Building an upgradable DIY Homeserver/NAS on a budget

[tsingla07]

Budget (including currency): $500 or ₹40000

Country: India

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: photo prism,  jellybean, and some other home automation that may come up.

 

Hi guys, i want to build a home server/NAS on a budget. I don't  want it to be too powerful or too weak. My current storage requirements are 1 TB. My aim is to make it upgradable so that with time I can upgrade it. Can you guys suggest me what processor, motherboard, power supply and case should I use. I am new to pc building. Also should I prefer SSD or HDD for storage? I think though SSDs are expensive but they should last longer and consume less power. Also like HDDs, do I need to buy NAS grade SSDs?

 

[ChrisLoudon]

42 minutes ago, tsingla07 said:

Hi guys, i want to build a home server/NAS on a budget. I don't  want it to be too powerful or too weak. My current storage requirements are 1 TB. My aim is to make it upgradable so that with time I can upgrade it. Can you guys suggest me what processor, motherboard, power supply and case should I use. I am new to pc building. Also should I prefer SSD or HDD for storage? I think though SSDs are expensive but they should last longer and consume less power. Also like HDDs, do I need to buy NAS grade SSDs?

Hi buddy,

 

For most home domestic use cases, NAS's don't really need much in the way of power. Mine is powered by an old Core i7 3770k and 16GB of Ram and it does me nicely.

 

Serving files and running a few dockers containers for things like Plex / Jellyfin, Pi-Hole.... is pretty easy going these days.

 

Where you will need to start looking at more powerful cpus / memory is if you are wanting to get into VMs as this eats up your system resources.

 

The only additional item that will help would be a cheap Nvidia GPU that can do all the PLEX / Jellyfin transcoding and take the heavy lifting away from the CPU. I use a GTX 1650 for this.

 

I would get you to consider running Unriad on your platform. Its not free (but not expensive) and its a great NAS platform that allows you to add hard disks as and when you need them. Also, unlike most other NAS solutions, you can mix and match disk sizes and speeds.

 

Mine has an 8TB (for parity / redundancy) then a 6 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 2 + 1 = 21GB for storage.

 

I also have docker containers running Plex, Pi-Hole, Nzbget, Sonarr and Radarr.

 

A great case to start you off is the Fractal Node 804. Its a relatively small uATX case which room to grow as you do. Mine started with a couple small drives and now has 7 X 3.5" drives plus 2 x 2.5" drives.

 

No, you don't need to by NAS grade drives. Its advisable but not necessary for 24/7 use. I don't.

 

Your main storage pool is unlikely to need the speeds offered by SSDs so chances are regular 'spinning metal' drives will be fine. Remember, most home networks top out at 1GBs (100ish MBs) which is slower than typical SATA 3.5" hard disk. The only reason you'd need SSD / NVMe drives on your NAS would be if you are actually working on the files on your NAS as if it was local storage.

 

I have an SSD in my NAS but I use it as a cache drive. This speeds things up as data is saved / written to this faster drive 1st then 'moved' to the array at a later date. 

[tsingla07]

@ChrisLoudon I have few doubts.

1. Can you tell me about factors I should consider for a case. I also want to know why you prefer Fractal Node 804?

2. Any good suggestions for motherboard?

3. I was thinking of SSDs because of longevity and power consumption not speeds. I think since no moving parts are involved, they should last long.

4. I am thinking of a cpu with intergrated graphics, this way I won't need to buy a separate GPU.

 

 

I have read somewhere that Athlon 3000G processor to be good. Your opinion on this?

[ChrisLoudon]

23 hours ago, tsingla07 said:

1. Can you tell me about factors I should consider for a case. I also want to know why you prefer Fractal Node 804?

Choosing a case comes down to many different factors. I decided on the Node 804 due to its hard drive capacity and I quite like dual compartment cases as they are great to build in and keep tidy. The space the box was going to fit in was also quite specific which the Node fitted perfectly.

 

23 hours ago, tsingla07 said:

2. Any good suggestions for motherboard?

Choosing a CPU and Mobo is something your going to need to research yourself. Do you want to go Intel or AMD, mini ITX, uATX or ATX, DDR4 or DDR5. For NAS / Sever use cases, connectivity is probably the most important thing to consider but it really all depends on what you want to do with your system and where you see it in the future. As I mentioned in my first reply, you are unlikely to need anything even the most basic boards offer so try not to over think it.

 

23 hours ago, tsingla07 said:

3. I was thinking of SSDs because of longevity and power consumption not speeds. I think since no moving parts are involved, they should last long.

While I can't comment on any power consumption numbers, I have a load of hard disks that are around 10 years old and still going strong. For general storage uses, spinning metal is perfectly fine.

 

23 hours ago, tsingla07 said:

I am thinking of a cpu with intergrated graphics, this way I won't need to buy a separate GPU.

Intel iGPUs with Quicksync are a great alternative to Nvidia cards when it comes to Plex / Jellyfin transcoding. While I'm not 100& sure on this, I don't think AMD are officially supported.

[tsingla07]

@ChrisLoudon thank you very much for your help. I finally settled on this configuration.

 

AMD ryzen 3 3200g

1x 16gb corsair vengance lpx 3200 mhz

Cooler master k380 case, found it for very cheap and has 7 HDD bays

Cooler master mwe 450 bronze psu

MSI B450M-A PRO MAX Motherboard

Western Digital WD Blue SN580 SSD

2x 4TB ironwolf drives

 

I Will order these from Amazon. Any tips for building and setting up the server will be appreciated.

[ChrisLoudon]

On 5/5/2024 at 4:44 PM, tsingla07 said:

Any tips for building and setting up the server will be appreciated.

Hi buddy,

 

I think you might want to look further into the 3200g's ability to hardware transcode in Plex / Jellyfin.

 

If you look at this Reddit post it might explain a little better:

 

My advice would be to go down the Intel route (with an iGPU so NOT an F series chip) From the above post it looks like AMD are lacking in this department with Intel and Nvidia the clear choices.

 

You could of course just get a cheap 1650 like I did and then you're good to go.

 

Hardware transcoding is pretty demanding so while you can rely on your CPU to pick up the slack, you'll see your CPU usage peg at 100% so don't expect your NAS / Server to want to do much else if its using the CPU horsepower to transcode.