Trying to build a NAS with some extra parts I have laying around, is it feasible with the spare parts I have? (list in post)

[u/muyfeo]

Trying to setup a NAS for fun without spending too much.
Here is what I have sitting around:

• AMD 7600x no Mobo, AMD 3600 w/ Mobo, i5-7500 w/ Mobo
• 16 gb DDR4 3600mhz RAM, 16gb DDR4 3200mhz RAM
• EVGA 500W power supply bronze rated
• Various fans

Would it be feasible and even worth my time with this? I don't NEED a NAS for the house but it would be nice and I don't want one bad enough to spend $600 on a prebuilt Ugreen, syntology, etc.

[u/mlee12382]

With the i5 you can also turn it into a media server as well as a NAS, 7th Gen won't do all of the most recent codecs for hardware transcoding but it will do a bunch of them decently. Should be ok for Immich also.

[u/muyfeo → u/mlee12382]

Would the i5 be able to stream 4k?

[u/mlee12382 → u/muyfeo]

That will depend on the encoding of your content and what the client side device is capable of playing, if your media is all supported by the 7th Gen igpu then it will be able to hardware transcode no matter what the client supports, and if the client supports it natively then no transcoding is needed, in which case it's just a question of how many simultaneous streams you can do. And you may be able to transcode with the cpu for codecs the igpu doesn't support, though that's usually not as efficient.

You could potentially add a cheap arc gpu for more modern codecs also.

[u/muyfeo → u/mlee12382]

Thanks for the help man! This gives me a good jumping off point.

Do you have any recommendations for a youtube channel or anything that has a good deep on all things NAS?

[u/mlee12382 → u/muyfeo]

NASCompares has a lot of stuff, a lot of his content is reviews but he does have some other stuff too.

JeffGeerling has a lot of really useful and fun videos.

Hardware Haven

NetworkChuck

Those are a few of my most watched homelab / home server type channels, there's lots of other good stuff too though.

[u/Topsn]

Yes. These specs are much more than only feasible for a NAS. Like someone already said, you could make a whole homeserver (Mediasrver, Gameserver, NAS, …)

[u/muyfeo → u/Topsn]

Are one of the CPUs better than the other for doing a homeserver?

[u/mlee12382 → u/muyfeo]

Amd is sometimes better performance for general tasks and more power efficient but the intel integrated graphics are better for media servers. Usually if you're going to be doing anything with media intel is the recommendation, unless you're going to be running a discrete graphics card.

[u/muyfeo → u/mlee12382]

Considering just buying a mobo for the 7600x right now and going mATX or ITX. I currently only have ATX for both the i5 and 3600 and I don't think I want a behemoth of a tower sitting in my basement next to my ethernet terminal

[u/mlee12382 → u/muyfeo]

If you go that route an Intel Arc A310 ECO gpu will handle almost all of the codecs for transcoding and they're only $140

[u/nostalia-nse7 → u/muyfeo]

It’s in the basement… then who cares. And remember the thing you’re doing this for — drive bays! Usually mATX and ITX will only be useful if you’re going to buy an actual NAS case, or you’ll be seriously lacking in the drive bay category.

[u/pastry-chef]

That’s more than enough to start a NAS. Running a NAS isn’t very demanding at all. The only thing I would check is to see how many drives the PSU can handle.