The Perfect Home Server Build! 18TB, 10Gbit LAN, Quiet & Compact

Another year, another home server build! This time I'm reusing some parts from my previous builds and cramming 18TB of storage into a 17 liter Streacom DA2 case.

Parts:
Motherboard: Asrock C236 WSI (Buy it used)
CPU: Intel i3-6100/i3-7100 (Buy it used)

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Music:
Vladislav Kurnikov – Saturday Morning
Hale – Moment
Gvidon – Body in a Half Light

Video gear:

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Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
01:35 What I need from a home server
02:53 Motherboard
03:27 CPU
04:09 RAM
04:43 Storage
06:45 Case
07:21 Cooling and PSU
08:05 10Gbit NIC
08:31 Remote Management
10:14 Build considerations
11:21 Cost
12:10 Alternatives
13:03 Outro

[WolfgangsChannel]

However, Tone Mapping IS supported on i3-7100, which also works with the Asrock C236 WSI motherboard. Better yet – you can usually get an i3-7100 for about the same price as the i3-6100! So definitely keep that in mind.

[diarmaidmac]

My home server is a pi4 with an external usb drive attached. It runs pihole, hosts my git repo's and music/videos for streaming. Its enough for me and is very light on power with the energy prices soaring at the moment! Thanks for creating and sharing the video. Lots of hard work and editing. Good job!

[pasan.]

"8Gb RAM more than enough". ZFS - hold my beer.

[Mrperezm]

I like the fact most people in the comments below are recycling used or older equipment to build home server systems. Less e-waste on the planet, happier wallets. I found a 10 year old PC in the garage the other day, i5-3470 with a decent amount of memory 24gb DDR3, I installed a small sata SSD. It ran Visual Studio and everything I threw at it without any problems, I enjoyed working with it.

[talhaakram]

Wow that's a really cool setup, I am just repurposing my old laptops as a homelab 😂 and have been controlling it over SSH benifit being that it consumes very little power and has a baked in UPS. Really looking forward to that 10G home network video.

[aidanjt]

"I hope this is the last NAS I'll ever have to build"
LOL

[vinkuu]

Famous last words: "Last NAS I ever have to build". Mine is currently running an 8 core EPYC Rome, 64Gb ECC with an upgrade path to 64 core Milan and 4Tb ECC. It does serve a dual-purpouse role of running my docker containers and CI, which takes up half of the resources. But as a NAS, it's able to congest the 10GbE network pretty easily with the workload it's been designed to handle.

[mtk]

For my home storage server i added a HBA card to get additional SATA ports. the DELL H310 running in IT mode. I see people recommend the LSI 9211-8i. But mine came pre-flashed with the right firmware and was cheaper, so no need.

[tauraamui]

When you mentioned the WAF (Wife Approval Rating) I spat out my drink (careful to avoid my expensive mech. keyboard that I'll probably not be allowed to replace), but that chimed so well with me. I always watch stuff like this, trying to think up how in the hell I'm gonna be able to convince my wife that I... we ... need it?

[jeffreymurillo]

Kudos for finding a motherboard with that many SATA ports.
I was building my own but had to abandon because of low SATA count and bad HDD mounting on the case.

[timos.]

Btw. a cheaper and even more power efficient debugging option that doesn't require hooking up a keyboard and monitor would be serial console redirection that this board supports. Sure, it doesn't have a fancy web interface and still requires one cable. But if you're used to SSH anyway and your server is at a somewhat accessible location (which I assume because otherwise noise is probably not an issue), it's an option that still gives you access to the BIOS or visual output in case your OS doesn't boot anymore, for example. I use a similar workstation board for my NAS build as well, and the serial console redirection allows me to do BIOS updates, configuration changes or debugging without the need to actually hook up a monitor (which would be a hassle because my NAS runs without any GPU, neither dedicated nor integrated). Since I don't need that maintenance or debugging access often (maybe once or twice a year), the serial connection works just fine for me.

[Holmesbbst]

For the remote management, Intel vpro was a perfect fit for me. The PiKVM looks more expensive and attachments to the board than going for a vpro enabled board. It was also super easy to get vpro working under Linux with Meshcommander and some basic MEBX settings.
There are NUCs available with vpro, but unfortunately isn't that common with other PC/boards.
My setup: Intel NUC (nuc11tnhv5) with external WD NAS. Fedora server with Libvirt/Qemu/KVM virtual machines. Remote management with vpro and Meshcommander.

Thank you for the great video! ❤

[seephor]

Good video. I went with a Lenovo Thinkstation P510 with a Xeon E5-2680 V4 CPU, 4 GB ECC ram and 1TB SSD for just under $350. Mainly for its ability to support 4 3.5" drives and 4 2.5" drives for a total of 8 drives with a SAS backplane. I think the total cost was just over $650 with the WD Red Plus drives and a couple of 1TB SSDs but it's a beast.

[homerobono]

This is great quality content. You have put costs research, existing solutions comparison, benchmarks, and more.
Also, your videos also have a good pace and progression, and better yet, you don't beg for likes and subscriptions.

[pesfreak]

Have the same processor in my NAS 😅 I bought a Fujitso Esprimo P556 used on ebay. It cost me 100€ including 8 GB RAM but no SSD. It doesn´t have ECC memory and only 3 Sata Connectors but that´s all I need. Went with Seagate Iron Wolf for storage since they are CMR drives no matter the storage size. Have it running since 3 weeks and I´m happy. Hope it will last a few years.

[apcyberax]

Good video. I just upgraded my home NAS. I went for a Synology DS1621+ with 16TB HDDs, 10Gbe network and upgraded it to 32GB ram so i can use docker and VMs with no worry. Not cheap. No NVME Cache drives yet though.

[Colton]

The pi KVM looks pretty neat! I wish I would have gone with an Intel or AMD APU so I could try this. Overall looks like a pretty sweet build! Looking forward to the software video 🙂.

[ApxuBbI]

Just out of curiosity: how many "Linux ISOs" you have stored on your NAS? 😃

[diacritic]

Great content Wolfgang!
About your NAS 2.0 build you are saying: "after around a year of use, one of the backplane connections on the case failed".
This tells me spending 140 EUR (~30% of build costs) on an Eolize SVD-NC11-4 mini ITX case was probably money you could have spent better.
The hot swap bays are something for which you pay extra and that can also break while it doesn't give you much benefit in a regular home environment.
If you need to replace a drive, you can probably allow for some downtime and removing a few screws as it seems you've also chosen to do so with your NAS 3.0.

[SneakyFERRiS]

I’ve just finished my version of this build, same case, love the case. Media server so went crazy and put an i7 12700k in there and barely fit a bequiet! Dark Rock TF2 cooler (replaced previous too loud, smaller fan, choice). ASROCK Z390-m ITX MB, 2x32GB DDR4 3600 (until the 2nd cooler wouldn’t fit so I removed one stick, RIP more RAM than I ever needed). 2xM.2 Drives, one 500GB cache drive and one 2TB drive as a faster drive for different apps running on UNRAID. Otherwise the same other than I flipped the fans on the CPU cooler to take away from the MB instead of sucking air over it and stuck the 2 case fans on the bottom sucking air in and up out the case. I have yet to buy the 2 planned 18TB drives to start me off (and replace previous still used 20TB setup) but I have decided to get an external drive thing that holds 5 drives and would keep the case a little cooler. Have set up a whole bunch on UNRAID already so I’m otherwise ready to move over but I’m not gunna lie, it’s running hot. Well in my opinion, but all I know is my gaming rig that doesn’t really go over 60c, this thing is running 70c-80c at 100% but oh my it runs fast, when idle 35c and 50c-60c under normal load (transcode a couple vids, background tasks). Don’t get at me for the odd airflow, it is mad but I’m used to bigger cases with better airflow and more space and heck, I wanted to try something out and it seems fine and I can’t be bothered to change it now 😆 So an almost finished build but thought I might share my build journey, so far cost around £1500. Planning on 5x18TB in the end but might end up adding 1-2 extra for parity drive, how ever many I need. It’s a slow background project but hope to finish it soon. Thanks for the video 🫡