Parts Recommendations to Get Started with Self-Hosting/Datahording

• 

  GateheaD on 29/10/2025 - 16:24

  +1

  I run proxmox with docker, in that about 20+ containers including all the arr stuff.

  Im starting to research NVR now using frigate however it looks pretty hungry for CPU usage with the detection stuff, so I'm looking into Hailo8 running yolo

• 

  Zephyrus on 29/10/2025 - 16:29

  +3

  Get a cheap PC off facebook marketplace and cannibalise the parts.

  I run Open Media Vault which is a really a nice UI on Debian, so you can all the Debian stuff you want and stuff like Portainer (UI for Docker) is already set up. If you want a home server, I recommened something Linux based or you'll be stuck with whatever has been ported to OpenBSD or whatever you get is based on.

• 

  3dprintdeals on 29/10/2025 - 16:48

  +6

  fractal define case from marketplace

  • 

    Shroomlet on 29/10/2025 - 18:06

    +1

    Will keep an eye out. Nothing currently available in my area that isn't someone else's $700+ rig

    • 

      3dprintdeals on 29/10/2025 - 18:42

      +1

      What city are you in?

      • 

        Shroomlet on 07/11/2025 - 13:23

        No you are absolutely right, I'm a nonce that didn't set my search setting correct. I'm in Melb and Looks like I've got a winner on a sub $200 R6 case!

  • 

    metalslaw on 02/11/2025 - 01:23

    +3

    Only issue is earlier fractal define cases have hard drive cages that are incompatible with larger hard drive bolt spacings. i.e. They used 1.75" versus 3" spacings. Which could become an issue once he starts using drives larger than about 8tb (I think 8tb to 10tb is the cutover point of where they started making them always with 3" spacings options).

    But there was also a time when you could buy extended cages off the Fractal Design spare parts website for a variety of cases that had the old spacing sleds, but all those parts are long since been bought up I believe. Incidentally, I got quite a few for my Fractal Design Core 2500's.

    Anyway, I believe it was midway during the Define R5 lifecycle, that they started standard equipping all new cases with updated drive cages/sleds with the extended bolt spacings.

    The R6 I believe came standard with extended bolt spacings though, so that is a good option if you can find one cheap. Though getting additional drive sleds for cheap is starting to get hard it looks like.

    Personally, I'd say the Define 7 is the perfect home brew NAS case. I have one I'm setting up currently. It can fit an absolute ton of hard drives in there (18 or so 3.5" drives, if you use every position/mount). Only downside is you have to buy the extra sleds, cages, and mounts, as the standard case only comes with 6 sleds, and 1 cage, and I think 1 mount (can attach a 3.5" hdd to an unused 120mm fan position).

    Still, I think it's a great case for NAS builds, as you can use standard parts, and you can easily re-use old parts.

    They are still decently cheap new at $239 these days,
    https://au.pcpartpicker.com/product/L8xbt6/fractal-design-de…

    And the you can still get the sleds, cage, and mounts for cheap occasionally from sales like black friday.

• 

  garetz on 29/10/2025 - 17:24

  +3

  Look for a nas case that can hold a good amount of disks is where i would start. I would probably get a 2nd 8tb hdd, and get rid of the 4tb or use it for backup purposes.

  • 

    Shroomlet on 29/10/2025 - 18:09

    Thanks for the help advice

    So I heard that it's probably worth buying a 16tb HDD… I totally agree with you, I am actually running out of space already…

    Would it be worth buying 2x 8tb HDD's or just 1x 16tb? I suppose I'm looking bang for buck and what would/should I be looking at HDD wise? NAS drives I assume?

    • 

      peteru on 29/10/2025 - 18:21

      +1

      Go straight to 2 x 26TB and mirror the drives. That'll get you best bang for buck.

      After many years of buying drives based on $/GB, I realised that it's a much better idea to only buy new WD Red Pro NAS drives. I won't touch a Seagate.

    • 

      garetz on 29/10/2025 - 19:52

      +1

      I currently use 2 x 16tbs in my nas, look for the best $ per gig, get nas dedicated disks like wd reds or seagate ironwolfs.

      If you get 1x16tb you can always get another one to pair with it down the line.

    • 

      moar bargains on 30/10/2025 - 13:04

      +2

      The trade-off here is time vs cost. I have been running 2x unmirrored drives in my NAS, and recently had one start failing. Fortunately it wasn't catastrophic and I had time to copy the data to a new drive, but it took me a few weeks (doing it here and there, not continuously) to get the replacement drive sorted out. If that sort of timeframe is a deal breaker for you, then you should get (at least) two drives and mirror them. However, that means that you essentially lose half your storage space. So buying 2x 8Tb gives you 8Tb storage, or equivalently, doubles the price of the drive you're looking at.

• 

  barge-in hunter on 29/10/2025 - 17:42

  +2

  I used this case; Jonsbo n4.

  It is a nas case with space for 6 3.5” hdds and fits a std Matx board. I also bought a low profile air cooler from aliexpress - hey presto! An upgradable diy nas.

  Re; power wise… I recommend starting with the parts you have and upgrading if you find they’re not up to scratch. You’ll probably find an 8th gen and up intel cpu better for streaming (built in encoder?) or a mobile based cpu better for efficiency - but all of that can solved when it starts becoming a problem

  • 

    Shroomlet on 29/10/2025 - 18:11

    +1

    Awesome! thanks for sharing. I see Fractal Design Node 804 recommended a lot too. Thanks for the upgrade path, you've nailed something I didn't mention, starting from a good platform : )

    • 

      peteru on 29/10/2025 - 18:16

      +1

      Be careful with small cases. The thermal management in them sucks once you fill them up with hard drives.

      Prefer an old ATX case, even one you find at council clean up time. If you are going to get serious about storage, you absolutely have to have decent airflow over every single HDD. Don't cheap out on fans. If you are not going to be within earshot of the machine, then BeQuiet! high flow rate PWM fans work well. If you need it to be quiet, go straight to Noctua.

      • 

        Bruceflix on 29/10/2025 - 19:26

        +2

        I used to use the Node 804 and still have it lying around. Heat was never a problem. mATX motherboards were.

      • 

        barge-in hunter on 29/10/2025 - 19:31

        +1

        Heat is fine in my Jonsbo - very well ventilated with intake fans blowing over the drives too

        The catch is it’s not actually that small, but Matx boards aren’t

    • 

      barge-in hunter on 29/10/2025 - 19:39

      +2

      Wow, that fractal design case looks like a chunky monkey. Must admit, would be nice if I could put in a full height gpu

      Edit - Also forgot to mention - I think the Jonsbo takes a smaller psu too

• 

  peteru on 29/10/2025 - 18:11

  +2

  I use https://miniroute.com/products/n7-amd-8845hs-nas-diy-monther… with Proxmox and 96GB DDR5 RAM. Very good motherboard that handles everything I throw at it with ease. Includes heatsink and fan.

  I also added an LSI 9211-8i SAS HBA to expand the storage to 16 SATA drives total (plus two NVME on board).

  As for hard drives, recently 28TB WD Red Pro NAS drives were reasonably priced, so I suggest getting a few of those.

  This will fit into just about any old ATX or mini-ITX case and a 520W PSU is good enough to run this mobo, the HBA and 10 SATA HDDs.

  The above setup runs at around 140W less than the previous Core i5 on a Gigabyte mobo with 16GB RAM and single 1GbE. That's about a $450/year saved in electricity costs and several times more grunt.

  Reusing your old PC parts may be false economy a couple of years down the track.

  • 

    Shroomlet on 29/10/2025 - 18:15

    +1

    Awesome! thanks for the advice. Definitely something to consider… more decision fatigue lol!

  • 

    peteru on 29/10/2025 - 18:23

    +1

    Correction to a typo above. That should be 26TB drives. Not 28TB.

  • 

    S Baldrick on 29/10/2025 - 18:34

    +2

    AMD CPUs seem to have significantly higher idle power draw compared to Intel ones, just one thing to keep in mind if you're planning 24/7 uptime (source: my 5800X3D gaming PC uses more idle power than my NAS and Proxmox server combined - both have i5 8500's)

    Might also be a tad overkill for OP's needs, I'd personally just get an 8th gen Intel CPU or newer (for Plex transcoding and idle power efficiency)

    • 

      peteru on 30/10/2025 - 14:19

      +3

      The above motherboard uses a mobile class AMD Pro CPU, so best of both worlds. Low power, yet plenty of PCIe lanes and ECC support. Most of the power consumption is from the spinning rust. The BIOS has options for power usage tuning and you can set the target anywhere from 15W to 65W. Very different to desktop CPUs.

      You can achieve better idle power, with N150 miniPCs (I have two Proxmox cluster nodes), but they are not even in the same class performance or expansion wise.

  • 

    Cheaplikethebird on 30/10/2025 - 10:26

    +1

    Which ebay seller did you end up going with for the HBA?

    • 

      peteru on 30/10/2025 - 14:12

      +2

      I've had the HBA for well over a decade. It was bought on eBay from some reseller in WA. I don't know who they were. It arrived with the RAID firmware, which I reflashed.

  • 

    metalslaw on 02/11/2025 - 01:29

    +1

    +1 on the LSI 9211-8i SAS HBA

    You can get them cheap used on ebay for like $40 bucks, already flashed to IT mode. Just need 2 forward breakout cables, and that's 8 extra drives you can attach to your NAS.

    If need be, he could also get a '16i' cards, if he gets a case with enough drive bays available, allowing expansion to 16 extra drives.

    Btw, OP, do not consider SATA PCI-e cards. Most of them fail pretty quickly from what I've read, and yeah, I've had one that failed. After which I did my research, and bought a used LSI HBA.

• 

  S Baldrick on 29/10/2025 - 18:29

  +2

  What quality will you be transcoding with for Plex? A 6th gen i5 should be fine for 1080P, though it might not fair well with 4K HDR. Then again, you could always have "optimised" versions so you don't need to transcode on the fly.

  Mini PC's have great specs for the price, but IMO it'd be better to stick with your current parts - otherwise, you'd need to use external HDD enclosures (might be fiddlier for data redundancy purposes). Energy efficiency might not be ideal (and you can always check with an energy monitoring plug), but like you said: better to reduce e-waste and see how much mileage you can get with current parts.

  For the security cameras, you may need drives designed for this purpose (eg. WD Purple), so make sure you get a case with plenty of 3.5" bays, for future expansion (if you go ahead with cameras).

• 

  Screamingeagle on 29/10/2025 - 18:55

  +2

  Just adding to what others have said. Have a look at some computer stores for some of their second hand cases. You might have to go to some of the smaller stores.

  Last year I managed to get an Antec Dark-Fleet DF-85 for $40. It holds 9 drives with an additional 3x 5.25 inch bays that I can put 5 more drives (with an adaptor) for a grand total of 14 3.5 inch drives inside one tower.

• 

  HulioChavez on 30/10/2025 - 11:19

  +1

  This is similar to what I am currently doing. Running unraid on a i5 7400 CPU with 32GB ram. I have 5 4TB drives with a 480GB patriot SSD for cache (highly recommend). This is all in a CS380 PC case with hotswap disk trays and built in back plane. It's big so I wish I had gone the smaller form factor ds380 case.

  I intend to install a 2.5gbe card in it soon when I upgrade the rest of my home network.
  Also, I would like to add a generic remote access card to it so if there are any problems after restarts or upgrades, I don't have to dig out the ol' screen and keyboard to troubleshoot.

  Beware unraid limits your disk's to 6 on the basic plan and you have to upgrade to a higher pro plan for unlimited disks

• 

  Cheaplikethebird on 30/10/2025 - 12:18

  +1

  My old gaming PC I was using as a JBOD file server died about a month ago so I decided to build a new tailor-made Unraid server from the ground up, weirdly it seems to have happened at a time where every other man and his dog is also looking to do the same. I've just gotten all my parts so I can share my build, putting it together over the long weekend, I'm basing my build loosely off this one. Probably a bit overkill for your needs as far as drive spaces go but thought I'd share anyway.

  Server
  Case - Sagittarius 8 Bay Nas Case - $230 (Bought off Ali, had to use a coupon plus the $30 cashback promo)
  CPU - Intel i3-14100 - $185 (Went with this for the better Plex transcoding)
  Cooler - Thermalright AXP90-X36 - $49
  Thermalright LGA 1700 Bracket - $10 (Can up cooling performance by 7 degs)
  PSU - BeQuiet! Pure Power 13 M 550w - $125 (Modular, has zero-RPM fan mode, has great efficiency at 20W and 40W as per Cybernetics report)
  MB - Asrock B760M Pro-A Wifi - $168
  RAM - Crucial Pro 32GB DDR5 - $183
  HBA - Fujitsu 9211-8i - $65
  NVME - Crucial T500 500GB - $85
  Fans - Arctic P12 Pro PWM PST 120mm 5pack - $59
  2x 3D Printed Fan Spacers off eBay for the two intakes - $10 (From this video)
  Total - $1169

  Drives - 5x Refurb Seagate Exos 14TB - $1788 (These went up $100 each a week before I was ready to buy, ouch)

  For the PSU it only has 2 molex whereas the case needs 4 for the backplane. Sent an email to the manufacturer and they're sending out an extra cable free of charge.

  • 

    metalslaw on 02/11/2025 - 01:39

    +1

    All the refurb drives going up in price recently is a pain…

    I need to expand, but don't have the cash spare yet. And each month I watch the prices go up. :/

    But have you seen DDR5 prices recently….. Holy moly.

    32gb 6000 cl30 kits are heading towards $300+ these days.

    They use to be half that price when on special.

    Thanks, stupid hallucinating AI boom.

    • 

      Cheaplikethebird on 02/11/2025 - 08:34

      +2

      Yep the kit I bought is 6000 CL48, cheapest I could get at $185. Bought it two weeks ago and a week later they'd upped the price to $250. If I'd not bought some of the components prior to the price hikes on refurb HDDs I probably would have reconsidered the build altogether.

    • 

      Cheaplikethebird on 07/11/2025 - 15:16

      +2

      That kit is now $299. Crazy.

      • 

        metalslaw on 07/11/2025 - 15:29

        +2

        Yep, I got a 48gb 6000 cl30 kit for $330 delivered about 4 weeks ago now. It was probably the last set of G.Skill Flare X5's in Aus (for cl30 6000), because the white version wasn't listed on pcpartpicker for some reason, and it went out of stock on my purchase, so no price updating from then, but I'd hazard it would be $500 by now (if it was available)… Crazy.

• 

  metalslaw on 02/11/2025 - 02:00

  +1

  CPU Heatsink wise. Just grab some version of a Thermalright Peerless Assassin. I'd normally say grab a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo, but they aren't made anymore, and the continuing models are hard to come by (V2, or Black Edition).

  Anyway, Thermalright prices (ordered by review score),
  https://au.pcpartpicker.com/products/cpu-cooler/#W=0&F=0&sor…

  The Thermalright Peerless Assassin's are the budget cooler of choice these days it seems, and review well. It's also quite solid for a i5-6500.

  You could get away with cheaper than $55. But imho, probably not worth it, given you are looking to run other things on the server, other than just file serving.

• 

  HulioChavez on 02/11/2025 - 08:25

  +1

  In terms of Hard drives… Bare in mind, the parity drive needs to be as big or bigger than any other drives… so if you buy an 8TB drive and have that as your parity… you will not be able to put anything bigger that 8TB in the array. So, if you but a 16TB drive later on, that will need to be your parity drive and you won't see the benefits until you then add another 16TB drive to the array.

  • 

    peteru on 02/11/2025 - 13:36

    +1

    That totally depends on the file system and how you configure it. BTRFS configured for 2 copies of data will let you mix'n'match many drives of different sizes and allocate data blocks such that there are always 2 copies on different devices. I've got a mix of 20, 22, 24 and 26TB drives on a BTRFS file system that was initially built with 4TB drives and over the years drives of various sizes, including 2TB, 8TB and 6TB got added or replaced. Each time the available space increased and there was no downtime or degraded mode operation when that was done.

    • 

      HulioChavez on 03/11/2025 - 08:35

      +1

      Interesting… Does that mean you are not using the parity drive function that's native to unraid? I didn't even know that was optional, I thought it was critical to how unraid works. In any case, the documentation for unraid is very clear about this requirement for the parity drive. You are able to put a smaller drive in but then it will limit the available space on all other drives in the array to what the parity drive is. Happy to be proven wrong though

      • 

        peteru on 03/11/2025 - 13:51

        +1

        I don't use Unraid. Or TrueScale NAS. I tried them both and didn't like them. I also investigated OpenMediaVault, but didn't even bother installing it as it seems to be more of the same.

        I'm using Proxmox and manage the NAS storage using command line. Proxomx is a recent change to the config; it was all on Gentoo Linux for the last 20+ years.

        It's actually heaps easier to do all this using command line rather than using a GUI. BTRFS storage is managed directly on the Proxmox host. It's ten HDDs with about 175TB. NFS is exported from Proxmox host. For Samba and DLNA, I have separate containers that export the desired subsets. I have a three node cluster with BTRFS and ZFS on each node and can migrate VMs and containers between nodes. I haven't turned on High Availability and automatic fail-over yet, but it's on the roadmap for when I have some time to test it.

        Daily backups are handled by taking snapshots and then backing up those to Proxmox Backup Server. PBS runs a ZFS pool with 5 HDDs in raidz1. That level of protection is adequate on the backup server as it holds a third on-site copy of the data. The original copy of important data is replicated to the other two nodes in the cluster every 15 minutes.

        Off-site copies are done by ad-hoc sneakernet. I really need to improve that. It's only done a couple of times a year.

        All free, with no licenses required, no subscriptions and no limitations.

        • 

          HulioChavez on 04/11/2025 - 09:10

          +2

          @peteru: Mad flex. As someone in sysadmin and an interest in home labbing, i'm impressed… The question from OP though was "Hey all. Looking for some advice on what to purchase and where to start on my self-hosting/datahording journey with UnRAID." So comments and replies that relate to storage config and application within the context of Unraid are more helpful.
          Unraid has ZFS support so further advice on that would be helpful and add value to the discussion.

• 

  Shroomlet on 07/11/2025 - 14:03

  +1

  Hey everyone. I just wanted to say thanks so much for all of your inputs. It's really been helpful in deciding what I'm going to do moving forward.

  It's good to know that I can bring back to life my older parts, and that the most expensive part will be buying the actual HDD's, honestly what the hell is up with HDD costs?

  Thanks again everyone for your contributions.

  • 

    metalslaw on 07/11/2025 - 15:32

    +1

    HDD prices will calm down again in a year or so. But yeah, it's no longer a good time to buy.

    Kinda sucks for me, as I was 'this close' to completing my required nas build, and I will have to make do with a JBOD setup, instead of what I want, Raid 0 drive pairs.

    • 

      Shroomlet on 07/11/2025 - 18:04

      That's rough, I'm in the same boat I guess trying to set this all up now lol
      Question, how come you want JBOD or Raid 0? My 5 seconds of googling says you don't get any data protection? Or do you not need it?