Hi have built a few personal PC but this is my first attempt at a home NAS and media servers. I don’t have a hard budget but I would like to keep it low-ish cost, but also don’t want to have to touch it or upgrade it for at list 5 years. My goal is to digitize my parents DVD collection and make it available to them through jellyfin. This media server could expect 6 users and probably no more then two streams at a time hopefully at HD quality.
I am also into 3D printing and wish to keep a store of backups of the STL files. While keep and long term back up of family documents and photos.
From the stuff I’ve read and watch this is the hardware that I should use and by. I don’t have any old parts to use but a power supply. If you have anythought on what’s wasted or not enough please let me know.
Hardware:
Case: MASS - Stackable NAS ITX Enclosure
CPU: Intel Core i5-10400F
Motherboard: GIGABYTE H470I AORUS PRO AX LGA 1200 Intel H470 Mini-ITX Motherboard
RAM: Team T-FORCE VULCAN Z 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) TLZGD416G3200HC16CDC01
Hard Drives:
Boot: WD_BLACK SN7100 M.2 2280 500GB
Storage: RAID 1 3x Seagate IronWolf 8TB NAS
Anyway there’s no RAID 1 in TrueNAS: Mirrors or raidz1.
A F CPU is a wrong choice if transcoding may be used and with a consumer motherboard which may not boot headless. I second going for (refirbished) server hardware if possible. @Akilese Where are you located?
What are your requirements/limitations?
Second-hand/refurbished is a matter of opportunity. US forumers may help with sites, but they’ll need to know what to look for.
I am trying to keep the build on the smaller size because I don’t have a lot of space to work with. Power efficacy is important but my electricity cost are manageable so it is not the end all be all about the build
Power efficacy can be second-hand Xeon D-1500 (embedded server), or socketed Core/Ryzen/Xeon E. The latter, however, is more readily available in micro-ATX size or larger.
If you go for consumer-grade Core/Ryzen, make sure to either have an iGPU or a motherboard which can boot headless.
I tend to disagree, if you were putting this into place for a small business where you need consistent remote access via IPMI, sure, but a little home server where physical access is common I wouldn’t be too concerned about.
On the other hand, this I do agree with, especially if buying new. You end up paying a premium for “Aorus AI Overdrive XEI Extreme RGB Chromatic Diffusion Filters” and other completely meaningless ‘features’ that will have zero benefit to a NAS. As long as it meets your requirements it should be fine.
As for ECC, the discussion on whether or not that’s needed for a home server has gone on for a long time, and it will continue to go on for a long time, best for me not to get into it
As mentioned by etorix keep in mind that you’ll need a graphics processor of some sort (either dedicated or integrated) in order to make proper use of transcoding. Considering your requirements for the media server aren’t particularly high, most Intel iGPUs with quicksync should be able to handle that, I think I was running something similar with an i3-10105 a couple years ago.
Transcoding may not be required at all. Or @Akilese may be fine dealing with transcoding on the CPU, in which case a Ryzen PRO APU on a consumer (mini-ITX) motherboard which unofficially supports ECC may be a decent solution.
The issue is that non-server motherboards may not boot at all without a GPU.
I’ve done a little more research and look at some of the other topics and this is the new build I have come to. This will cost more but seems to meet all the recomendations that have been suggested for a build.
Indeed it is no longer lowish cost…
Hardware incompatibilities:
micro-ATX MB in mini-ITX case
registered DIMM instead of unbuffered
If you’re going this route, you may have a look at B550 boards as well (a NAS does not need last generation hardware), or into second-hand mini-ITX X10SDV boards with the transcoding dGPU.
All Arc GPU have the same transcoding unit, so you may go for the lowest A310 (or A40) rather than the A380.
haha! - I have my NAS stashed in the cellar in the corner (collecting dust). I’m just too lazy to walk down the stairs, thankful I have IPMI. - Professional Couch Potato.
*If I left a NAS at my parent’s house - I would make sure it had IPMI - save me the time explaining my parent’s what to do / or driving over to their house and dealing with it.
