Total noob looking for some guidance

vK 3 1 RON · August 22, 2023

Hello! Been a while since I was on the forums

Recently, I've become increasingly interested in my own server/NAS (I'm unsure, the terminology has got me all mixed up).

If I explain the kind of thing I'm looking for, I'm hoping people can help me narrow down what I want so I can go and research stuff related

In my head, I want a server that's up 24/7, that can do a bunch of different tasks for me. For example:

Host a couple game servers (for friends and I): Rust / Minecraft / Gmod? Probably won't all be at the same time, but it could be
Host a plex service (I'm new to plex but it seems really cool)
Host a website (simple static website, nothing crazy going on, no ecommerce)
Host a discord bot (previously I used AWS for this, but I thought I could migrate here)
Interact with some smart devices around the home
Store my steam library, i.e. I'd like to have a background worker keeping my steam library up to date - so when I want to play a game, I can quickly nab the latest version from my nas/server and get going.
Store various other things that I want to keep on it.

Since I'm new to the area, I don't have any expectations for the price, I'm mostly interested in what you guys think the budget would be for this kind of setup. I'm based in the UK too.
I'm also completely fine with used parts, maybe not the CPU just because I'd have to buy a third party cooler, and the cost saved from the CPU probably wouldn't equal the price of the cooler.

The Theory Craft of Parts

Ryzen 5500 (Balance of cores/freq)
16/32gb ram? I'm not sure, I'm thinking with the servers I'll be running, I should invest in 32
Spare 1060 3gb I have laying around for video transcoding
PSU choice is trivial, something reliable <= 450w

Here's the two main sticking points for me:

Cases
Drives (250gb nvme ssd, but unsure on hdds)

I'm a total noob at looking for the types of cases I'd want, and how big the drives should be, or what company/models are good. If I could get some thoughts on my plan and also on the possible options for drives/cases I'd be very grateful.

Thanks y'all

vK

Slottr · August 22, 2023

You'll want to use something like WD Red Plus'/Pros. They are designed much better than the standard reds.

Case depends on how much story you really want. I find something like the N400 should be more than enough for most people.

39 minutes ago, vK 3 1 RON said:

Ryzen 5500 (Balance of cores/freq)

If you plan on running Plex without a plex pass, you won't be doing any GPU hardware acceleration. I would highly recommend an intel chip for quicksync.

Dutch_Master · August 22, 2023

More cores=better. More RAM=better. For HDD's, use CMR drives, SMR drives are atrocious for performance. As for cases, do you have room for rack equipment? If not, choose the biggest case you can fit in your living space with as much space for drives as possible. You may want to investigate old (2000's or something) cases as these often have more drive spaces then modern cases who are aimed at RGB-h0rny gamers.

vK 3 1 RON · August 22, 2023

7 minutes ago, Slottr said:

You'll want to use something like WD Red Plus'/Pros. They are designed much better than the standard reds.

Case depends on how much story you really want. I find something like the N400 should be more than enough for most people.

If you plan on running Plex without a plex pass, you won't be doing any GPU hardware acceleration. I would highly recommend an intel chip for quicksync.

Thanks for the info, I'll give a research into the N400. Also didn't know that about Plex, so I'll definitely consider an intel chip then

5 minutes ago, Dutch_Master said:

More cores=better. More RAM=better. For HDD's, use CMR drives, SMR drives are atrocious for performance. As for cases, do you have room for rack equipment? If not, choose the biggest case you can fit in your living space with as much space for drives as possible. You may want to investigate old (2000's or something) cases as these often have more drive spaces then modern cases who are aimed at RGB-h0rny gamers.

I'm currently living in a studio apartment so no space for a full rack, would have to be mid tower (maybe a little bigger). I'll take a look at some used old cases then and see what I can find.

vK 3 1 RON · August 23, 2023

@Dutch_Master @Slottr If it's okay, I have another question

I was looking at some drives, how does this drive fare?

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/6FQcCJ/seagate-ironwolf-nas-4-tb-35-5400-rpm-internal-hard-drive-st4000vn006

Was thinking of getting maybe 4 of them, I understand that 4TB isn't an awful lot, but I just need a few drives to get me running for a year or two without breaking my bank And correct me if I'm wrong, I should use ZFS/TrueNas for the file system and probably use Raidz1. Or, if you think that the 10tb usable storage I'll have won't be enough for a plex, then I can just not do plex right now and save money on drives to focus on my other use cases.

Seeing as I'll be serving content to users on game servers, I thought I could get an SSD to do that aspect of it? I.e. Large file storage (media, steam library, whatever else) on the pool of hard disks, and then use the solid state for things that require more speed.

Also, going back to my use case of doing all this crap - website, game server, file storage etc - Can I achieve all this by using TrueNas? I read that it has a virtualization component, so I'm hoping I can just setup a VM for the website host, one for each game server, one for plex etc.

Am I on the right lines here? Thanks