I'm in the process of setting up a NAS server for use at home and need some guidance. Here are my main requirements:
- I plan to use it mostly for streaming movies, TV shows, music, and personal photos.
- It needs to be capable of transcoding 4K movies if necessary.
- Energy efficiency is a priority; I want low power consumption.
- The server will run on either TrueNAS or Unraid, paired with Jellyfin and the *rr stack.
- Wi-Fi capability is a must.
- I don't intend to run it continuously, mostly on-demand. This makes me unsure whether to get a dedicated NAS drive or a standard HDD, especially since there are sales on drives right now.
- I also want redundancy for my personal photos but am less concerned about redundancy for other media.
Feel free to review my build and suggest any changes. Here's my PCPartPicker list.
1 Answer
Hey! It sounds like a fun project. First off, be careful with that SATA expander; they can be hit or miss. Maybe consider sourcing a used LSI card for better reliability since you need to support quite a few drives. Also, check if your power supply has enough SATA connectors for all your drives.
On building with ITX, I suggest going for mATX instead. It gives you much more flexibility for future upgrades. Plus, having so many drives can drive up your per-GB costs, so you might want to look into just getting a few higher-capacity drives for redundancy and saving space. Just a thought!