Best Home NAS for home media server

[BeakerLink]

I have 500+ movies/TV shows that I am wanting to put in a home media server but I don’t have an existing computer/nas to store it on. I am looking for a good option the cheaper the better but I have a budget of around 450$ not including drives. If you have any suggestions please let me know. I am planing on using old drives in a raid 5 configuration so RAID compatibility and extra drive bays are one of the requirements. At max I would want to have one 4k stream from it or 2 1080p streams.

[johnt]

You're asking for the moon. Look for a used computer on eBay or CL, something like an i5, and install Plex on it with Windows 11 Pro. Use Storage Spaces to manage your RAID5 or just use volume mirroring in Disk Management for RAID1 (and you will never have to rebuild your RAID or lose your data if your system breaks). Make sure it has enough SATA ports or buy a SATA expansion card.

[Zando_]

Something like this: 

PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/BVCDVW

CPU: Intel Core i3-12100 3.3 GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($121.98 @ Amazon) 
Motherboard: ASRock B660M Pro RS Micro ATX LGA1700 Motherboard  ($94.99 @ Newegg) 
Memory: Silicon Power GAMING 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory  ($53.97 @ Amazon) 
Case: Antec P101 Silent ATX Mid Tower Case  ($109.99 @ Newegg) 
Power Supply: Corsair CX750M (2021) 750 W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply  ($74.98 @ Amazon) 
Total: $455.91
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-03-29 14:42 EDT-0400

 

That board has 4 SATA ports, the case fits 8 3.5" drives and the PSU includes 8 SATA connectors. So grab a used HBA and you can use all 8 drive bays. The board has a PCIe x16 and x4 (physical x16 but x4 bandwidth) slots, so you should be able to fit both an HBA and a 10Gb NIC if you have a 10G LAN. Picked the i3 12100 as the 12th gen chips have good idle power draw, the iGPU can be used for en/decoding (and means you don't need a GPU filling a slot and adding more power draw), and most NAS tasks are single-threaded so there's no need for more cores/threads (if there's something else you want to do that needs them, the i5 12400 is a very good pick). 

[DrMacintosh]

Not only go you need a system, but you're going to need storage. How big is your library currently? How big you foresee it getting? This really determines what kind of system you are looking for. 

[johnt]

3 hours ago, Zando_ said:

Something like this: 

These are good components, but I wouldn’t spend 20%+ on the case. Get a cheaper case. 
 

Edit: you can get away with 16 gb of memory. 

[Biohazard777]

1 hour ago, johnt said:

These are good components, but I wouldn’t spend 20%+ on the case. Get a cheaper case. 

+1

 

1 hour ago, johnt said:

Edit: you can get away with 16 gb of memory. 

Not sure if OP will be running Plex/Jellyfin and transcoding, if he will then having a bit more RAM and transcoding to it wouldn't be a bad idea.

[johnt]

4 hours ago, Biohazard777 said:

Not sure if OP will be running Plex/Jellyfin and transcoding, if he will then having a bit more RAM and transcoding to it wouldn't be a bad idea.

I ran a quick test using a 4k source and Plex transcoding to slightly lower bitrate 4k and my total system memory usage was 6.2 GB, transcoding to 1080p used 5.4 GB, and 720p reported 5.1 GB. This was all using CPU transcoding on Windows 11 Pro with a few lightweight processes and services in the background.

 

I can't really speak for Jellyfin though. I hear you can rip blu-rays with is... not sure how much memory that uses either.

[Zando_]

11 hours ago, johnt said:

These are good components, but I wouldn’t spend 20%+ on the case. Get a cheaper case. 

Case is one of the cheapest options with 8 3.5" drive bays - in slots too, and right in front of the intake fans, so the drives will stay cool and be more easily swappable. If OP doesn't need that many drives then yes there are cheaper options. As @DrMacintosh said, sorta depends on how much exactly OP is intending to store.

11 hours ago, johnt said:

Edit: you can get away with 16 gb of memory.

Good point. Can get that same kit in 2x8GB instead of 2x16GB: https://pcpartpicker.com/product/P4FKHx/silicon-power-sp016gxlzu320bdaj5-16-gb-2-x-8-gb-ddr4-3200-cl16-memory-sp016gxlzu320bdaj5. It is only $20 cheaper, so if OP will want 32GB in future, it is cheaper to just get a 32GB kit, as it's less than 100% more cost for 100% more RAM. Also depends on the OS OP intends to use. For a beefier NAS box I'd prefer TrueNAS Scale, and by default that will only use 50% of the RAM for caching, so ~16GB. I believe you can manually override this, but if you then boot up some containers/VMs or something and forget to change the limit, you can run out of RAM and the system will hard crash.

[johnt]

4 hours ago, Zando_ said:

Case is one of the cheapest options with 8 3.5" drive bays

 

Good point

But you recommended a broad with 4 SATA ports, which I think is an ideal number of drives. I know two RAID1 configurations is not fancy, but multiple drives in a RAID5 sounds so risky to me. I mean they make 22+ TB drives nowadays and with plenty of options for SMART monitoring. You can easily replace drives before they fail and skip RAID completely. Especially if you're just backing up movies and TV shows.

[Zando_]

On 3/30/2024 at 2:17 PM, johnt said:

But you recommended a broad with 4 SATA ports

Because most cheap boards only have 4. That's why I mentioned the HBA.

On 3/30/2024 at 2:17 PM, johnt said:

I mean they make 22+ TB drives nowadays and with plenty of options for SMART monitoring.

Those drives are extremely expensive.

 

Not sure what you mean with the SMART monitoring, that's been a thing since... the mid 90s, looks like. I've got drives out of vista PCs that spit out SMART data, that's really the oldest hardware I've personally used. I've never considered a drive not having it, but I guess they must have not at some point.

On 3/30/2024 at 2:17 PM, johnt said:

You can easily replace drives before they fail and skip RAID completely.

No. SMART is not that reliable and fluke failures are a thing. We don't do redundancy for fun.

On 3/30/2024 at 2:17 PM, johnt said:

I know two RAID1 configurations is not fancy, but multiple drives in a RAID5 sounds so risky to me.

OP hasn't mentioned what drives exactly they intend to use (how many, what capacity), what OS they intend to use, and how much data they intend to store. So we can't really advise on what RAID/ZFS/other array type they should use.

[johnt]

3 hours ago, Zando_ said:

OP hasn't mentioned what drives exactly they intend to use (how many, what capacity), what OS they intend to use, and how much data they intend to store. So we can't really advise on what RAID/ZFS/other array type they should use.

The Op mentioned he is planning to use RAID5, which I don't think he should. You are correct that we don't have enough info to make any recommendations on the RAID type. But we can provide our recommendations for or against certain options.

 

But I am not sure I understand your concern about cost. It's cheaper to buy two 20 TB drives for RAID1, than three 10 TB drives for RAID5, especially if you can find the drives on sale. That capacity is not unrealistic for 500+ movies/tv shows. I have to make the assumption the Op is going to continue adding media to his collection.