400 RPM Internal Hard Drive ($65.98 @ Amazon) Storage: Western Digital Red 4 TB 3.5" 5400 RPM Internal Hard Drive ($65.98 @ Amazon) Video Card: Asus R7250-1GD5 Radeon R7 250 1 GB Video Card (Purchased For $0.00) Case: Thermaltake Overseer RX-I ATX Full Tower Case (Purchased For $0.00) Power Supply: Corsair AX860 860 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (Purchased For $0.00) Optical Drive: Asus BW-12B1ST/BLK/G/AS Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer (Purchased For $0.00) Custom: 2.5GBase-T PCIe 3.1 Network Adapter with Intel I225-V+3ft Cat8 Ethernet Cable 2500/1000/100Mbps PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Card RJ45 LAN Controller for Windows 10/11 with Low Profile Bracke ($29.99 @ Amazon) Total: $750.69 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-06-23 11:34 EDT-0400 I've done a bit of research. I was considering unraid, but there are documented problems between unraid and that ps3netsrv app that I need to run. Long story short they don't always play nicely together unless you are using an older version of unraid. So I kinda ruled that out. It is possible the problem was solved, as the threads I found where people were talking about it were 3 years old, but the github thread ended with a dead end, not "its fixed yay!" so I don't think the problem was ever solved. I'll be honest, I didn't look too much into Windows server. It just would kinda hurt my soul to buy another windows license, as bad of a reason as that is. While I know it would do everything I want, and even have a level of familiarity, I would like to at least try something else first. I looked a bit into Ubuntu but I wasn't quite sure what I was looking for.. I did come across mergerfs, which is really cool, and I think could probably even do what I need it to do. Combining with snapraid would be a okay solution for storing ISO files and windows backups. This may just be my misguided feelings, but something in me feels like this would be an awesome thing to do, if my desktop was running linux. For some reason this just doesn't feel like the right solution for a NAS, but that could EASILY be my inexperience and lack of understanding talking. I think I am going to try installing proxmox first, and then virtualizing Truenas Scale. Both seem to be fairly well documented, and Truenas has a guide for ps3netsrv on their community forums. There are also a ton of youtube videos on Truenas. As for proxmox. The only reason I decided to virtualize, is it gives me flexibility for the future. I may not have many plans other than file transfer and storage right now, but in the past I've used my computer to run servers for Rust, Minecraft, Astroneer, Teamspeak (when that was relevant), the list goes on. I'm not really building this machine to host game servers, but I recognize that it's a possibility in the future. Maybe not for those games anymore, but maybe something in the future. Maybe in a few years when the used prices of the intel 13th generation have fallen to cheap levels, I'll upgrade the cpu to something with more get up and go in it.

That is a can of worms I have barely begun to open. The one single application that I need to run on this NAS is "ps3netsrv" which has a Linux folder with file inside, though I've yet to try it's Linux version. Running Windows on a NAS seems like stupid, needless idle work, but would also do what I need. I have zero experience with unraid, truenas, or any other kind of common NAS OS, and say about a week's worth of experience with Linux. That isn't to say I'm opposed to any of them though. Learning is good. That is where youtube will be extremely helpful for me. I wanted to try and nail down the hardware before moving on to software, since my requirements for software are almost non-existent. This was the me being dumb part. I certainly don't need SSDs. The only real reason I chose SSDs was the perceived reliability jump from HDDs. Moving parts vs none. I do remember one of LTTs videos on a NAS that mentioned SSDs rebuild quicker than HDDs in the event of a drive failure. But outside of those two, very arbitrary reasons, I have no real opposition to HDDs. I have an old AMD Radeon R7 250 that I can use for a video output to get it setup. That card is so old, I think intel integrated graphics might actually out preform it now. If I went with one of the builds that SorryClaire posted though, I'd probably just use the integrated graphics of the intel cpu. Once the NAS is up and running I'll probably just use some kind of remote desktop application and run without a monitor plugged in, or worst case I have a portable monitor that I can easily bring to the NAS. One of the possible homes for this NAS is right by my home theater receiver "overpriced HDMI switch" (you may laugh, but don't ask) and if it goes there, I can just use my TV for the display when needed xD. Hope you made your reservation! Thank you for the build suggestions. Seems the general consensus is that I'm definitely out to lunch trying to build SSDs into my NAS. It may be fancy and less cabling, but as you have easily shown me, there is definitely a price premium to it, and I'd be leaving so much on the table with my network bottleneck. Not to mention PCIe lane issues, which I hadn't even considered. Plus, with the money saved by going for HDDs, I could literally double what I was planning to have in storage and still come in under budget compared to what I built, if I wanted. I have an old Thermaltake Element G still in my closet from a decade ago, and while I don't relish the thought of setting up that, absolute behemoth of a case again, it was built with like literally 10 HDD bays or something stupid like that. Kinda perfect for a NAS.. Thank you again to everyone who replied, and if anyone else has suggestions, I'm not like, waiting, finger on the trigger to buy things. I've still got a lot of research on software to do before I place orders!

Budget (including currency): Whatever is needed, but preferably less than ~$1500USD Country: USA Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: File hosting, backup target Other details: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/FGKNXy CPU: Ryzen 5 5600 CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-L12 Ghost S1 Motherboard: MSI MEG X570S UNIFY-X MAX RAM: 32GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200 GPU: Radeon R7 250 that is just collecting dust in my closet SSDs: 6x Leven JPS600 2TB M.2 PCIe 3.0, 1x Kingston A400 2.5" (Boot) PSU: Corsair AX860 - Ridiculous overkill recognized. Also already just sitting in my closet collecting dust. Case: Silverstone GD09B HTPC Case - Chosen for small size for ATX case, and has 5.25" bay. 5.25: ASUS BD-Drive - Bought 10+ years ago Fans: 4x Noctua S12 redux-1200 So first off hello! First post here. Albeit a selfish intent one. After listening to Linus say for years "just post on the forums" when people ask for build advice, I decided I'd give it a go. I'd say go easy on me, but I actually don't wanna waste money, so please tell me what is dumb, and preferably why :). I'm putting together my first NAS and I really have no idea if I'm out to lunch with my build. The main thing I want to use it for is simply as a file server that I can store the digital copies of games I have. Not just for my computer, aka steam library, but also for my PS3 running CFW, so a bunch of ISOs and bin files. The other thing I'd use it for is a target for the two computers in the house to backup to. Spoiler because long winded explanation of parts you may or may not care about. What is your opinion? I have bought nothing other than the PSU, GPU, and BD-Drive I already own. I really only put together the parts list based around M.2 drives because it'd be way less cable management. Do you have a setup you could recommend in place of what I've built here? Do you think a synology, qnap, asustor, etc. product would be better for my use case? My only requirements are that I'd like to have SSDs in RAID 6, and I'd like a minimum of 8TB of space. Other than that I'm not trying to compete with LTT, or anyone else, in the high performance NAS space. My house's networking is all 1Gb networking anyways, so I assume that would be the bottleneck. I appreciate any and all advice offered!