You could also simply sell used hardware when it doesn’t fit your needs any more.
In my experience a self-built system will never be as silent and energy efficient as a commercially built mass-produced one. With a right-sized power supply you will get 85% efficiency, with an oversized one you only hit 60%. And while I being an electrical engineer do have all the equipment for measuring dynamic loads in my lab you probably don’t.
So you can only choose what to pay for, but you will pay for sure.
Other fun fact: I’ve got a backup/spare NAS system in a different room.
- Mainboard: Supermicro A2SDI-H-TF Supermicro
- 4* 8TB WD Red Pro on one of the 4-channel Mini-SAS connectors.
- onboard 10G Ethernet connection to the rest of my network.
Mechanical drives are slow. The 10G Ethernet doesn’t give me much speed improvement over 2.5G. I had to downgrade to 2.5G for maintenance reasons (RJ45 SFP+ module died), and while a stopwatch whould have noticed the difference I didn’t. With 8 or 12 mechanical drives things are different, but not with 4. At my workplace I have chassis with 36 drive bays.