14TB Home Server/NAS Build – Small, quiet & power efficient

My home server desperately needed an upgrade, since I was running out of storage and my case didn't have any more drive bays. So I rebuilt it using a power-efficient miniITX mobo+CPU combo and 12TB of additional storage.

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Music
Falls - Underground Lyfe
Falls - Imagination
King Pong - Game Recognize
Tru Genesis - Burned

Timestamps
00:00 Introduction
01:13 My previous NAS build
01:50 Why I decided to upgrade
03:16 The components for the new NAS build
03:27 Case
04:43 PSU
05:24 Case fan
06:18 Motherboard and CPU
07:13 Hard drives
08:37 RAM
08:53 Accessories, adapters, etc.
10:41 Size comparison
11:26 Build timelapse
14:51 Build impressions, problems, etc.
16:23 Final specs and prices
17:00 Alternative budget builds
18:05 Outro

[WolfgangsChannel]

TIMESTAMPS
00:00​ Introduction
01:13​ My previous NAS build
01:50​ Why I decided to upgrade
03:16​ The components for the new NAS build
03:27​ Case
04:43​ PSU
05:24​ Case fan
06:18​ Motherboard and CPU
07:13​ Hard drives
08:37​ RAM
08:53​ Accessories, adapters, etc.
10:41​ Size comparison
11:26​ Build timelapse
14:51​ Build impressions, problems, etc.
16:23​ Final specs and prices
17:00​ Alternative budget builds
18:05​ Outro

[rdwatson]

Good video! This build is so much more practical for home users than dream NAS videos where the manufacturer supplies thousands of dollars/euros of parts for free.

[WolfgangsChannel]

UPD: Actually, Fractal Design Node 304 only has 6 hard drive mounts.


UPD3: Yes, those WD MyBook 6TB drives are SMR drives, unfortunately. SMR (shingled magnetic record) drives have worse write/read speeds than traditional CMR drives, but they're also cheaper to make. However, if you lose a drive in an array (RAID, ZFS, Unraid, etc.), recalculating the array might take a really long time (e.g. 3 days instead of 15 hours). SMR is not as critical for home NAS usage, but if you're concerned about that, you might want to look into 8TB+ drives, since those are believed to be non-SMR models.

[maxarendorff]

14 TB. That's a loooot of Linux ISOs.

[tsbohc]

Damn, you practically read my mind. I was racking my brains thinking about a proper home NAS to replace my repurposed 2010s PC (it lives!!). It seems we were on the same wavelength in terms of cases and MBs. Thanks for the video, my dude

[MartinPaoloni]

I bought the same motherboard last month for my Unraid build. Also shucked 4 8TB WD drives. So overall a similar build. Quite happy so far! The CPU sips power and works great with Plex and a bunch of Docker containers.

[MaxCuberful]

Really waiting for that software video! Thank you for such great content, man.

[maxarendorff]

Damn. My boi got all that youtube money now for fancy aluminium ITX cases and new NAS systems lol.

[Panzerino]

Wolfie, the Delta PSU are a top-notch PSU brand-most of the HP Z workstation are build only with Delta PSU. Delta PSU are on pair with Seasonic's, and even better. Nothing to worry about. But, a surge protector is a must device. Fractal Node 804 was a good choice. But you want hot swappable hdd. About fans- sure, Noctua are the best. But for less money, NIDEC are a top choice too. Wolfie, small case= high temperatures= noise. The most basic principle of the case cooling is a "negative pressure inside the case". It is achieved by the front fan speed at low speed and rear and/or high placed fans at the top of the case at rpm speed ~ 1200-1400 rpm. PWM fans are not always a good solution, because it’s a matter of the mobo fan's logic. Which is a very "delicate" matter. Good hdd temperatures are below 30C. If your CPU temperatures goes high- your hdd temperatures will goes high too, and this ridiculous side fan will do nothing-he recirculate hot air inside the case- do not suck him out. Pls note, in regular case, the PSU fan helps the interior air circulation. Wolfie, at about 90-100$ it was possible to find micro-ATX Supermicro board, with ECC RAM support... Just 1-2 years old. Will serve you better than all these things there. Wolfie, in scope to be recognized like boot device, your NVMe must be AHCI variant, OR, the BIOS must be compatible. Or, put your NVMe in a PCI express controller (with BIOS compatible, must be AHCI variant).

[rgjpuso]

I just used an old laptop, it's sufficiently powerful and is perfectly usable for light usage. I use mine mostly as a home server and a FTP server.

[odinimago]

I've been running an Unraid box very similar to this one since early 2018, based on very similar components: Gigabyte GA-J3455-D3H, 8GB RAM, PicoPSU, 4x3TB, an USB boot drive, a cache 500GB SSD on an USB adapter and a custom wooden case with a single 20cm Noctua fan. It sips power, but it starts to struggle if any transcoding or concurrent use is required, especially with many containers active.
I've been meaning to replace it for years but... it just keeps on chugging, delivering the bare minimum performance, enough to convince me to let it live a bit more!

For fan speed control, since the CPU needs barely any cooling, I use Unraid's hddtemp-based fan control. Previously I used arch, and used a nice tool called hddfancontrol to do the same.

[OGBhyve]

Great video. Love the way you credited other YouTubers for each piece of content! I like the way you edited in corrections as well.

[mr.sandman]

Well it's actually pretty funny to look how you're fighting with the hardware)
Keep it up, you are progressing in the right direction!
And count my voice in a more often video making voting.

[sebastianbitzer]

There is a study from Backblaze (a big hosting provider using over 100k HHDs in production) that pretty much concluded that the temperature of the HDD is irrelevant. There is no correlation between temperature and HDD failure rate.

[Domowoi]

@15:28 your soldering isn't a problem, but maybe put a little insulation or tape around the red and black wire. They are close together and could touch...

[vollhorst]

Good video, I like that you updated the video with experience and even failures. Thumbs up.

[ClaudiusEllsel]

I really like the scope of you videos. Being focused on pricing and finding good solutions is pretty interesting.

I recently built some NAS system based on a Dell PowerEdge T20 which seems to have rather low idle power consumption (about 10 W on Forums, did not measure myself until now). I got one used complete with some ECC RAM for I think around 150 €. With this as a base, I added shucked HDDs from external drives (some I had lying around and one 12 TB purchased additionally). I guess for my usecase that setup is very cost effective while also being very powerful for a NAS (currently not needed for me, but well ...). Downsides are the size, non hot-swappable HDDs and maybe the power consumption under load. I am also not sure about cooling.

[kbly]

As a german i'm really impressed by your english pronunciation. I did not realized that you are German until you said ebay-Kleinanzeigen.

[naoltitude]

Oooooh shit I've been waiting so long for this to come out, looks great!

[lunarpassion]

Got myself a used HP Microserver N54L for about €50 long ago and it's still working fine. Slow by today's standards, though, so maybe not a best option nowadays.