First-Time Building a NAS/Home Server

[Herodotus]

Budget (including currency): Less than $1000 with HDD included

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Jelly Fin, Immich/PhotoPrism, VMs, Few docker containers, tailscale, Storing other data, etc. Want to use TrueNas Scale

 

Hi all, 

         I'm trying to build my first NAS/Home Server (I want to use it for both). I've been researching, but I'm confused about what to go with. I don't want a beast of a system nor a weak one. I've seen a lot of videos with Erying motherboards, but I'm not sure if that's suitable for a NAS. I want to be able to build it fully like a PC where I can replace anything. I'm looking to go with 2 16TB drives for now with redundancy. I do like Jonsbo N2 case but if its harder to build I'm okay with changing that idea. Any help with the selection of the parts would be much appreciated.

 

[johnt]

Go for an i5 12400 with 32 GB of memory. Make sure the CPU has an integrated GPU. This will save you money if you are not planning to purchase a dedicated GPU right away. You may never need to if your CPU has it.

 

Buy the cheapest brand name motherboard you can find (AsRock, ASUS, MSI, etc.) that has the number of SATA ports you need and at least one NVME/M.2 port. Also consider if you need a 2.5 Gbps NIC onboard. They are very inexpensive to add on later if you need to improve your bandwidth speeds in the future. The other thing is the case you are going to build in. The N2 requires a mini ITX board, so that is going to be a significant cost just for the form factor.

[Herodotus]

22 hours ago, johnt said:

Go for an i5 12400 with 32 GB of memory. Make sure the CPU has an integrated GPU. This will save you money if you are not planning to purchase a dedicated GPU right away. You may never need to if your CPU has it.

 

Buy the cheapest brand name motherboard you can find (AsRock, ASUS, MSI, etc.) that has the number of SATA ports you need and at least one NVME/M.2 port. Also consider if you need a 2.5 Gbps NIC onboard. They are very inexpensive to add on later if you need to improve your bandwidth speeds in the future. The other thing is the case you are going to build in. The N2 requires a mini ITX board, so that is going to be a significant cost just for the form factor.

Thank you for the reply. After Researching a bit more I came up with these 2 configurations (with one of your recommendation as well). I'm not sure which one to go with yet. PCPartpicker doesn't seem to have the exact parts so added the amazon link (Sorry about that).

First Config: https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/1T2H7GU4UR4N2?ref_=wl_share
Second Config: https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/2K60SZR6QIFDO?ref_=wl_share (Doesn't make much sense but just added it here since the diff is $100. Not sure if it's worth it)

I'm so confused on what drives to use. Seagate Exos 12TB or Seagate Iron Wolf Pro 12TB or WD Red 12TB. Can you please help with what drives to use with this NAS. It wont have a lot of read writes all the time

[johnt]

They seem largely similar, except the CPU and motherboards. The 12400 config is about $100 less, and that's mostly because of the motherboard. Neither one of these configurations will fit into the Jansbo N2 from your original post, but that's probably why you added another case. The N2 requires a mini ITX board, unfortunately. The ASUS motherboard is the same one that I use in my NAS.

 

I think you would normally get a lot of push back from other forum members about wasting money on an k-sku Intel chip that can overclock. Unless you have a direct need for it, you really don't need that much horsepower in a home NAS/server. I agree that a slow chip is not ideal either, but the 12400 is a perfect balance in my opinion. Plus, the 12600k does not come with a cooler. That's another cost.

 

The only suggestion I have is to skip the Crucial drive and look for an Intel drive instead. I've had nothing but great experiences with Intel drives, and the P3 Plus just does not perform the same. The Intel 670p 2TB is what I use in mine. The 1TB model will be just as good. I use it a lot to transfer files quickly to my NAS over the network, and then copy them to the SATA drives overnight.

 

I don't have enough experience with modern Seagate spinning drives to answer this question. In the past, I've had nothing but bad experiences with Seagate drives. I have never had a premature failure, but I did have instability (in the Windows 95/98 era), louder devices, poor performance, freezing, more frequent bad sectors. I think the reason I didn't have a premature failure is I just had to replace them before they could fail lol. I've just learned to avoid them. I bought a 5400rpm 2.5" drive for an Intel NUC about five years ago and the performance was so bad I just never used it. I did use the drive in a simple NAS situation and that served faithfully for years, but it was just on all the time and infrequently used... but it did keep the data! I'm sure there 7200rpm NAS products are better but I'm too jaded on this brand lol

 

Western Digital drives are my go to. They are all very expensive and using something like RAID1 for redundancy is just double the expense! I actually started looking for used drives on Amazon. I found a seller who has 2 TB drives for $29 each, and they had less than 30 days of use with manufacture dates from 2016 and 2017. They are performing perfectly in RAID1. My goal is to upgrade to much larger capacities in the future, but so far my 2 TB drives are serving me well. I can send you a link if you're interested. I have no affiliation with the seller and your drives may be wildly different than mine. For me, it was a fun starter "who cares what happens" project that seemed to work and I got the kinks out and it's just been working just fine.

[Herodotus]

17 hours ago, johnt said:

They seem largely similar, except the CPU and motherboards. The 12400 config is about $100 less, and that's mostly because of the motherboard. Neither one of these configurations will fit into the Jansbo N2 from your original post, but that's probably why you added another case. The N2 requires a mini ITX board, unfortunately. The ASUS motherboard is the same one that I use in my NAS.

 

I think you would normally get a lot of push back from other forum members about wasting money on an k-sku Intel chip that can overclock. Unless you have a direct need for it, you really don't need that much horsepower in a home NAS/server. I agree that a slow chip is not ideal either, but the 12400 is a perfect balance in my opinion. Plus, the 12600k does not come with a cooler. That's another cost.

 

The only suggestion I have is to skip the Crucial drive and look for an Intel drive instead. I've had nothing but great experiences with Intel drives, and the P3 Plus just does not perform the same. The Intel 670p 2TB is what I use in mine. The 1TB model will be just as good. I use it a lot to transfer files quickly to my NAS over the network, and then copy them to the SATA drives overnight.

 

I don't have enough experience with modern Seagate spinning drives to answer this question. In the past, I've had nothing but bad experiences with Seagate drives. I have never had a premature failure, but I did have instability (in the Windows 95/98 era), louder devices, poor performance, freezing, more frequent bad sectors. I think the reason I didn't have a premature failure is I just had to replace them before they could fail lol. I've just learned to avoid them. I bought a 5400rpm 2.5" drive for an Intel NUC about five years ago and the performance was so bad I just never used it. I did use the drive in a simple NAS situation and that served faithfully for years, but it was just on all the time and infrequently used... but it did keep the data! I'm sure there 7200rpm NAS products are better but I'm too jaded on this brand lol

 

Western Digital drives are my go to. They are all very expensive and using something like RAID1 for redundancy is just double the expense! I actually started looking for used drives on Amazon. I found a seller who has 2 TB drives for $29 each, and they had less than 30 days of use with manufacture dates from 2016 and 2017. They are performing perfectly in RAID1. My goal is to upgrade to much larger capacities in the future, but so far my 2 TB drives are serving me well. I can send you a link if you're interested. I have no affiliation with the seller and your drives may be wildly different than mine. For me, it was a fun starter "who cares what happens" project that seemed to work and I got the kinks out and it's just been working just fine.

Thank you so much! I've settled on the 12400 and Asus combo, which seems like the most sensible option for my budget. Also, the 12400 performs really well. I've made the switch from Crucial to the Intel 670p as you recommended. If you could share the link for the drives, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks once more for your help!

[johnt]

Sure I will send it to you in a DM.