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.
PiKVM: pikvm.org/
Parts:
Motherboard: Asrock C236 WSI (Buy it used)
CPU: Intel i3-6100/i3-7100 (Buy it used)
Recommended RAM geni.us/Px3pAw (Amazon)
Hard drives geni.us/M51BbZM (Amazon)
Case geni.us/MbIBA7 (Amazon)
Recommended SSD geni.us/DqrHh (Amazon)
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Vladislav Kurnikov - Saturday Morning
Hale - Moment
Gvidon - Body in a Half Light
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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
One small detail: it turns out that i3-6100 does not support Tone Mapping in Jellyfin, so you won't be able to watch HDR content on an SDR screen: jellyfin.org/docs/general/administration/hardware-acceleration.html#configuring-opencl-acceleratedvpp-tone-mapping 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.
Is that when you try to watch HDR movie and it appears to be in shades of green and violet?
@@kennethdarlington Sometimes it's green, sometimes it just looks washed out. In my case, the "N" in the Netflix pre-roll actually looks yellow...
@@kennethdarlington Or it's a bad rip
Hi, where is the link with the software part? I´m really interested on that. Thanks a great video.
I cannot get the exact information. Most hardware information websites report that the i3-7100 does not support ECC memory even if intel ark site says it does. Many people advise to stay with i3-6xxx CPUs if yo want ECC memory support.
"8Gb RAM more than enough". ZFS - hold my beer.
That’s plenty for certain sized zfs pools. ZFS scales up and down well, so blanket statements like this are nonsensical.
Proxmox - hold my beer too 😅
@@BlownMacTruckfalse it’s good enough to keep and access a ZFS pool, but not to regularly be writing files to it.
@@JessehermansonphotographyCite your references.
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!
@@PhilRey. weak in what sense?
I think he means they can easily be torn of causing files to be corrupted
My home server is very similar to yours! I run a Pi 4 with an external desktop HDD. It too runs Pihole as well as a Plex server and storage for general files.
@@L39T Hello! I got a question regarding Plex server on a Raspberry pi 4. Does it work well for 1080p videos? I'm thinking at a Samsung TV as client. Thank you!
@@cosmin3 Yes, 1080p and even 4K works fine. Just make sure to not transcode the videos. Although I've had one video that the Pi would struggle with and that was a .mp4 x265. I never troubleshot because a .mkv x264 version of the video was available anyway.
"I hope this is the last NAS I'll ever have to build" LOL
Well... He's young. :-) He still has time to learn the ways of the homelab world. I'm sure he'll be working on his first basement/garage rack in a year or two.
Narrator: *it was not the last NAS he ever had to build*
until he finds truenas :D
We all know it's never the last NAS.
Well. If his computing needs never change and technology freezes in place, maybe it’s his last one. :)
You're good at explaining things, funny and always teach me a lot! Thank you!
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.
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.
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 🙂.
Love your homelab! This looks very good and i can't wait for the software side of this video
Thanks for sharing this. I might just try to build this exact thing now! I find myself in need of separating my media streaming (Emby) and data storage from my gaming PC that sits in the living room. So this is exactly what I could set up and have a fun project too
Very nice home server! Love the way you added your own "remote management" solution! 💯
Nice build! Really clever use of parts like the pi KVM!
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.
Very cool appearance quiet with a very good connection what should be a home server ! Good job like always !
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.
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.
I thought about doing that aswell but am not sure if it's a fire hazard with the batteries on all the time
@@Alex-fl2yh good point about the battery exploding hadn't considered that, I will pull it out and connect directly to the UPS, thanks!
@@Alex-fl2yh you can easily check the battery health and if they are in good health then there should be no issues. Most laptops entirely bypass the batteries and supply power directly to the laptop when plugged in and the laptop batteries work as a sort of battery backup. Li-Ion batteries won't explode out of nowhere, you can see signs of damage pretty early on in form of bulging or overheating batteries. It's the ideal setup for me personally because laptops being low power, used laptops are cheap. Only issue is the lack of being able to add tons of cheap HDD storage and being limited to the more expensive notebook HDDs or SSDs
Power consumption is crazy for old hardware
@@ITshnikBro pretty manageable if you get anything above or at 6th gen. Mine is a 2 core 4 thread i5 and I run 9 services via Podman (14 images) plus cockpit on it. It also acts like a NAS and saves encrypted backups from my phone and macbooks. The power usage is usually around 5W - 15W at the max. The thing has been running 24/7 for about 3-4 years now without any problems.Only time it really breaks a sweat is when Immich is running its image classification tasks.
Hyped for the OS vid! Defently want a secrt 5g test
Found your channel because of this video. I like the video and setup very much. PiKVM is something, I'm planning to use but I have to switch to an Intel APU first. Greetings from Würzburg
It's the first time I've seen a video from your channel, great content!
Looking forward to part 2
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.
This video came up in my search for Homelabs and I like it! Also... you could totally pass for Daniel Bruhl's Baron Zemo. Keep up the good work!
Great channel, great build. Not sure about the "last you will ever build bit" ..lol Subbed !!
I always love watching your videos. You have a soft voice and face. I can't resist
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.
Nice! I was just looking for something like this
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.
Thanks for the PiKVM tip.
i swear when it comes to this topics your channel is the absolute best
Wow, thank you!
Awesome little build.
Great build and good editing, I was hoping to see the software you use for the cmplete installation.
the pi idea is brilliant. never occurred to me to do that!
Right? I’ve only used them as application servers, but they are flexible hobbyist devices that can do so much more
LOL. I got the same board with ECC and i3 running now for 4 years ;) Good choice!
the J series CPUs are a great option at 15 watts! performance somewhat similar but lower than the i3-6100. i built my home server out of a J4195 on arock board. you can get almost any number of sata ports on a PCIe 1x card 3.0 speed. I've seen 10x sata and 8x sata. inc the MB ports that is plenty.
it really help lot of ways to built my own server
Can't wait for the software vid! Any plans for when you'll post it specifically? :)
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 🫡
Thank you KZhead algorithms for this channel. Subbed!
gutes video wolfgang ! 👌pikvm ist ja mal mega geil
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?
Poor boy, you always have someone to convince and approve
I have a WAF, too. 😞
The pi hidden is dope. Brilliant. Can even install vnc or rdp on it.
Hi, awesome Video! I am wanting to build something similar but run it as a type 1 hypervisor (bare metal) home lab. will the i3-7100 be enough or should I beef it up. And if so, what would you recommend? TIA
You are amazingly talented and intelligent. I love your channel.
Waiting for your 10gb network… Thanks for your work
I love how you explain everything, but I miss a little more about how to set up the OS and install the necessary software to run it properly!
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.
You can also use PCI express/SATA converter cards. 1 PCIe lane can handle like 8 drives easily
@@GeneralKenobi69420 totally a valid option. you can get some (even cheap) SATA cards, just make sure they're host bus adapters (HBA) instead of RAID controllers (not many popular NAS Linux distros handle these particularily well).
just buy the asrock rack 246 wsi. it has a total of 8 sata connections (4 via oculink) and a m.2 slot. also, the board shown in the video does not support hardware transcoding
Thx. Looks like a nice build to copy
thank for the explanation, nice video.
Amazing video !! liked and subscribed.
That was so inspired. I am wondering could you make another video for parts assembling? Thank you
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.
What is the power consuption when idle?
Nice NAS build i had done also in term of smilier size on your video.
What a beast!
Looks 🔥 Cant say that about the looks of my Homeserver 😂😂
Great build video Wolfgang. Do you have an alternative for the Asrock C236 WSI? } It seems to be unobtanium now, even 2nd hand. I need a minimum of 6 SATA ports. I know I can use a PERC/HBA card, but I'd like to have 10GBe too 🙂
Hi Wolfgang. I use 10GBit for my link between my main PC and server. Do you use the SSD you mentioned to take onboard backups and keep them there or then transfer them to mechanical drives? Just curious as I find mine with 8x 4TB drives (Raid6 BTRFS) doesn't hit wire speed (no encryption, Xeon-D SOC) If you need an alternate motherboard I use a Supermicro mini-ITX Motherboard that has 10Gbit (dual) onboard so I can use the PCI-E slot for an HBA for extra drives (it has 6 or 7 Sata onboard already). Ive built mine in a Lian-Li PC-26 which willt take 11 drives. I also use the same PSU and so far after a year it's going well.
Nice video, keep it up, thank you :)
Can't wait!
"Secret Corona 5G Test Site" hahaha nice detail, and very good video! Hope to hit your level one day. Just gotta practice a lot.
I think ur very fair and very in my opinion " we r looking the same way " I'll subscribe u pal ! good luck, keep doing the good work! thanks 4 help!
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.
Also looking forward to software video. Especially as you said you weren't running any VMs
Thanks for this video... You've got me thinking. I went around and looked, but can't find that motherboard. I found Supermicro X11SSM-F and MBD-X11SSM-F-B but none of them come with I/O shield (bummer). Alternatively, why don't I just get an old Dell Optiplex and make the upgrades you did? Your thoughts?
Thanks for your sharing
Is there a video on the ras pi solution for remote management, or is that going to be included in the next one?
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! ❤
PiKVM's website is a bit misleading bc their pitch implies that you *need* to buy their PiKVM hat to use PiKVM. In reality, all you need is a Raspberry Pi (Zero would work too), an HDMI-to-USB capture card (costs $5-7 on Ali), and a power splitter that you can make yourself out of two USB-C cables Intel vPro looks really impressive though. PiKVM might be a good alternative if you want a portable solution that you can plug into anything that has an HDMI out
you posted this video at the right time i have an old i5-6600k i am remaking into a plex server to replace my 10 year old i5-2500. all i really need is that mother board and it should work with my ddr4 ram i have now. if not oh well only 2 items i will have to buy thanks again for a great video. im putting mine into a Fractal Design Define R5 case i got it for a steal from amazon at $75 in a damaged box the case was mint the box looked like it was thrown down 5 flights of stairs.
You and I pretty much have the same build! I haven't met many folks using the C236. Not sure if you're aware, but the C200 chipsets have vPro capability. Meaning when you pair a supported intel CPU you're able to do KVM. That was one of my main draws to this platform. Intel AMT isn't as fleshed out as iLO, but it gets pretty close. Any Xeon series ending in "5" and some i7's have vPro. I've been searching for the last 6 years for something that would replace it. But no serious contenders seem to have come out. I refuse to get the C246 board... More expensive, and they moved the 4 SATA ports to a oculink... without including any cables.
I would love to see a video on how you use the 10gig ethernet or the 10gig ethernet setup in general :)
I've just built a personal home NAS server. I used an Asus P11C-I/ngff2280 motherboard which is a mini-itx server motherboard, with a BMC module slot (very cheap £30 module), 6 sata ports, and two M.2 slots (although I'm not sure whether they can be used at the same time or not). It costs about the same new as the second hand motherboard you bought did. Might be an option for others watching this video
A NAS is literally a file server. I don't see how you can describe it in any other way. I said 'NAS server' to indicate that my machine is used both for file storage and as a server for things like Home Assistant, Plex, Zoneminder, AdGuard, ect... There isn't a single word to describe it, and that seemed the most appropriate.
I recommend the ASUS P10S-I as well, it is a C232 ITX Mainboard. It has 2x SATA and SAS (4x SATA), M.2 NVMe 2242, PCIe x16, IPMI and an internal USB 3.0 port for operation systems like unRAID.
I was looking at synology but will probably copy this build haha
Great video
"Im cheap, so thats what I went with" words to live by! lol
I went with an AMD Ryzen 2700 (about 2 years ago) for my NAS build. it doesn't quite have the transcode prowess of intel igpus made in the last 6 years, but it's got enough cores to do everything I want. I went matx as itx is too restrictive for AMD platforms unless you limit yourself to really niche boards. By doing that I was able to get 10g, an 8port SAS card, and a low-end GPU. I really hope AMD starts making regular desktop chips with an IGPU that A: aren't last gen cores, B: don't have the pcie16x cut in half. If that ever happens my NAS will get a very big upgrade.
Hi, I interested about A and B reason for that.. could u pls explain about it?
Awesome! 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
WOW! I had no idea that Noctua a.k.a. Team Brown made a fan that sucked!😮 Learn something new everyday.
I just recently built a kinda similar but way higher budget desktop server. It's built on a ryzen 5900X, asrock rack X570D4U-2L2T, 128GB of ECC RAM, and 8x 6TB exos enterprise drives over an HBA. Everything put into the fractal design node 804. Running proxmox with virtualized truenas scale for kubernetes, and linux mint for a couple other services I don't want in containers. I can do lots with it if I need to.
Great Content, i really want to build a NAS myself as well, mainly plex/storage. I find though... can pi's handle 4k? i need a gpu for the transcoding? then obviously just lots of storage with parity.
AFAIK, Pis are capable of hardware accelerated decoding, but I'm not sure how well they handle 4K
Very nice build.My only remark is that instead of using a mainboard with 8 sata ports , I will probably go for an 8 port hbe sas card (from 20 to 70 euros depending on the model). In any case I separate my nas from my home server (that is just a lenovo m900 tiny with 32gb of ram , a 1tb ssd + 2tb hdd).
Thx from Brazil
Nice work! What about the power consumption and fans noise?
This is what I am interested in. What is the draw from the wall idle, normal usage and under load. This is where a QNAP or Synology are great.
if i remember correct, my qnap ts-453a also cost around 400+€ back in 2016, no 10GbE, only 4 hdd´s, max 8GB ram, celeron. i think the price here is okayish for the potential performance, but i am not my wife^^
Everytime I watch your video I wanna buy new things 😂
Great video and awesome editing. Thanks for mentioning ECC RAM, I feel like a lot of people don't talk about that when it comes to a NAS build. Is it required...no, but if you want to minimize the chance of data corruption you should probably use it (especially if you go with ZFS).
why "especially with ZFS"? ZFS doesn't require ECC and is the most robust FS even for systems without ECC ram.
False belief that ECC RAM minimises anything. Virtually all modern OSes and UEFIs are immunity aware to correct in-flight bit errors. ECC is just data centre premium.
Very nice build ! If you want to go with any other ITX motherboard, a pcie card to SATA could do the work.
good point. huge savings.
what os do you use for the server? also how to load up services on it? for example can i install bitwarden on this machine and have it work for all devices on the network?
Cracking up at the last nas I ever have to build comment at the end. Pretty sure that failure or obsolescence of gear, or the simple desire for better or faster will make that unrealistic. I am expanding my home lab now so will likely be building some truenas or unraid setup, to get iscsi support for VMs on the network.
I hear you. Redid my home “lab” about 3 years ago. I still use my of the original equipment, but I definitely did not buy enough storage for my Linux ISOs. In fact, I’ve bought more drives for my NAS every year as my needs have changed.
Looks better than the ML 350 G8 I have showed in a closet
Really neat build. Seems like a very cost effective 10Gbit NAS. What is the power draw like on this NAS?
19W with the drives spun down
I'm building a new NAS using some of the components that you've recommended in your video, but instead of the Asrock C236 WSI I got the previous version of the motherboard (E3C236D2I). Would this one also fit? What do you think? There are not many differences besides that there is no HDMI output. Thanks and keep up the good work!
Looks good to me!
Nice!!!👍🏾
Great project ! Awesome ! I am just wondering why such as storage power is needed at home. Any specific use case to have this much ? Thank you !!
Piracy
Great, which nas system are you using?
2:22 How did you get that multi- interface? What OS have you installed?
Excellent build especially with the custom KVM & 10 Gbps solutions. I believe an older server motherboard would've fit your needs better. More RAM for ZFS, built in IPMI for remote management and lower TDP server CPU like Avoton/Atom (Eg - Asrock C2550D4I). Also your hard drive choices were interesting, why not consider WD Gold enterprise drives ?
I'm afraid older server motherboard won't support CPU with good quicksync capabilities, that would've meant adding GPU for transcoding which would increase cost, heat and electrical consumption. However I do agree older server motherboards are pretty cool.
@@jstan5802 Yes, I see now. This is not just network attached storage but a server with multiple uses including plex which will use the quick sync cpu feature from intel.
Bravo!
as an DIYer and Data horder, I can assure you this is not the last NAS you ever build. I've moved from 2 bay J1900 to, a 6 bay 10100T NAS in 5 years, build 3 NAS, now I am once again looking for a 8 bay case.
Look at the Silverstone CS280 case for 8 bays with a dedicated backplane.
I was able to grab HGST He14 drives for around $170 USD each, I have 12 of them total 9 are active, with 3 being parity drives for ZFS and then 3 spares that will hot swap in as soon as there is a failure of any of the drives. I did have room for an ATX system though so I had the option for HBA cards and a 10GBe NIC and a quadro p2200 for hardware Plex encoding. This is a great build for those who want the a smaller option. I run a ton of VMs as well as using it for a build server for work so I have 2 2699v4 CPUs and 512GB of RAM.
Do you have any issues running separate gpu for the VMware
Good vid, sub'd!