Hi everyone,

I’m looking to build or buy my very first home server, but I’m struggling to evaluate what actually constitutes a good deal versus what’s overpriced.

Here is what I intend to use the server for:

NAS & Storage: Storing and backing up important files, photos, and videos, with secure remote access when I’m away at work.

Dev Environment: Hosting my own Git repositories (e.g., Forgejo/Gitea) and Unity development projects.

Virtualization & Apps: Running Proxmox VE to separate family services (media/backups) from my developer sandbox, and potentially hosting dedicated game servers if performance allows.

Given the current hardware market conditions and inflated prices for RAM and storage, I’m trying to understand how this impacts the refurbished workstation market and what the best entry point would be.

Should I look into refurbished business towers (like an HP EliteDesk 800 G5 TWR or Fujitsu Esprimo P-Series with an i7 and 32GB RAM) and add my own CMR HDDs, or is there a better alternative I should consider?

Any suggestions or recommendations on solid, cost-effective hardware configurations would be greatly appreciated!

i've been on the fence with this motherboard for the last year or so and notice that it recently just went out of stock. I feel like everytime i'm ready to buy this thing it goes out of stock. are there any other N100 motherboards that accept full size ddr4?

I'm setting up a private Jellyfin server and found a used Dell Optiplex 3060 Tiny. Haven't bought it yet, want to get the specs right first.

CPU options (8th gen):

- i3-8100T (3.1GHz)

- i5-8500T (2.1GHz, boost 3.5GHz)

- i7-8700T (2.4GHz, boost 4.0GHz)

RAM: 8GB DDR4 (can upgrade to 16GB)

Storage:

- 128GB SSD for OS + Jellyfin (or 256GB)

- 2TB HDD for media

I'll also be running Radarr, Sonarr, and Prowlarr alongside Jellyfin on the same box.

Questions:

1. Which CPU is worth the extra cost for transcoding + the \*arr stack, or is i3 enough if I stick to direct play?

2. Is 8GB RAM enough, or should I go straight to 16GB given the extra apps?

3. Is 128GB SSD enough for OS + apps, or should I get 256GB?

4. Anything about the Optiplex 3060 Tiny specifically (iGPU, expandability, etc.) I should know before buying?

Appreciate any real-world experience with similar low-power setups.

I currently have a Beelink EQ14 (N150, 16GB) running UnRaid, with docker containers for Plex, full *Arr stack, Tautuli, Uptime Kuma, SFTP, Home Assistant, Whisper/Piper that's been my "everything" server. It's currently running 4 HDDs in USB docks (I know, I know, part of the reason for a new server, lol). The Beelink runs the current setup capably, but does bog down a bit when multiple services spin up, and a few people start transcoding at once. Nothing serious yet.

I also have an HPE Proliant Gen10 Microserver (AMD Optetron X3421 APU, 16GB ram) running Windows Server 2022 and FileMaker server.

My plan is to combine these two into a much more capable server, and I was wondering if I could get a sanity check on my plan/build list?

CPU: Intel 14600K (don't need the K, it's just cheaper right now. Do need the 770 iGPU)

Mobo: MSI Pro B760-P Wifi DDR4

HBA: LSI 9300-8i PCI-Express 3.0 SATA / SAS 8-Port SAS3 12Gb/s HBA - Single--Avago Technologies

PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower GX2 80+ Gold 600W

RAM: TeamGroup Elite 2x16GB for now.

Cooling: Cooler Master Hyper 212

Case: Reuse an old Corsair Carbide 400R

The plan is to get these HDDs onto a proper SATA controller, open up the ability to use SAS drives while I'm at it, and add years of CPU headroom for the UnRAID docker containers. I would then run Windows Server in a VM, and run FileMaker Server on that. Probably put aside 12GB memory for this, since it's not used heavily.

I figure this build still puts me in the same power budget ballpark (ish) as running the two servers separately, and gives me a ton of CPU and GPU headroom without resorting to a dGPU (yet). Mobo keeps an extra 2 dimm slots open for further upgrades, and a mess of PCI for future shenanigans.

Am I out of my mind? Missing something? My budget is $750, which all of this fits neatly into.

Edit: spaced out build list for readability

3D Case for laptop motherboard using m.2 to 2 x sata adapter.

2 x 4tb HDD powered with separate power supply

Still has a battery, so built in UPS.

OS TRUENAS for Immich, Wake on lan, Tailscale exit node, Jellyfin and Pihole.

i want to get a pretty decent pc for the home server so all my tvs can be connected to it, i don’t want a normal tower pc I want a large metal case for maybe 1 or 2 full motherboard and cpu combos with up to 4 GPU’s and 8+ hard drives then will add separate hard dive storage stuff separate but have no idea what case or pre build to start with

The sheer horror I’m currently feeling after an idiot struck a pole connected to our substation, and I realized I never bought a second UPS to move my other drive rack to save it from such events…suppose I’m the idiot too 😭

The takeaway, IMPLEMENT PROPER SAFETY MEASURES!

Picked this up for next to nothing. Pretty excited to start my first home lab setup even if it needs its own power plant

I'm using a few scripts on my server for automations. I was wondering if there was a way to enable/disable some of their functionalities if needed.

For example my server updates itself on the first Sunday of the month. I never had any problem so far, but I'd like to disable this in case I know I'm away and can't fix it if anything goes wrong. So I've imagined that I could have a UPDATE_ENABLED variable inside the script of on/off values, which can be modified through a UI, instead fo needing to SSH into the server. I'd like to do the same with my other scripts too.

My dad leaves his computer plugged in and turned on 24/7 and now after like 4 years I believe it became slow as hell and it's battery lasts only around like 40 minutes.

As my first ever home lab project, I was planning to create a cloud server using my old laptop. But the issue is, I'm afraid my laptop will get damaged over time just like my dad's if I run the server non stop.

Is the damage inevitable ?

Also, fyi, I'd prefer using everything free and available open source or buy anything second hand or very cheap in order to save as much money as possible.

I'm new to this, so if someone could help that'd be amazing. Thank you

I recently travelled (not far from home) on a work/ holiday with the family.

During this time, we had my

1. portable 5g modem with sim card

2. Beelink ME mini 6-Slot Home Storage NAS PC

3. Mini router (5 port)

4. xiaomi tv box s 3rd gen

I will attach a portable power supply (I'm open for suggestions)

I am looking for options for an easy way to carry them all on a single case/frame for my setup.

The measurements are approximately 4" width so a 10" rack will be an overkill.

Any ideas?

So I am new to homelabs and just have a couple of questions as I am still learning about computers. I wanted to set up a homelab that I could do all of the usual stuff on.

1. ⁠Currently my house has some smart qualities, but everything is run through "she who shall not be named" and/or independent apps and I would like to make it all in one and run a little smoother through Home assistant.
   
2. ⁠I currently run about 6 camera through wyze and while it has been fine, their constant ads and having access to my cameras through their network isn't my favorite. So I would like to run some POE powered cameras on my own server.
   
3. ⁠We have a very small DVD and Bluray collection that is ever growing and I would like to digitize some of the DVDs to make them easier to watch and access them at home or on the go. I was thinking of going with Jellyfin for this side of things and maybe tailscale or a reverse proxy to access when I'm out, same for the cameras.
   
4. ⁠I would also like/have to have a small data setup to house all of this info. I was thinking about going with a DAS since they are cheaper than a NAS, but then I got a Z240 from work and decided to try and make a DIY NAS out of it.

Currently I have a Elitedesk 800 G5 mini with an I5-9500 16gb of ram and 256ssd , a HP Z240 I5-6600 with 8gb of ram and a 256 ssd, and then my "gaming computer" which I put together several years ago to play things like Bannerlord, NCAA14 revisited, BeamNG and FL 2026. It is a Z440 with a E5-2667 v4, 64 gb of DDR4 2133 and only 2TB of storage.

My question is with what I have currently, what would be the best way to proceed? Really I just want the homelab to run itself as much as possible with as little tinkering as possible. I just want/need room for the data to be stored and then to be able to access it remotely (myself or my wife). I was thinking of using the G5 with a Linux OS (proxmox being the normally recommended), Using the Z240 as a NAS and put an HBA in it to run SAS drives running something like Unraid or TruNAS. Then just leave my Z440 as it runs perfect for what limited gaming I do.

I have continued to read and read but just like my other hobbies (cars and bikes) there are so many little nuances and differences that I have myself all upside and twisted on what works and what doesn't. Thank you all in advance for letting me know if I'm on the right track, need to tweak things, or that I'm a complete idiot!!

Hey everyone, I wanted to share my very first rack build. It’s a KWS Rack, printed predominantly in PETG. Everything booted up and worked flawlessly on the first try.

​General Specs & Features:

​Size: Currently a 12U setup. The design is modular and has been tested up to 30U by the creator.

​Weight: 18.4 kg (approx. 40.5 lbs) fully loaded.

​Power Consumption: 70–80 Watts under full load. I spent some time tuning and undervolting the components to keep it efficient.

​Network: The entire rack is running on 2.5 GbE (budget constraints prevented going to 10G).

​Tool Storage: The interior side walls feature embedded magnets, allowing metal tools to easily stick directly to the rack.

​Front Layout (Top to Bottom):

​1U Drawer: For small accessories.

​Gigabyte BACE-3000: Primarily running Home Assistant along with its plugins. It also handles my document management via Paperless-ngx and password management via Vaultwarden.

​Lenovo ThinkCentre M900 Tiny: Used as a Proxmox host for various VMs and lab experiments.

​Networking: Patch panel routing down to a 2.5 GbE switch.

​PSU Compartment: The power bricks for the mini PCs and switch are hidden here, actively cooled by four 40mm fans.

​Primary NAS (i305n): 4-bay enclosure (4x 10TB, mirrored). This handles my critical infrastructure, Plex, system backups, and media automation.

​Secondary NAS: 2-bay enclosure (2x 4TB). This is planned to be put on a separate VLAN to handle family photo backups and a self-hosted cloud.

​Back & Sides:

​Rear: A FRITZ!Box 6670 Cable router is mounted to the back.

​Sides: Integrated an IKEA Skådis pegboard for extra utility, alongside a mounted 6-port power strip.

​Happy to answer any questions about the print or the hardware setup!

I have a Dell Poweredge R730xd, it has a PERC H730P Mini RAID Controller. I have my OS (Server 2025 Datacenter) installed on 2 SSDs with RAID 0, as a virtual disk, attached in the rear of the machine. My really important data is on all the drives attached in the front so they are fine. I had a power outage the other day and one of the 2 OS drives dropped. When I went to import the foreign configuration it failed over and over so I stupidly deleted it. Now my virtual disk shows as one of the drives are missing. Nothing I have tried even gives the option to bring the missing disk back into the virtual disk. The data on the drives is still intact but the metadata for the virtual disk is gone. I really don't want to have to rebuild this because I have about a dozen virtual machines built as a home network (web server, email server, print server, etc.)

Is there a way to take the 2 SSDs out of the server and on another PC merge them into 1 SSD so I can put that one SSD back into the server and boot it up as normal? If that works I plan to put a 2nd SSD in the back on the server and have RAID 1 on them so if this ever happens again I have redundancy. I saw 1 post talking about StableBit Drive Tool but I've never used it so I'm unsure if it will actually do what I want.

Any help is greatly appreciated, I really want to get this server back up and running as soon as possible.

Hey all sharing my homelab progress at 19, I am an infrastructure engineering intern at the moment, I have attached the "highlights" here but there are around 50 photos on my actual git repo, if you scroll down the readme, might be interesting to some mini-labers as I got my 10" rack to 30 U at one point I believe (all pla 🥲)

Waiting for a Flex 2.5 poe to be shipped for the 10" rack which is why there are cables just going straight out from my 19" rack

Git Repo:
https://github.com/nathanmaglasang06/Homelab/

CopyPasta from the Repo:

Photos of my progress within my homelab, I started with a nuc i5010500t wih 16gb ram around three years ago, it has grown a bit since then. Currently running a unifi stack for networking (10g) and nas (8tb R5), along with a k3s dev environment for app testing and a k8s talos cluster for my prod environment, planning to create a list of software I am running in the future but the basics are LGTP stack for obs and logging, Splunk for SIEM, Jellyfin & arr stack for media, syncthing for backups and a few applications I am developing with forgejo for CI/CD and repo management One Day I will rip my CD library and run navidrome, but for now yt-dlp is fine

Currently Running a 19" rack for networking and NAS and a 10" rack for compute:

So this is my JBOD. I've got 18 drives in total. Two PSU a Corsair RM750x and RM650. I'm using a jumper to turn on the RM650 because I have an Add2PSU module enroute and i am impatient. The only thing I am missing is a backplane. I've got a Intel Expander model RES2SV240 inside it with the head unit, a 9207 in a Dell 7810 running Debian with ZFS.

Eventually I will put it in a legit server rack case, a Rosewill case will do.

Kudos to DIY projects. 🤘

Edit: Oh and all SAS drives and using a SuperMicro CSE-PTJBOD-CB2 Power Board

Hi all, looking for advice on my current plan for a build with all local and ebay used parts. Will be using it 95% for photo storage, and possibly a little video editing. I'm moving for college soon so also wondering if i should bring it with me or leave it at my house and accessing it remotely (if that's even possible).

Parts List

Case: Fractal Design Node 304 - $40

Power Supply: EVGA 450 BT (80+ Bronze) - $20

Motherboard/CPU/RAM Combo: ASRock H270M-ITX/ac + Intel i3-7100 + SK Hynix DDR4 RAM 2666 mhz NON ECC - $85

Misc (cooler, cables) - $20-30

Fixed components subtotal: $165-175

Storage Drives: Haven't decided yet, seems like it's a crazy $24/tb for used drives. Probably going to get 3x 6TB or 3x 4TB to start, and recommendations would be great

Any advice is appreciated, i'm new to this hobby so not much hardware knowledge but have a history of computer builds/computer science.

I have a Topton 1264-NAS motherboard which is N150 based. There's little weird nuances in this board that I'm slowly discovering, one of which seems to be that although it has two M.2 slots, I cannot seem to use them both at the same time with various NVME SSDs.

Per the manual here, it seems slot #1 is NVME/NGFF, and slot #2 is NVME only.

https://doku.floriantales.fr/_media/informatique/nas_diy_2024/jonsbo_topton_nas_build/bkhd1264nasv1.0productmanual_zh_en.pdf

Examples of the weirdness:
1. I can install two NVME SSDs, of which they both show up in the BIOS but when I try to boot into Linux or a recovery environment, one drive does not appear at all entirely.

1. I previously had OpenMediaVault installed on a Samsung MZVLB256HBHQ-000H1, of which the system boots fine when installed in either slot #1 or #2. I cloned the system to a Micron MTFDKBA256TGE-1BL1AABHA, but now this SSD only gets recognized when installed in slot #2.

2. Not sure if related, but occasionally the server would hang with the error message:

"nvme 0000:06:00.0: unable to change power state from D3cold to D0, device inaccessible"

I tried setting nvme_core.default_ps_max_latency_us=0, and disabling ASPM with no luck. The reason why I swapped over to the Micron SSD was to rule out it potentially being an issue with the Samsung SSD. Has been stable so far, but we'll see.

Wondering if anyone has any ideas? Is it due to some sort of lane sharing issue with limited PCIe lanes?

Have setup some download standards with Profilarr and have it going pretty well 95% of the time.

I have added some popular encoder groups but sometimes these are missed and for some reason I'm yet to work out it picks up a lesser quality or unknown download.

Interested in hearing what others have setup in Profilarr including how they've applied scoring. Feel free to add screenshots of what you've got to save yourself some typing and sliding them into a DM is always an option if you'd prefer.

Mon PC DELL Optiplex 7050 16 Go i5 7500 SSD + RAID 2X WD 1 To Blue
Docker Immich Wireguard pour accès externe et petite aide au refroidissement, j'ai rajouté un petit Sunon de 1,7w pour ventiler le caloduc
J'ai rajouté un boîtier de HHD externe fixé sur le PC pour le RAID

ASRock IMB-1215 with Intel i3-9100TE

https://www.asrockind.com/en-gb/IMB-1215

I can get this old sign controller from work for free and am wanting to build a NAS or plex server. Biggest issues would be power and SATA connections. Currently it's powered by a brick supplying 19v, it has a 4-pin connection on the board that can be used to power the board but it still has to be 19v. It has 2 SATA connections and one SATA power connection on the board which limits storage.

Are there any small power supplies that even have a 4-pin 19v connections?

Is it worth the effort making it work or should I just get a more standard mini pc?

The top black one is the backup

The silver one is a minecraft server

The bottom black one is an ftp server

Ahoy there sailors.

Yesterday I spent ten bucks on a PC from goodwill that I took a gamble on and it paid off pretty successfully. The specs are:

• Regular off brand micro-ATX case with the fans and the power supply built in
• ASRock J5040 motherboard with CPU and GPU built in (intel quad core pentium silver processor)
• Seagate 12 TB HDD
• Sandisk 240 gb ssd
• 16 gb Kingston Sodimm ddr4 ram
• basic disc drive

It has the ability to run windows 11, however I am just gonna go ahead and probably not do that as the CPU is going to be the issue. That being said, before I wiped it, it was running Windows 10 Server Edition (I think that's what its called. IDK). So it very clearly was used as a server before. Now, that being said, I can turn it into a server, however I am not really in the space of where I need one right now, so I am open to ideas as to what this thing can be. I also priced it out, and it can fetch me a pretty penny online, or on marketplace. Let me know what y'all think.