Storage Solutions Help selecting parts for my home lab server(NAS + VM).

Austropotian

Austropotian

Apprentice
So, I have finally decided to start my journey to build a tower server for my use case. Majorly, I would be using the server as a NAS(have lost a couple of hard drives due to failures), Media Storage for Plex and a backup for the security cameras. Apart from this, I would also like to shift some of my Postgres databases to my server rather than on GCP, and I would like to experiment with some self-hosted projects on the server. Initially, I thought of going to the Raspberry Pi 5 route, buying the 8GB version and getting either the M2 HAT/ NVME Base or the best Pibox dock. I later had to drop the plan since I would like to run some VM on it along with the storage part so there was some hardware limitations. Then, I looked over for some refurbished workstations/servers but was not satisfied with their current parts/price ratio since the parts are almost 8/9 years old and they draw in so many watts even at idle stage(250-300 watts). They still work great though since you can get so much cores at a dirt cheap price, no doubt the Xeons have shown their resilience.

Unsure about where to start. Confused about the CPU/Motherboard combo and system compatibility for PCIe lanes, system upgradeability, unsure about the performance needed, and unable to start selecting parts for it.

1. Budget - 40/50k apart from harddrives
2. At least 8 cores CPU with integrated graphics(TDP if possible should be lower than 70/80 W)
3. No GPU for now
4. Ram - 32GB DDR4(DDR3 also acceptable depending on config)
5. Storage - minimum 4/6 bays for 3.5" drives + minimum 1 nvme port for boot drive
6. Motherboard(No ITX, looking for upgradability in the future)
7. Case - Don't care about looks (only good airflow is needed)
8. PSU - Gold rated(500/600 W)

I am open to refurbished tower servers and older machines for starting purposes(so that I can experiment for 2/3 months and then get a clear image of work I would really like to do on the home lab server) and decide the config accordingly for the next build and also if anyoner can suggest any good site/local sellers where I can buy it along with spare parts then I would be grateful for it.

One more question, which is better use old gen parts or build using the recent gen intel/amd chips? Pros and Cons for homelab servers

Location - Jaipur/Rajasthan

Every response/suggestions is appreciated, also since I am new hear if I made a mistake in this thread please correct me.
 
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Hey @Austropotian, I'm currently in the process of a building a tower server for NAS + VM too. I've spent a lot of time reading up on this so I can help you with some pointers. My goals were:
1. It should be full tower because I am expecting to chuck in a GPU at some point post RTX 50 series launch for experimenting with LLMs
2. Has support for 4+ HDDs (more the merrier)
3. Should be power efficient (I fell down the rabbit hole of "Wolfgang's Channel", "Hardware Haven" and "NAS Compares" YT channels). Basically you want your build to get to higher C states for lower consumption.
4. Silent and Low maintenance -- I just want a black box that is silent (one of the major drivers for this project for me is the noise my external hdd are making in my bedroom).

Here's what I went with:

Case:
I wanted to build in a Jonsbo N4/N3 but they weren't available here. In India, the only decent options I found were: Ant eSports Vanguard (supports ~13 3.5" drives), Antec P101 Silent (8 drives), Fractal Define 7/7XL (good looking but costly). PrimeABGB had one unit of Silverstone CS380B but I heard the airflow is bad in that case. CS382 is beautiful but that isn't available here either.
I ended up picking the Antec P101 Silent (got it delivered today). It's supposed to be silent and has foam on 3 sides and the top. Comes with 4 fans. I also like that it had a flat top (I know it's bad for airflow but now I don't have to worry about dust settling on top, plus it's a free table). (Price ~₹8500)

PSU:
You'll have to research on this, as I ended up reusing my old SF750 Platinum SFX from an old build. (~₹0)

Motherboard:
So I have a B550 ITX mobo from my old build. I was scouring OLX for some Ryzen Pro APUs so that I could do a build with ECC RAM. But then I decided I didn't want to lose out on Intel Quicksync for efficient transcoding of my media files. Then I heard DDR5 has some ECC built-in so perhaps I could compromise with that. DDR5 has its issues -- that ECC isn't good enough apparently, you can't have 4 sticks on a board without having the speeds crawl down to DDR4 levels, and more importantly it's 2X the price of DDR4.

I gave up on all that and decided on LGA 1700 + DDR4. I wanted a board that had the following: Wifi+BT (the server will be headless connected to my Asus router but Wifi will always be useful), 1 x16 Pcie 4.0 slot (running at x16) and another x16 Pcie 4.0 slot (running at least at x4). The reason being that the first slot could be used by the GPU in future, and the second could be used by a HBA card when I run out of the 4 SATA ports that come with most boards. And 4 RAM slots (going for 128GB DDR4). This plus the budget removes a lot of choices.

The final options were: MSI Pro B760M A Wifi DDR4 MATX (~14k), Asus Prime H770 Plus ATX (~17k but no wifi) and MSI Pro B760 P Wifi DDR4 ATX (~17k as well).
The Asus board has a Pcie 5.0 x16 slot. The latter MSI ATX board has 2 Pcie 4.0 x16 (both run at x16) which could be useful. I think the ATX MSI board is the better choice but I cheaped out and went with the MATX at the end. (~ ₹14k)

Storage:
I'm planning on starting my TrueNAS setup with a 3x12TB RAID Z1 setup (effective capacity 24TB). But for now I bought one 12TB Toshiba HP Enterprise refurb from @aasimenator. (~ ₹11k)

RAM:
I'm going to get 2 kits of 2x32GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3600C18. Ran out of money atm so bought a 8GB EVM stick so that I can get started. (~ ₹1k for now, but will be ~20-24k in a couple of months)

CPU:
You'll get the best transcoding experience with an Intel Arc card at the moment. But they're not too efficient as the Intel iGPU. For basic transcoding you can make do with anything with a 7th Gen Intel CPU or better. But the current best iGPU on a desktop Intel CPU for transcoding is an Intel UHD 770 (it can do twice the amount of streams as a UHD 730 because it has 2 codec engines vs 1). The cheapest processor you can get this with, is an Intel Core i5 12500 or a 12500T (available from @aasimenator or on Gameloot). The 12500T is a 35W TDP laptop CPU and the 12500 has 65W TDP. I read a lot of articles claiming that idle consumption is no different between a regular processor and a T Series one these days, so I ended up with the 12500 just for the higher clocks. (4k gaming some day) (Price ~ ₹10.5k)

CPU Cooler:
Just get a simple Cooler Master tower cooler for ~2.5k. But I prefer Noctua everywhere (have 4 A12s from my old build so may replace case fans), so I recommend the U12S Redux at 4.3k.
However, I ended up buying a Noctua L9i for the same 4.3k because that would let me move all these parts into a Jonsbo N4 at some point.

SSD:
Reusing an old 970 Evo Plus 1TB as the boot disk and VM storage.

So that's my build, I spent ~50k (reusing a PSU, skipping RAM and with the single HDD) so far. Now I'm considering chucking in a PiKVM to let me access the server remotely (including the BIOS screen). I'll be running Proxmox, with Truenas virtualized (with the SATA ports passthrough) for the storage. Lots to learn.
I am open to refurbished tower servers and older machines for starting purposes(so that I can experiment for 2/3 months and then get a clear image of work I would really like to do on the home lab server) and decide the config accordingly
Click to expand...

I am currently using a HP 600 G3 Mini PC (with a 7100T, 8GB RAM) with 2 USB HDDs connected, running Unraid. This consumes ~8-10W on idle. This could be a cheap way to get started, if you get one with a i5 or better with more ram (because you said you wanted VMs).

Unsure about where to start. Confused about the CPU/Motherboard combo and system compatibility for PCIe lanes, system upgradeability, unsure about the performance needed, and unable to start selecting parts for it.

1. Budget - 40/50k apart from harddrives
2. At least 8 cores CPU with integrated graphics(TDP if possible should be lower than 70/80 W)
3. No GPU for now
4. Ram - 32GB DDR4(DDR3 also acceptable depending on config)
5. Storage - minimum 4/6 bays for 3.5" drives + minimum 1 nvme port for boot drive
6. Motherboard(No ITX, looking for upgradability in the future)
7. Case - Don't care about looks (only good airflow is needed)
8. PSU - Gold rated(500/600 W)
Click to expand...
Just want to note that the 12500 has 6 P cores and 0 E cores. If you need more cores, you can checkout the 12600K but that becomes costly. Dont consider anything from Intel 13th/14th gen at the moment as they have some hardware issues going on for all processors 65W TDP or more. You could consider Ryzen 3000 APUs but the ones with 4+ cores are not easily available.

Ram -- just get used sticks from OLX/this forum, just make sure to test the sticks with Memtest86 (regurgitating internet advice, I've never done this till now either).
 
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tgavara said:
Ram -- just get used sticks from OLX/this forum, just make sure to test the sticks with Memtest86 (regurgitating internet advice, I've never done this till now either).
Click to expand...
That is the most basic advice but the next one is even more important if you are using XMP to run the ram at speeds higher than those autodetected by mobo on boot. Always test ram overclocked speeds stability by running hci memtest or prime95 custom test for checking memory.

tgavara said:
Ran out of money atm so bought a 8GB EVM stick
Click to expand...
Why because I doubt that evm stick saved you more than 200-300 rupees compared to the basic green version of crucial?
 
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guest_999 said:
Why because I doubt that evm stick saved you more than 200-300 rupees compared to the basic green version of crucial?
Click to expand...
I didn't pay much attention to that, planning on getting 64gb vengeance lpx 3600 this month anyways so all that single stick had to do was to let me build the system
 
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