I agree with you on this point, as I have a 128GB drive drive that served me well since 2016. However, the smallest NVMe drives are 500GB now.
This is my opinion, but here is what I would do if I was building a home/gaming server…
- Boot Drive - TrueNAS doesn’t require a ton of space to run, unlike Windows. I have a 128GB drive in my system that has been running since 2016 that works fine. However, it appears that a 500GB may be the smallest you can get.
- 2×2TB NVMe - I would set this up as a Data VDEV (Virtual Device) mirror. This means that if one NVMe drive fails, you can replace it without data loss. I would use this as “fast storage” and where you would store the Apps including the Apps data. The databases inside of the apps will benefit from being on NVMes. I would name this pool
nvme.
- 6× 4 TB HDD, 2× 2 TB SATA SSD - I would change this to 8×4TB drives set up as a Data VDEV in a RAIDZ2 or RAIDZ3 configuration. This way, up to two (RAIDZ2 which I use) or three (RAIDZ3) HDDs can fail without data loss. I would use this as “slow” storage of the media files, while the actual media apps (Plex, Audiobookshelf, Emby, Jellyfin) would be on the NVMe. I would name this pool
hdd.
- 128 GB ECC - Remember that any memory not used for services will be used as Cache memory. For a home server, the other VDEV types are unneeded. You may have to reduce the memory because of the recent spile in prices. I’m running 64GB quite nicely.
If you want to run game servers, the apps will be run in Docker containers on TrueNAS, and those would benefit from the NVMe drives. As far as I know, the gaming services available through the TrueNAS app store are:
- Factorio
- Minecraft
- Palworld
- Satisfactory
- Terraria
There are other images out there, so I would check Docker hub. One thing you want to do is set up an authentication service such as Authentik or Authelia to make managing logins easier.
In checking the Gigabyte MW34-SP0 motherboard, excellent choice. It has a 2.5 gigabit ethernet port and a management port so that you can connect to the server console remotely. Provided you have the appropriate other equipment (2.5 gigabit switch, computers that have 2.5 gigabit ports), you will have some nice transfer speeds.
One item that is missing, and can be added later, is a nVidia video card. This will help with video transcoding in the Plex/Jellyfin/Emby applications. If possible, you can repurpose an old nVidia video card newer than the 10xx series. Otherwise, I would purchase either a 4060 or 5060 card for transcoding, as they perform more than an adequate job (I have a $300 5060 in my server). A 4060Ti/5060Ti , 4070/5070, or higher would simply be wasted money. No need to even plug in a video monitor.
Note that, once this server is running, you’ll put it into a closet and “forget” about it. No keyboard, no mouse, no monitor. You’ll be performing all of the tasks via SSH, web browser, or an application.
