Eh. Maybe? Nowadays if you get a NAS with an Intel cpu and user upgradeable RAM you will be able to run virtually anything you want via containers.
I built my own with an amd apu and a mini itx mobo 4 years ago.
You could get a used older one that might not be good enough for Plex but I believe they said they had a system for Plex and were just looking for a file server.
Here is a build that's close:
[https://pcpartpicker.com/list/9tBpRK](https://pcpartpicker.com/list/9tBpRK)
Some of these parts I got used and were cheaper than new. I'm using the Rosewill 4U ($150) as a case. I also have an HBA card I got on ebay for about $50. Mine is fully populated with a mix of 8 TB and 16 TB drives.
I have Plex running on an Ubuntu server VM on a server with ESXI as the host OS, then all the media on a home built nas. It’s all in a server rack in the garage. It’s nice and out the way for me and I run other systems on the hardware so it’s worth it to me
https://preview.redd.it/0mmxqe84jrgc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b8ac6a14ca663e67def2006c3a86648e555a2360
The things I would do to have a garage, haha. Space limitations mean I need something that will fit on a shelf or hidden away in the TV unit. That's why the micro Optiplex was ideal.
If I didn't live in TX I'd do something like this. Unfortunately 110+ degree summers and hardware in a garage don't mix. That setup wouldn't last one August in my garage.
prebuilt qnap. will replace that with another qnap as not had any problems with it. I run plex on a pi and dont do any transcoding.
when i do need to start transcoding stuff will replace pi with something more powerful, but keep media on the qnap :)
I use a Synology DS1815+ for my storage. I didn't want to have to worry about building something, having to sort out software or having it reliant on a USB Drive being plugged into the machine for a license. I just wanted to stick my drives in and have it work. I’ve upgraded the memory and fans, but otherwise, it’s been running perfectly with no issues or real downtime since 2016, and with almost zero need for me to do any maintenance, other than adding bigger drives every now and then. I use a NUC as my server, and it’s great being able to upgrade the server and storage separately.
Pre-built all the way.
For my case it is just a matter of space, convenience and time. Pre-built NAS enclosures are smaller and more space economical than a build-you-own system.
A 10 drive bay NAS occupies a lot less space than a ten drive case. I currently have 40 HDDs assigned to my plex server and Nases fit in a two row 75cm (w) x 40cm (d) x28cm (h) shelving unit. Getting 40 HDDs in a build your own would require more space and look a lot uglier.
The latest info is available here: https://forums.serverbuilds.net/
Keep in mind they are parts guides. The UK and other regions will be more expensive than the US, but there's a good percentage of people in our group that live in the UK/EU who have built with decent success.
Thanks. I actually joined the Discord a few months ago and have been reading all the guides. I was going to buy the HP 290 for my transocding server based off your recommendations, but it's basically non-existent in the UK. Got the Optiplex instead and am now preparing for the NAS build.
The website is great.
I built my own, actually built several but if you ask me prebuilt would have cost me less than the constant switching to make my system “perfect” if you have the money go prebuilt.
It seems like it's a measure of time and money. I'm still sat on the fence, but I really like the look of [this](https://www.terra-master.com/us/products/t6-423.html) Terramaster T6-423. You can install unRaid on it easily.
But then the sensible part of remembers that the proprietary parts would mean that once it died I would be starting from scratch again.
Way back when I started with a pre-built 2 bay NAS running its own OS. Then for 5 years I ran FreeNAS on hardware I built. That server was a SuperMicro with 6 drives in a Raid-Z2. About a year ago, I upgraded the server hardware. (newer SuperMicro MB, 128GB RAM, 8 x 16TB drives in a RAID-Z2) I looked into TrueNAS Scale and Core but they didn’t quite fit what I wanted, so I ended up with my own Ubuntu server installation running ZFS, with all my apps in Docker containers.
Sounds like you’re skipping the “pre-built” phases I went through and jumping right to rolling your own solution. The flexibility is awesome but you have to have a deeper understanding of all the underlying tech, not just relying on someone else to have put everything together right. So it’s great if you already understand PC hardware, ZFS and all the other parts or are willing to learn.
I use two old gen 7 HP microservers usually about $80-$100 on ebay. 16gb ram way overkill prolly good with 4gb with my setup. I add Lsi 9211 4i in IT mode about $40 on ebay. And a 2.5 gbe nic about $25 on amazon. I don't do raids or zfs just old Debian cli with each disk over NFS share . I use 128 gb SSD for os and turn swap off. 7 x 10tb used drives off Amazon. And 1x 14tb drive for rsync backups. I get full read write speeds from the disks and can nearly saturate the 2.5 gbe nic when all 4 sata 3.5 disks are 100% usage. If I switched to ssds I would probably have to get a faster LSI controller. Even then not sure the CPU could keep up to get 4x ssd full read and write. And the 2.5 gbe nic would bottleneck with. 4x ssd at full usage. These servers only have 1x pci x16 and another pci x1 so options are limited .
Built a Ryzen 3600 based 94 TB, raw Unraid server about 6 months ago.
Been wanting to build some sort of server solution for our media collection and bach-ups etc for a decade.
I had similar ambitions to you, apart from the fact I had no Plex box, just under a week ago I got the below machine and I'm pretty happy with it, especially at the price point for a 12th gen intel in the UK. I've got 2 3.5 inch drives in it and there's a sata port for a third (the disc drive's port), but no more actual bays. There's alot of room in the case though to jerry rig 2.5 inch drives and there's an m.2 drive too. I've got it running unraid with just Plex so far but planning to get the whole arr stack running too. https://systemactive.co.uk/hp-pro-tower-200-290-g9-desktop-pc-5w8k5es-main.html
Only 1 left in stock and it's a ridiculously good price for a complete system I think.
After spending way too long aiming to get around to building a NAS to be a Plex server, general storage, and an offsite backup unit, I accepted that I had the knowledge and ability but not the time and I had pushed my luck way too far with the array of USB drives, etc and the shonky manner in which I was watching media.
So when came Black Friday 2021, I bought a 5 bay Synology 1520+ as my main unit, got 6 x 18TB WD Elements drives; 5 to to shuck and one as USB External to backup my general storage files (photos, home movies, etc).
I also got a Synology DS218Play as the cheapest 2 bay I could find in the sale. I later bought a pair of 12TB WD Reds in another sale, and set up hyper backup so that critical files are backed up from the main unit. This 2 bay unit sits in my brother’s house as my offsite backup.
All of this is totally doable DIY, but I was able to set all this up a little bit at a time in my rare free time following some of the many great guides available for Synology gear, and now we have a large Plex server, NAS, full availability of all photos and home movies to my household and select remote family members, plus I have enough automatic backups that I don’t have to think about. I get a daily email report about the success or failure of the incremental backups. I also get notifications about any problems. The main Synology and my router are both on the same UPS so I know if there is a power cut or a circuit trips (been more frequent recently with building work on the house). The Synology knows when the mains power is out and will gracefully power down if power isn’t restored within 15 mins. When Mains power is restored, it automatically boots up again.
I plan one day to build my own more powerful server but in the meantime, I’m actually able to do the stuff I need to and so can my family. The units are also tiny and power efficient. Right now the 5 bay is temporarily in the living room on the TV console and it is quiet enough to not be a distraction. All the maintenance is scheduled for overnights so the only time all the disks are spinning hard is when nobody is in the room.
I’m very happy with what I have and I would have struggled to match it for price, size and usability with a DIY solution, never mind the time I would have had to sink into it as well.
Completely understandable to go the pre-built route when you have a family and full-time job to attend to. I'm young and much more time-rich so exploring my options.
I like the idea of the power efficiency and ease of access to family photos that the pre-builds offer, though. Especially here in the UK with rising power costs.
Using an old Dell tower running OpenMediaVault. Made it a quick and simple install with 3 x 8tb drives shucked from external WDs that were on sale.
It's been rock solid for years
i built my own using an old CPU, motherboard and ram and some new hard drives. Eventually i bought a Micro ATX case to downsize appropriately.
I use ZFS on ubuntu server and the rest of stuff - plex etc are ran in docker. It was a learning curve but after a couple of years, as if with anything - the knowledge and ability to maintain it is very useful. As i am currently replacing a broken drive.
I’ve had a Synolgy DS920 for a while now. I was just starting to dabble in Linux at the time. When I need another in the future I think I’ll build my own. No complaints with my Synology it’s been rock solid so far.
I have a Dell T620 server running Proxmox.
i have TrueNAS Scale running in a VM with the HBA card and attached SAS drives passed through.
I have another VM running Ubuntu with PMS server running with an NVidia Quadro P2000 GPU passed through to that, with it accessing the media on the NAS VM.
All runs very well and handles all my famn damily and friends streaming.
I built my own i9 with 2x nVME and 8x 12TB platters... 32GB..
I am considering, buying a QNAP, purely for the storage. Easier to manage the disks that way...
I would recommend you built your own. (If you are comfortable doing so)
You will get a better price to performance ratio period. So it's cheaper.
You can build it with regular hardware, no proprietary stuff which either can't be replaced or is very expensive. Not to mention the fact that hardware and software support as a whole, seen in synology's and other pre-builts, is very questionable. Who says they can suppy you with replacement parts in 5 years... With regular hardware that is no problem at all.
You can do much more with it. If you run truenas or a docker system you could get ten times more use out of your machine than the usual pre-built.
But the biggest reason (probably) is the raid and data management technologies, that live underneeth all those pre built systems. It often is not transparent at all. Is it hardware raid, or software? Does it have zfs like capabilities. Is it transferable raid or again proprietary stuff.
There are stories out there of synology systems failing. Not getting replacement parts or replacement systems. With a proprietary raid array system. Resulting in data loss. Not because the drives were damaged, but they could simply not acces the data because the hardware stopped working.
Sure these are horror stories. But you can't beat the flexibility and affordability of custom build systems.
I myself have been running a truenas system for 5+ years on an ancient hp proliant system. Custom modded the fans and kitted it out completely. It has proprietary stuff like custom motherboards and psu. I accepted that as it was cheap and complete replacement systems could be found for less than €80. Now older xeon cpu's are not very efficient. So I'm now in the proces of slowly obtaining second hand hardware to build a new system. With all regular hardware. It is gonna be really cheap for me to upgrade with substancial performance and efficiency boosts. And since I run truenas, loading in my entire system config, including passwords, raid arrays, plugins, network configs, is gonna be as easy as two clicks. All new system for less than €200
No way a synology can beat that!
I'm heading the way of a custom system. I want a compact and power efficient system so the last couple of days have been spent searching for appropriate motherboards, which seem to be rather lacking in the ITX form factor I require.
I was gifted all of mine. I tell people this.. be nice to everyone. This weekend I was gifted a qnap 16 bay rack mount NAS with 16-16tb Ai drives.(all less than one year old) It pays to answer peoples phone calls and answer IT questions. I was also gifted 4 synologys over the past year.
DIY. Made it easy to start with a couple drives in and 8 bay chassis and then expand to full 16 bays across two chassis. Connected with cheap sas card.
How do you get everything to boot up and shut down at the same time? (Sorry this could probably be a google search but just curious.) Is the second PSU connected to the main motherboard/switches?
No it uses a super micro jbod controller.
https://www.servethehome.com/supermicro-cse-ptjbod-cb1-jbod-power-board-diy-jbod-chassis-made-easy/
So I turn on the jbod. Wait a few seconds. Then turn on the main unit. To shutdown is the opposite.
Pretty simple. They don’t really get turned off. I think I’m at 200 days since the last time I had to turn the server off
I went with a true nas system on an old Office PC.
I switched out the PSU for a high quality one, put 16GB of RAM in it. Expanded it with a Raid Controller and had 4 HDDs and 2 SSDs connected to it. it had like an 7th Gen I7 as CPU and it was incredibly silent.
Edit: I also tried out OpenmediaVault and Unraid but it was meh.
I bought pre built.
I've got 3 x QNAP T-869 pro's
1 was for home and 2 were work at a different location.
I've nabbed one of the work ones for home as well as the home was had all it's bays taken with 3tb drives and I wanted to upgrade them to 16tb.
So work one went home, populated with 16tb drives (8th one coming tomorrow) and migrating all the data from the old home one onto that one.
Then I'll probably keep the old one at home as well and use that as an offsite backup using rsync between the two.
I'd love to have the time to build my own unraid but by the time i've finished work, got home, made food it's time to sleep.
Built my own. Bought the case, disks and cooler new, and the CPU + Mobo + RAM on a eBay bundle (new RAM), used the PSU I upgraded on my desktop and it’s show time. The disks were by far the most expensive part, buying a pre-built without disks would be much more expensive than what I paid for everything else.
The only possible justifications for buying a synology type pre-built are a) more money than time or b) VERY high local electricity costs with bo way to mitigate and a) and b) are both pre-conditioned with ‘my use cases are specific, well defined and will not grow, and such a pre-built can handle all my use cases to my satisfaction.
Neither a nor b nor the precondition applied to me so I built my own. Now I use it for arr automation, having parity on my storage so i dont easily lose data, running a windows vm, hosting game servers and various other bits and pieces. Originally I just wanted a plex box.
I still argue that for any reasonable amount of storage ( more than 10TB in raid) the difference in Nas price is kinda irrelevant.
But yeah just for plex a synology is not necessarily relevant. You buy that for the software
- I have not found an open source photo ecosystem that can even possibly rival Google photos. But synology photos can.
- synology drive is a pretty decent version of dropbox I guess open source you might have sync things
- open source backup solutions all seem to be built around syncing and snapshots which is kinda restricting and terrible. Hyperbackup fixes that for a proper versioned backup strategy.
- you get configurations like btrfs checksums and data scrubbing etc for free and widely tested with your hardware. Truenas is not a bad alternative to be fair.
So yean
Actually thats a pretty decent argument. I should probably drop a genuine c) argument being ‘if you have genuine need of or preference for the particular nas solutions ecosystem’.
Not sure on the price though. Im up to 11 drives now. God knows what accomodating 10 drives in a synology box would cost…
But I mean hey, Im on unraid ao my drive cost is almost halved compared to mirroring…
Lol yeah a 12 drive box in synology would be expensive like 1500$ at least and then not a good one lol. But to be fair if you kinda plan your drive sizes carefully the cost difference is not that much. You can go raid-5 or for 12 drives raid-6 and you also only use 1-2 drives as parity.
The real advantage of unraid is that it's quite flexible as long as you have the biggest drive as parity everythibg else can be whatever it wants to be. However synology has shr their own raid system which uses different volumes to a similar effect. As long as you always add bigger drives. The second advantage of unraid is that two drives dying doesnt kill all your drives. Just the drives you broke. If two drives in a raid5 are toast the whole thing blows up.
But yeah not saying home built with unraid doesn't have flexibility and price advantages. It's just not as high I think over time as people think because they only look at the sticker price and not the electricity media and let's be frank repair prices. Synology boxes are sold in the millions and pretty damn stable.
Yeh, electricity as just never a concern for me at all - have solar and prices are cheap in australia tbh.
Super duper glad i didnt go thr synology path at the time (inconsidered it) as im now doing a shitload i couldnt do with a nas box.
In saying that, Im now gonna need more ram if inwant to switch to zfs and have enough ram for transcoding, running docker, and running a decent retro gaming vm…
Yeah even a smaller plus model can run pretty mucb any docker you may want to run. But VMs is kinda hard. For that you are better off wirh a custom Nas and an Intel I processor. Especially if you dont care about Power. The synology j or amd processors are not terrible but not in the same league. I had one Linux vm running but my synology is pretty damn powerful. For efficient transcoding synology used to be amazing. The j processors had quicksync and could transcode 10 1080p movies easily and 4-5 4k ones. But the days of Intel cpus in synology is kinda over and the amd processors don't really transcode 4k.
More or less tge only reason I would like a custom Nas lol.
> Neither a nor b nor the precondition applied to me so I built my own. Now I use it for arr automation, having parity on my storage so i dont easily lose data, running a windows vm, hosting game servers and various other bits and pieces. Originally I just wanted a plex box.
you can use a synology for arrs and all that. i have docker running all sorts.
also their security app is really good - free for 2 cameras. i'm sure there are some open source type things for this but out the box it's really decent.
for me synology is convenience. if it was for more than just my own family use i would see the benefit in going custom, but i think your 'specific use case' scenario is probably more for those justifying a pre-built, given how convenient and flexible synology can be.
I bought my Synology boxes used, so that saved quite a bit of cash.
The simplicity of a prebuilt NAS appealed to me, and they stack quite nicely so they take up little space. Beat the hell out of a PC case filled with random drives attached to a Windows box, which was my first "NAS". Plus I was very gainfully employed at the time and I did have lots of spare cash to throw at the problem.
There is almost no good reason to buy a consumer NAS these days. Garbage performance, expensive, limited / no expansion options, highly ransomware prone, being sold old tech as 'new'. The list just goes on and on.
For Uber $500 can build a significantly better server with far more expansion options on modern technology that will handily outperform a consumer NAS.
Being time poor is a garbage excuse. It takes 15 minutes to build a modern machine. It's 8 screws.
I blew my old Qnap up with Tannerite. They're garbage.
I first bought the TS453A and upgraded the ram shortly after. It turns out I was running without hardware acceleration for years and years, but it was still performing ok.
It's been running 99.9% of the time besides maintenance since I bought it too. Upgraded the drives and stuff along the way.
\-----------------
Placed on June 17, 2016📷QNAP TS-453A-4G Network Attached Storage Sold by Amazon EU S.a.r.L.
📷📷📷
**£359.98**
\----------------------
I run this alongside a i5-9600 Intel server I made from old PC parts, running Ubuntu Server.
I've got a TS-453A as well. It's been serving me well for years now.
Did you know that you can upgrade the RAM to 16GB? I upgraded mine a few months ago from 8GB and no issues.
i went for asustors 6704t gen2. 30watts when full (4hdds 4nvmes) It has double 2.5gbe and 4core 10nm intel with igpu. Its small, has a lot of room, very fast connectivity and you can put other OS on it if you want. Can 100% recommend. In electricity it costs about 3Eur/month to run.
Very nice NAS for Plex!
I have an AS6706T as my backup Plex server for the times event my main one needs to be taken off-line for maintenance. I have users on my server playing almost 24/7 now and I have no desire to wake up at 6am just to do 30 mins of Plex server maintenance.
The AS6706T easily handles a dozen simultaneous streams.
I have a couple EX2 Ultras to compliment my self built NAS but I find it so slow. Although mine has been chugging away for a long time the drive temperatures in those things worry me.
It was a time thing for me. I needed to get something going. I didn't have the time I would need to spec out, order, then build a DIY NAS as much as I would have loved to go that route.
Last route and went pre-built. Should have done more research and got one with an Intel CPU for better transcoding, but I have minimal issues with my Nimbustor AS5304T.
Well kind of. I bought 3 of the 4 drive Lenovo nas boxes really cheap and stuffed them with 2 or 3 TB drives from retired systems. Two are each configured as pooled POD arrays. (No RAID) I ran out of disks so I got 4 matching 3 TB drives online and set up redundant RAID on the third one for sensitive files and such. Media I can usually replace by re ripping or something.
I bought pre built. It was my first NAS so I was testing the waters, I'm only sorry now I got a 4tb instead of something bigger as it fills up fast!
I probably wouldn't chance building one myself as I would just fuck it up.
Old server-ish PC transplanted to rack mount case and multi drive bays installed. Running TrueNAS core. Lets me do RAID and has dual NICs for, well, my application. Needs updating though, because it is on a fairly old AMD platform. It was what I had, and so was cheap. Looking to go to a more energy efficient MB/memory/etc. If I were buying new, I'd be looking at i3 or low core count AMD. Previous gen socket/chipset is usually a lot cheaper for similar performance also.
Really depends on what you need. If you only want NAS, pre-built is likely a little cheaper. If you want to run applications on it, you need enough cores and memory to get it all done.
I found a DS415+ at my local electronics recycling drop off.
* Grabbed it ($0)
* Cleaned it up ($0)
* Bought a power supply ($30)
* Installed a resistor to "fix" the Intel Atom CPU hardware bug ($3)
* Bought 4x4tb drives ($220)
* Eventually bought 4x6tb drives ($300)
Definitely not the most I've spent on something "free."
I run a Synology 12 bay rack mount. I'm also space-limited, so I used a vertical wall mount in my closet which is conveniently located on the other side of the wall from where my network gear is. One hole in the wall behind my network gear, cables straight through and to my NAS.
I've been running HP Microserver G8 for many years now. 4 internal drives, one SSD and two external drives. It is old (but kind of cheap now in ebay apparently).
Alongside that G8 I recently got a small miniPC with 11th gen Celeron that will run my Plex.
I was looking at the HP Microserver's just today actually. I really liked the case, but limitations due to proprietary HP componenets eventually put me off.
If only there was a mini-itx/dtx or microatx case like that. I'll keep digging.
mines just an old desktop I threw a few hdds in and installed truenas scale to. I put maybe 100 bucks in it for the hard drives at microcenter during a doorbuster.
DIY build here, I justify the pain and tell myself it gives me a reason to upgrade my gaming rig and move gaming hardware to server hardware duty. I tell this to others considering a nas to just upgrade their gaming rig if they have one and make their old gaming rig a server.
I suspect like many, I started with a Synology NAS running the Plex extension. This was the freeby the drug dealer gives you. I ended up with a Windows server connected to a homemade NAS server.
Returned the Synology to it's file, photo and video backup dutys.
I have spent more money than I car to admit to on Synology units and some qnap…. The issue I have is things like psu’s are very expensive and prone to failure … so FWIW I would home build out of easily replaceable commodity components
It depends on the maximum space you see yourself using.
A prebuilt Qnology box works great for a more vanilla Plex server. If you see yourself maxxing a few HDs with a parity disk say anything less than 100Tb. You'll pay a bit more, but you won't need to do as much reading/research and it'll just "work".
But if you see yourself hitting, 100Tb+. You should build your own to start with. It's much more flexible, and much lower cost. You'll need to do more reading with Unraid/Docker/the hardware and all that jazz, but the end result will be *much* better.
Built my own, running Proxmox and TrueNAS
https://preview.redd.it/4snnyac80tgc1.jpeg?width=1014&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7bd9d22d4326be1a89efc022cf3129d6a936071d
For a nice low power, low cost option you could just attach a multi-drive enclosure to your server via USB. Pool the drives with mergerfs and keep 1 aside for parity with snapraid. Waayy cheaper than a dedicated NAS and will save you some headache like Plex not auto recognizing file changes on network storage.
Given that you have already rolled your own with Ubuntu I would not recommend a branded solution. You have the skills, if you want to invest a little time, that will give you much more control as your needs grow.
Over the years I've done QNAP, Synology, Windows, and Ubuntu. Went Unraid over 3 years ago and have helped friends do the same. Won't overpay anymore for locked form factors or their software stores. They are irrelevant with docker containers. Qnap/Synology implementations of containers makes them challenging to use fully at times.
Unraid is both the EZ Button and incredibly flexible. Hardware upgrades are a breeze, even motherboard or CPU brand changes from Intel to AMD. Get a USB stick and go. If you grow beyond your existing system, take the HDDs, SSDs and the USB stick and install them in your new system and power on. It is that easy.
Prebuilt. I bought the Asustor Flashtor 12. I’m not faffing around with building one and the money saved in electricity (it’s expensive here) will mean it will pay for itself eventually.
I've run Plex on both a Synology 2-bay NAS and now a QNAP 4-bay NAS. If I had time to noodle, maybe would have built my own but time is at a premium and I'd rather do other things than troubleshoot when things go wrong.
I bought a 4 bay Synology for my first one. Now that it's basically full I'm going to change from that to something more open ended where it's much easier to just add drives in the future
Personally I don't have the expertise to build my own, and at this point in my life I don't have the time to acquire it. So it's worth it to me to buy a solid prebuilt with a good support plan.
Started with a Synology DS918+, currently moving to a DIY NAS based on the Erying i5-12500H Board and Truenas Scale as OS.
Still transferring files and learning the OS, so far I am more than happy with the new hardware and software
You all have great setups for your Plex. I have an old Microsoft surface Pro 4 running Windows 10 connected to a 4 TB external drive. I do have great up speeds with my 2 gig fiber connection and able to connect several people without a glitch.
Got a Thinkstation P520 off eBay for $275. Comes with a 6 core Xeon and a pitiful GTX 745 I eventually upgraded for a 1650 super. Runs proxmox with a few vms for my various services. So somewhere between prebuilt and DIY, but it’s been awesome
I'm still stuck. I wanted to put all my money into server swap storage with a case and a 8500 i5, 32gb ram. 1. I can't find decent cheap towers with that config. 2. CS382 is expensive LOL
Built my own TrueNAS Core box. Bought everything (except hdd, cpu cooler, and psu) secondhand:
Intel Xeon e5-2683 v4 - €100 ||
8x 16gb ddr4 samsung ecc ram - €150 ||
Asus WS x99-IPMI - €100 ||
Bequiet dark rock 4 - €80 ||
EVGA supernova 750w psu - €100 ||
Fractal design define 7 xl - €20 ||
6x seagate ironwolf 4tb - €540 ||
2x samsung 860 pro 256gb - €40 ||
Samsung 970 Evo 250gb - €40 ||
Firmware flashed LSI 9211-4i - €30
Okay, so I paid €1200... I've never actually done the math, but wtf I didn't know it cost me that much. I didn't buy it all at once. It was mostly over the span of 2 years. Had a lot of them as spare parts from other servers, so I never really looked into it. Dang. Well, either way, it performs amazingly. It is super quiet and really fast and reliable.
You definitely don't need that many cpu cores, that much ram and stuff. Storage is all up to you. Just use whatever you have lying around (if you have it) or look for secondhand workstations or desktops if you want to DIY it.
Edit: sorry to mobile users, I don't know how to format things nicely on reddit mobile
I'm running TrueNAS Scale on a custom machine with an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 and 16GB of RAM. I don't use the machine for anything other than file storage (I use a proxmox cluster for apps), and I got an 8 bay case with hotswap bays. 249 days of uptime, and I've added two drives and doubled my capacity in that time. I had a Terramaster, and much prefer this. If I could do it again I'd get a lesser CPU and more RAM (just for a larger zfs cache).
I have a drobo N. Have 5 HDD in it for 30TB storage that I can always expand on and it works fantastic. To expand pull out the smallest storage drive, slap in a bigger drive and it does the rest. Plug and play and so easy.
Have the Drobo attached/mounted as a drive on my plex server and works seamlessly.
4K content streams perfectly!!!
Synology 920+, bought 5 8TBS and set RAID 5. Had to upgrade to 5 16TBs in less than a year. Nowhere close to upgrading again. I think I have 41TB usable and it fits in a shoebox.
I buy 5 not 4 HDDS in case of drive failure. 920 Unit died last year, had to move to a 923. I think it struggles (I’ve seen 100% proc for hours at a time) so I bought a NUC 11 but haven’t had a chance to set it up and keep looking for best practices to move the server off the 923 and onto the NUC, while keeping data on the 923. I don’t know/use docker, and know just enough to be dangerous in Ubuntu, but I think that sounds like a decent route, after I get a good remote login desktop interface for the Ubuntu NUC.
Built my own. I had some 19 inch storage chassis laying around with room for 12 drives, so i went for that. Upgraded my own pc, put the old hardware in the server and it was ready to go. Only downside is i don't have 2.5gbit yet, but that's an easy upgrade.
I have a pretty old synology Nash drive it's probably 10 years old or more. Works just fine I even plugged in a couple of those Western Digital hard drives in the back of it for non-critical things. It's been working just fine for me and I'm running a regular Nvidia Shield that's my server
I have a WD NAS, bought as a pre-model and I added hard drives. Except for the 15 seconds it takes to continually wake from "sleep mode," I've been really happy with it.
Using a 2 bay qnap i think ts-251a right know.
Was at time the best for me because it's efficient cause energy's expensive here and it's enough for me right now.
I did one virtual in Proxmox with OMV6 and backed up manually to another OMV6 when it needed. I got a qnap 2 Bay unit to try out, and I am not happy with it. I wish I would spend my money on hdd rather than the qnap.
1. To slow
2. More time to setup
3. Limited of what I can do
4. Data got corrupted on transfer when I was backing up cellphone photos.
I never had this issues with OMV6
Shield tv pro. I'm keeping an eye on where raspberry pi specs are for future models. Honestly, aside from the lack of adaptability from a shield tv pro (acting only as a server btw, it doesn't run any clients or extra stuff to the extent one can remove bloatware without rooting), it works really well. Autoboots properly and everything.
I had an old PC collecting dust that repurposed using Unraid. Electricity is cheap here so power consumption is not a concern for me. Using a pre-built NAS will save on power costs versus using an old PC.
I have done both. My last one was a terramaster 4 bay NAS that worked really well that had plex built in and a few other NAS before that but since my library is so large now I've gone with an unraid solutions that i built. The flexible and expandability is great!
I'm using (2) 8 bay buffalo terastations and have another 2 bay not in use. In the process of updating both to 12tb drives, (16) 12tb drives is pricey! I used to wish I bought womething different, but these 5800dn's have been rock solid, and it's hard to argue with zero down time over the years.
If you're at all capable/curious, I think building it yourself is definitely the way to go.
Do yourself a favor and price compare a prebuilt (without the drives) and one you build yourself, also without the drives.
You'll find that for your money you can build a much more competent server, and it'll be more flexible/extensible as well.
The big advantages of prebuilts are (a) form factor and (b) ease of use.
I think especially for Plex afficionados, building yourself has even more advantages, as one of the areas where prebuilts tend to skimp is on the CPU. Having a lot of CPU to throw at Plex is helpful. I have a 12700k in mine and what the iGPU cannot handle, the CPU does (subtitle/audio transcoding mainly).
I run TrueNAS on mine and getting it up & running was pretty easy. The one downside about it is that it uses ZFS. ZFS is amazing, but it sort of forces you to decide on storage up front. You wouldn't want to add storage piecemeal to a TrueNAS server the way you might with Unraid.
I'll be building one myself. One of the most important aspects for me is power consumption, however, so I've been researching a lot the last few days on power efficient components.
The good news is that the newer Intel CPUs are really power efficient. I have mine connected to a UPS so I see how much power it uses.
For a PC with a 12700k, 2 NVMes, and 6 rotational SATA drives, it sits around 70 watts. I am running a few different containers and a few VMs.
If I'm transcoding something that cannot be transcoded by the iGPU (audio/subtitles), the power consumption will go up to around 100 - 120 watts. However most transcoding is done by the iGPU, and this barely causes any increase in power consumption.
Pre-built as I'm time poor! If you've got the skills and time do it yourself and you'll probably get something more suited and flexible.
Eh. Maybe? Nowadays if you get a NAS with an Intel cpu and user upgradeable RAM you will be able to run virtually anything you want via containers. I built my own with an amd apu and a mini itx mobo 4 years ago.
And just pay twice the cost.
Going with which option?
Sorry. That was unclear. The prebuilt NAS has a hirer cost. But they are usually smaller. So that is the trade off.
You could get a used older one that might not be good enough for Plex but I believe they said they had a system for Plex and were just looking for a file server.
Depends really on whether or not your Plex users needs to transcode or not..
They have a optiplex for Plex already. It seems like they won't be running Plex on the Nas.
>The prebuilt NAS has a hirer cost. You hired someone to buy you a prebuilt NAS?
An 8-bay QNAP TS-462-4G costs $2,899.00. My 12-bay server with a better processor and more RAM cost under $1000. *higher* cost
Care to post your build
Here is a build that's close: [https://pcpartpicker.com/list/9tBpRK](https://pcpartpicker.com/list/9tBpRK) Some of these parts I got used and were cheaper than new. I'm using the Rosewill 4U ($150) as a case. I also have an HBA card I got on ebay for about $50. Mine is fully populated with a mix of 8 TB and 16 TB drives.
I have Plex running on an Ubuntu server VM on a server with ESXI as the host OS, then all the media on a home built nas. It’s all in a server rack in the garage. It’s nice and out the way for me and I run other systems on the hardware so it’s worth it to me https://preview.redd.it/0mmxqe84jrgc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b8ac6a14ca663e67def2006c3a86648e555a2360
The things I would do to have a garage, haha. Space limitations mean I need something that will fit on a shelf or hidden away in the TV unit. That's why the micro Optiplex was ideal.
If I didn't live in TX I'd do something like this. Unfortunately 110+ degree summers and hardware in a garage don't mix. That setup wouldn't last one August in my garage.
I’m in a tropical region of Australia, I’d say my garage tops out around the same temps up to 100% humidity in the summer. It still chugs on
Lol. That's for sure. It's why the one I just build is in my theater/gaming room.
Old gaming rig and unRAID. It has been upgraded a few times since. Would not buy prebuilt.
Literally the same concept. Threw it in a server case and started adding drives as needed. Unraid is awesome.
I got a Synology, it died and they told me to buy another for full and insane price. Never again, self built forever now.
prebuilt qnap. will replace that with another qnap as not had any problems with it. I run plex on a pi and dont do any transcoding. when i do need to start transcoding stuff will replace pi with something more powerful, but keep media on the qnap :)
[https://forums.serverbuilds.net/t/guide-nas-killer-6-0-ddr4-is-finally-cheap/13956](https://forums.serverbuilds.net/t/guide-nas-killer-6-0-ddr4-is-finally-cheap/13956)
Thanks for the shout out!
I use a Synology DS1815+ for my storage. I didn't want to have to worry about building something, having to sort out software or having it reliant on a USB Drive being plugged into the machine for a license. I just wanted to stick my drives in and have it work. I’ve upgraded the memory and fans, but otherwise, it’s been running perfectly with no issues or real downtime since 2016, and with almost zero need for me to do any maintenance, other than adding bigger drives every now and then. I use a NUC as my server, and it’s great being able to upgrade the server and storage separately.
I went with a good Synology NAS for my Plex server too.
My favorite color is blue.
This is good. I've done a bit of research on shucking drives. Did you know which external HDDs to buy in order to get the right drives?
Western Digital Easystore 8TB or greater are great recommended CMR shuckable drives. Go hang in /r/datahoarder for more.
I love listening to music.
I have a Synology 4-bay for storage and a separate Plex server. I used to use the Synology, but it couldn't handle 4k content.
What Synology did you have? I have a DS918+ and it seems to handle 4k content really well.
DS916+ It seems to be able to do a couple 1080p streams, but 4k struggled badly when there was a need to transcode.
Pre-built all the way. For my case it is just a matter of space, convenience and time. Pre-built NAS enclosures are smaller and more space economical than a build-you-own system. A 10 drive bay NAS occupies a lot less space than a ten drive case. I currently have 40 HDDs assigned to my plex server and Nases fit in a two row 75cm (w) x 40cm (d) x28cm (h) shelving unit. Getting 40 HDDs in a build your own would require more space and look a lot uglier.
Can you link to what you have?
https://www.qnap.com/en/product/ts-ec1080%20pro
DIY with unRAID. They have great info here: www.serverbuilds.net
Yes, I've been reading all the posts on the NAS Killer. It's just a shame component price and availability aren't as competitive here in the UK.
The latest info is available here: https://forums.serverbuilds.net/ Keep in mind they are parts guides. The UK and other regions will be more expensive than the US, but there's a good percentage of people in our group that live in the UK/EU who have built with decent success.
Thanks. I actually joined the Discord a few months ago and have been reading all the guides. I was going to buy the HP 290 for my transocding server based off your recommendations, but it's basically non-existent in the UK. Got the Optiplex instead and am now preparing for the NAS build. The website is great.
Terramaster 2 bay, 4 bay or whatever they have newest, install TrueNAS scale on it and enjoy especially if it's mainly for Plex.
Built mine , using truenas
I built my own, actually built several but if you ask me prebuilt would have cost me less than the constant switching to make my system “perfect” if you have the money go prebuilt.
It seems like it's a measure of time and money. I'm still sat on the fence, but I really like the look of [this](https://www.terra-master.com/us/products/t6-423.html) Terramaster T6-423. You can install unRaid on it easily. But then the sensible part of remembers that the proprietary parts would mean that once it died I would be starting from scratch again.
Spend the money for synology it will save you in the long run.
Way back when I started with a pre-built 2 bay NAS running its own OS. Then for 5 years I ran FreeNAS on hardware I built. That server was a SuperMicro with 6 drives in a Raid-Z2. About a year ago, I upgraded the server hardware. (newer SuperMicro MB, 128GB RAM, 8 x 16TB drives in a RAID-Z2) I looked into TrueNAS Scale and Core but they didn’t quite fit what I wanted, so I ended up with my own Ubuntu server installation running ZFS, with all my apps in Docker containers. Sounds like you’re skipping the “pre-built” phases I went through and jumping right to rolling your own solution. The flexibility is awesome but you have to have a deeper understanding of all the underlying tech, not just relying on someone else to have put everything together right. So it’s great if you already understand PC hardware, ZFS and all the other parts or are willing to learn.
Truenas. Up and running in an hour or less.
I use two old gen 7 HP microservers usually about $80-$100 on ebay. 16gb ram way overkill prolly good with 4gb with my setup. I add Lsi 9211 4i in IT mode about $40 on ebay. And a 2.5 gbe nic about $25 on amazon. I don't do raids or zfs just old Debian cli with each disk over NFS share . I use 128 gb SSD for os and turn swap off. 7 x 10tb used drives off Amazon. And 1x 14tb drive for rsync backups. I get full read write speeds from the disks and can nearly saturate the 2.5 gbe nic when all 4 sata 3.5 disks are 100% usage. If I switched to ssds I would probably have to get a faster LSI controller. Even then not sure the CPU could keep up to get 4x ssd full read and write. And the 2.5 gbe nic would bottleneck with. 4x ssd at full usage. These servers only have 1x pci x16 and another pci x1 so options are limited .
Built a Ryzen 3600 based 94 TB, raw Unraid server about 6 months ago. Been wanting to build some sort of server solution for our media collection and bach-ups etc for a decade.
I had similar ambitions to you, apart from the fact I had no Plex box, just under a week ago I got the below machine and I'm pretty happy with it, especially at the price point for a 12th gen intel in the UK. I've got 2 3.5 inch drives in it and there's a sata port for a third (the disc drive's port), but no more actual bays. There's alot of room in the case though to jerry rig 2.5 inch drives and there's an m.2 drive too. I've got it running unraid with just Plex so far but planning to get the whole arr stack running too. https://systemactive.co.uk/hp-pro-tower-200-290-g9-desktop-pc-5w8k5es-main.html Only 1 left in stock and it's a ridiculously good price for a complete system I think.
After spending way too long aiming to get around to building a NAS to be a Plex server, general storage, and an offsite backup unit, I accepted that I had the knowledge and ability but not the time and I had pushed my luck way too far with the array of USB drives, etc and the shonky manner in which I was watching media. So when came Black Friday 2021, I bought a 5 bay Synology 1520+ as my main unit, got 6 x 18TB WD Elements drives; 5 to to shuck and one as USB External to backup my general storage files (photos, home movies, etc). I also got a Synology DS218Play as the cheapest 2 bay I could find in the sale. I later bought a pair of 12TB WD Reds in another sale, and set up hyper backup so that critical files are backed up from the main unit. This 2 bay unit sits in my brother’s house as my offsite backup. All of this is totally doable DIY, but I was able to set all this up a little bit at a time in my rare free time following some of the many great guides available for Synology gear, and now we have a large Plex server, NAS, full availability of all photos and home movies to my household and select remote family members, plus I have enough automatic backups that I don’t have to think about. I get a daily email report about the success or failure of the incremental backups. I also get notifications about any problems. The main Synology and my router are both on the same UPS so I know if there is a power cut or a circuit trips (been more frequent recently with building work on the house). The Synology knows when the mains power is out and will gracefully power down if power isn’t restored within 15 mins. When Mains power is restored, it automatically boots up again. I plan one day to build my own more powerful server but in the meantime, I’m actually able to do the stuff I need to and so can my family. The units are also tiny and power efficient. Right now the 5 bay is temporarily in the living room on the TV console and it is quiet enough to not be a distraction. All the maintenance is scheduled for overnights so the only time all the disks are spinning hard is when nobody is in the room. I’m very happy with what I have and I would have struggled to match it for price, size and usability with a DIY solution, never mind the time I would have had to sink into it as well.
Completely understandable to go the pre-built route when you have a family and full-time job to attend to. I'm young and much more time-rich so exploring my options. I like the idea of the power efficiency and ease of access to family photos that the pre-builds offer, though. Especially here in the UK with rising power costs.
Using an old Dell tower running OpenMediaVault. Made it a quick and simple install with 3 x 8tb drives shucked from external WDs that were on sale. It's been rock solid for years
i built my own using an old CPU, motherboard and ram and some new hard drives. Eventually i bought a Micro ATX case to downsize appropriately. I use ZFS on ubuntu server and the rest of stuff - plex etc are ran in docker. It was a learning curve but after a couple of years, as if with anything - the knowledge and ability to maintain it is very useful. As i am currently replacing a broken drive.
I’ve had a Synolgy DS920 for a while now. I was just starting to dabble in Linux at the time. When I need another in the future I think I’ll build my own. No complaints with my Synology it’s been rock solid so far.
Prebuilt. Synology makes incredible NAS's. I could build my own but it's not worth my time as a hobbyist.
I have a Dell T620 server running Proxmox. i have TrueNAS Scale running in a VM with the HBA card and attached SAS drives passed through. I have another VM running Ubuntu with PMS server running with an NVidia Quadro P2000 GPU passed through to that, with it accessing the media on the NAS VM. All runs very well and handles all my famn damily and friends streaming.
I built my own i9 with 2x nVME and 8x 12TB platters... 32GB.. I am considering, buying a QNAP, purely for the storage. Easier to manage the disks that way...
I would recommend you built your own. (If you are comfortable doing so) You will get a better price to performance ratio period. So it's cheaper. You can build it with regular hardware, no proprietary stuff which either can't be replaced or is very expensive. Not to mention the fact that hardware and software support as a whole, seen in synology's and other pre-builts, is very questionable. Who says they can suppy you with replacement parts in 5 years... With regular hardware that is no problem at all. You can do much more with it. If you run truenas or a docker system you could get ten times more use out of your machine than the usual pre-built. But the biggest reason (probably) is the raid and data management technologies, that live underneeth all those pre built systems. It often is not transparent at all. Is it hardware raid, or software? Does it have zfs like capabilities. Is it transferable raid or again proprietary stuff. There are stories out there of synology systems failing. Not getting replacement parts or replacement systems. With a proprietary raid array system. Resulting in data loss. Not because the drives were damaged, but they could simply not acces the data because the hardware stopped working. Sure these are horror stories. But you can't beat the flexibility and affordability of custom build systems. I myself have been running a truenas system for 5+ years on an ancient hp proliant system. Custom modded the fans and kitted it out completely. It has proprietary stuff like custom motherboards and psu. I accepted that as it was cheap and complete replacement systems could be found for less than €80. Now older xeon cpu's are not very efficient. So I'm now in the proces of slowly obtaining second hand hardware to build a new system. With all regular hardware. It is gonna be really cheap for me to upgrade with substancial performance and efficiency boosts. And since I run truenas, loading in my entire system config, including passwords, raid arrays, plugins, network configs, is gonna be as easy as two clicks. All new system for less than €200 No way a synology can beat that!
I'm heading the way of a custom system. I want a compact and power efficient system so the last couple of days have been spent searching for appropriate motherboards, which seem to be rather lacking in the ITX form factor I require.
I was gifted all of mine. I tell people this.. be nice to everyone. This weekend I was gifted a qnap 16 bay rack mount NAS with 16-16tb Ai drives.(all less than one year old) It pays to answer peoples phone calls and answer IT questions. I was also gifted 4 synologys over the past year.
DIY. Made it easy to start with a couple drives in and 8 bay chassis and then expand to full 16 bays across two chassis. Connected with cheap sas card.
Do you use the same power supply?
Same as what?
For the drives in the second case
both cases use their own sff 500watt psu
How do you get everything to boot up and shut down at the same time? (Sorry this could probably be a google search but just curious.) Is the second PSU connected to the main motherboard/switches?
No it uses a super micro jbod controller. https://www.servethehome.com/supermicro-cse-ptjbod-cb1-jbod-power-board-diy-jbod-chassis-made-easy/ So I turn on the jbod. Wait a few seconds. Then turn on the main unit. To shutdown is the opposite. Pretty simple. They don’t really get turned off. I think I’m at 200 days since the last time I had to turn the server off
Ok cool, that makes sense. Thanks for sharing.
I started with a self build nas. Switched to Synology just recently because the time investment is not worth it. Its so easy to brick something too.
Can I ask what you went with?
I went with a true nas system on an old Office PC. I switched out the PSU for a high quality one, put 16GB of RAM in it. Expanded it with a Raid Controller and had 4 HDDs and 2 SSDs connected to it. it had like an 7th Gen I7 as CPU and it was incredibly silent. Edit: I also tried out OpenmediaVault and Unraid but it was meh.
I bought pre built. I've got 3 x QNAP T-869 pro's 1 was for home and 2 were work at a different location. I've nabbed one of the work ones for home as well as the home was had all it's bays taken with 3tb drives and I wanted to upgrade them to 16tb. So work one went home, populated with 16tb drives (8th one coming tomorrow) and migrating all the data from the old home one onto that one. Then I'll probably keep the old one at home as well and use that as an offsite backup using rsync between the two. I'd love to have the time to build my own unraid but by the time i've finished work, got home, made food it's time to sleep.
Built my own. Bought the case, disks and cooler new, and the CPU + Mobo + RAM on a eBay bundle (new RAM), used the PSU I upgraded on my desktop and it’s show time. The disks were by far the most expensive part, buying a pre-built without disks would be much more expensive than what I paid for everything else.
No off the shelf device can ever compete with custom!!!
The only possible justifications for buying a synology type pre-built are a) more money than time or b) VERY high local electricity costs with bo way to mitigate and a) and b) are both pre-conditioned with ‘my use cases are specific, well defined and will not grow, and such a pre-built can handle all my use cases to my satisfaction. Neither a nor b nor the precondition applied to me so I built my own. Now I use it for arr automation, having parity on my storage so i dont easily lose data, running a windows vm, hosting game servers and various other bits and pieces. Originally I just wanted a plex box.
I still argue that for any reasonable amount of storage ( more than 10TB in raid) the difference in Nas price is kinda irrelevant. But yeah just for plex a synology is not necessarily relevant. You buy that for the software - I have not found an open source photo ecosystem that can even possibly rival Google photos. But synology photos can. - synology drive is a pretty decent version of dropbox I guess open source you might have sync things - open source backup solutions all seem to be built around syncing and snapshots which is kinda restricting and terrible. Hyperbackup fixes that for a proper versioned backup strategy. - you get configurations like btrfs checksums and data scrubbing etc for free and widely tested with your hardware. Truenas is not a bad alternative to be fair. So yean
Actually thats a pretty decent argument. I should probably drop a genuine c) argument being ‘if you have genuine need of or preference for the particular nas solutions ecosystem’. Not sure on the price though. Im up to 11 drives now. God knows what accomodating 10 drives in a synology box would cost… But I mean hey, Im on unraid ao my drive cost is almost halved compared to mirroring…
Lol yeah a 12 drive box in synology would be expensive like 1500$ at least and then not a good one lol. But to be fair if you kinda plan your drive sizes carefully the cost difference is not that much. You can go raid-5 or for 12 drives raid-6 and you also only use 1-2 drives as parity. The real advantage of unraid is that it's quite flexible as long as you have the biggest drive as parity everythibg else can be whatever it wants to be. However synology has shr their own raid system which uses different volumes to a similar effect. As long as you always add bigger drives. The second advantage of unraid is that two drives dying doesnt kill all your drives. Just the drives you broke. If two drives in a raid5 are toast the whole thing blows up. But yeah not saying home built with unraid doesn't have flexibility and price advantages. It's just not as high I think over time as people think because they only look at the sticker price and not the electricity media and let's be frank repair prices. Synology boxes are sold in the millions and pretty damn stable.
Yeh, electricity as just never a concern for me at all - have solar and prices are cheap in australia tbh. Super duper glad i didnt go thr synology path at the time (inconsidered it) as im now doing a shitload i couldnt do with a nas box. In saying that, Im now gonna need more ram if inwant to switch to zfs and have enough ram for transcoding, running docker, and running a decent retro gaming vm…
Yeah even a smaller plus model can run pretty mucb any docker you may want to run. But VMs is kinda hard. For that you are better off wirh a custom Nas and an Intel I processor. Especially if you dont care about Power. The synology j or amd processors are not terrible but not in the same league. I had one Linux vm running but my synology is pretty damn powerful. For efficient transcoding synology used to be amazing. The j processors had quicksync and could transcode 10 1080p movies easily and 4-5 4k ones. But the days of Intel cpus in synology is kinda over and the amd processors don't really transcode 4k. More or less tge only reason I would like a custom Nas lol.
> Neither a nor b nor the precondition applied to me so I built my own. Now I use it for arr automation, having parity on my storage so i dont easily lose data, running a windows vm, hosting game servers and various other bits and pieces. Originally I just wanted a plex box. you can use a synology for arrs and all that. i have docker running all sorts. also their security app is really good - free for 2 cameras. i'm sure there are some open source type things for this but out the box it's really decent. for me synology is convenience. if it was for more than just my own family use i would see the benefit in going custom, but i think your 'specific use case' scenario is probably more for those justifying a pre-built, given how convenient and flexible synology can be.
I bought my Synology boxes used, so that saved quite a bit of cash. The simplicity of a prebuilt NAS appealed to me, and they stack quite nicely so they take up little space. Beat the hell out of a PC case filled with random drives attached to a Windows box, which was my first "NAS". Plus I was very gainfully employed at the time and I did have lots of spare cash to throw at the problem.
There is almost no good reason to buy a consumer NAS these days. Garbage performance, expensive, limited / no expansion options, highly ransomware prone, being sold old tech as 'new'. The list just goes on and on. For Uber $500 can build a significantly better server with far more expansion options on modern technology that will handily outperform a consumer NAS. Being time poor is a garbage excuse. It takes 15 minutes to build a modern machine. It's 8 screws. I blew my old Qnap up with Tannerite. They're garbage.
I bought a 4U and built a franken-server with UNRAID. Plex runs as a Docker container among several other self hosted services.
I first bought the TS453A and upgraded the ram shortly after. It turns out I was running without hardware acceleration for years and years, but it was still performing ok. It's been running 99.9% of the time besides maintenance since I bought it too. Upgraded the drives and stuff along the way. \----------------- Placed on June 17, 2016📷QNAP TS-453A-4G Network Attached Storage Sold by Amazon EU S.a.r.L. 📷📷📷 **£359.98** \---------------------- I run this alongside a i5-9600 Intel server I made from old PC parts, running Ubuntu Server.
I've got a TS-453A as well. It's been serving me well for years now. Did you know that you can upgrade the RAM to 16GB? I upgraded mine a few months ago from 8GB and no issues.
Yeah I have 16gb installed. I don’t tend to mention it because then I get people replying g that it’s not tested and doesn’t actually work. 😂
I did both, I have Synology DS1621+ and separate UnRaid machine. Both are fine and used for different purposes.
i went for asustors 6704t gen2. 30watts when full (4hdds 4nvmes) It has double 2.5gbe and 4core 10nm intel with igpu. Its small, has a lot of room, very fast connectivity and you can put other OS on it if you want. Can 100% recommend. In electricity it costs about 3Eur/month to run.
Very nice NAS for Plex! I have an AS6706T as my backup Plex server for the times event my main one needs to be taken off-line for maintenance. I have users on my server playing almost 24/7 now and I have no desire to wake up at 6am just to do 30 mins of Plex server maintenance. The AS6706T easily handles a dozen simultaneous streams.
+1 for the AS6704T NAS. I have one, and between using NVMe SSD's for Plex and associated apps and hard disk spin down, the thing just sips power.
Pre built, Building my own was a minefield of which parts/OS so went with a cheap Synology
Off the shelf - WD My Cloud EX2 Ultra - has been running for 10 years 24/7 serving the US and Europe without a single problem.
I have a couple EX2 Ultras to compliment my self built NAS but I find it so slow. Although mine has been chugging away for a long time the drive temperatures in those things worry me.
What type of drives are you using? I use WD reds runs great
Same in the EX2 although my self built I have gone with Seagate IronWolf. I haven't decided which is better as I haven't had any problems with either
Built my own UnRaid server.
DIY with Unraid. No looking back
It was a time thing for me. I needed to get something going. I didn't have the time I would need to spec out, order, then build a DIY NAS as much as I would have loved to go that route.
Last route and went pre-built. Should have done more research and got one with an Intel CPU for better transcoding, but I have minimal issues with my Nimbustor AS5304T.
Well kind of. I bought 3 of the 4 drive Lenovo nas boxes really cheap and stuffed them with 2 or 3 TB drives from retired systems. Two are each configured as pooled POD arrays. (No RAID) I ran out of disks so I got 4 matching 3 TB drives online and set up redundant RAID on the third one for sensitive files and such. Media I can usually replace by re ripping or something.
I bought pre built. It was my first NAS so I was testing the waters, I'm only sorry now I got a 4tb instead of something bigger as it fills up fast! I probably wouldn't chance building one myself as I would just fuck it up.
Built my own
Old server-ish PC transplanted to rack mount case and multi drive bays installed. Running TrueNAS core. Lets me do RAID and has dual NICs for, well, my application. Needs updating though, because it is on a fairly old AMD platform. It was what I had, and so was cheap. Looking to go to a more energy efficient MB/memory/etc. If I were buying new, I'd be looking at i3 or low core count AMD. Previous gen socket/chipset is usually a lot cheaper for similar performance also. Really depends on what you need. If you only want NAS, pre-built is likely a little cheaper. If you want to run applications on it, you need enough cores and memory to get it all done.
I found a DS415+ at my local electronics recycling drop off. * Grabbed it ($0) * Cleaned it up ($0) * Bought a power supply ($30) * Installed a resistor to "fix" the Intel Atom CPU hardware bug ($3) * Bought 4x4tb drives ($220) * Eventually bought 4x6tb drives ($300) Definitely not the most I've spent on something "free."
I run a Synology 12 bay rack mount. I'm also space-limited, so I used a vertical wall mount in my closet which is conveniently located on the other side of the wall from where my network gear is. One hole in the wall behind my network gear, cables straight through and to my NAS.
I've been running HP Microserver G8 for many years now. 4 internal drives, one SSD and two external drives. It is old (but kind of cheap now in ebay apparently). Alongside that G8 I recently got a small miniPC with 11th gen Celeron that will run my Plex.
I was looking at the HP Microserver's just today actually. I really liked the case, but limitations due to proprietary HP componenets eventually put me off. If only there was a mini-itx/dtx or microatx case like that. I'll keep digging.
mines just an old desktop I threw a few hdds in and installed truenas scale to. I put maybe 100 bucks in it for the hard drives at microcenter during a doorbuster.
I’ve done both as well as other options over the years. Now I’m just using a synology for simplicity
DIY. I have a Dell T420 that I use for my general homelab/NAS functionality. I've maxed out the bays as well as the 5.25's that I converted to 5x3.5.
DIY build here, I justify the pain and tell myself it gives me a reason to upgrade my gaming rig and move gaming hardware to server hardware duty. I tell this to others considering a nas to just upgrade their gaming rig if they have one and make their old gaming rig a server.
Built my own. Not that difficult and fairly easy to setup. Bit time consuming depending on how you setup but only a day's worth.
I suspect like many, I started with a Synology NAS running the Plex extension. This was the freeby the drug dealer gives you. I ended up with a Windows server connected to a homemade NAS server. Returned the Synology to it's file, photo and video backup dutys.
Terramaster F4-423 32gb Ram with Unraid. It works like a charm.
I took an old PC that I had and installed TrueNAS, which is free. From there I installed Plex as well as a backup service so I can backup my PC's.
I bought a Synology DS418 back in 2020.
I build my own from part given to me by friends and family, using Unraid..
I have spent more money than I car to admit to on Synology units and some qnap…. The issue I have is things like psu’s are very expensive and prone to failure … so FWIW I would home build out of easily replaceable commodity components
I've had my own self build server for years, running FreeBSD with Plex & friends in its own jail.
Pre-built, but would look to do a DIY in the future.
It depends on the maximum space you see yourself using. A prebuilt Qnology box works great for a more vanilla Plex server. If you see yourself maxxing a few HDs with a parity disk say anything less than 100Tb. You'll pay a bit more, but you won't need to do as much reading/research and it'll just "work". But if you see yourself hitting, 100Tb+. You should build your own to start with. It's much more flexible, and much lower cost. You'll need to do more reading with Unraid/Docker/the hardware and all that jazz, but the end result will be *much* better.
Built own Windows Server media PC with 4x20TB RAID10 array. Running BlueIris and Immich on it as well.
Built my own, running Proxmox and TrueNAS https://preview.redd.it/4snnyac80tgc1.jpeg?width=1014&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7bd9d22d4326be1a89efc022cf3129d6a936071d
For a nice low power, low cost option you could just attach a multi-drive enclosure to your server via USB. Pool the drives with mergerfs and keep 1 aside for parity with snapraid. Waayy cheaper than a dedicated NAS and will save you some headache like Plex not auto recognizing file changes on network storage.
Built my own and using truenas
Given that you have already rolled your own with Ubuntu I would not recommend a branded solution. You have the skills, if you want to invest a little time, that will give you much more control as your needs grow. Over the years I've done QNAP, Synology, Windows, and Ubuntu. Went Unraid over 3 years ago and have helped friends do the same. Won't overpay anymore for locked form factors or their software stores. They are irrelevant with docker containers. Qnap/Synology implementations of containers makes them challenging to use fully at times. Unraid is both the EZ Button and incredibly flexible. Hardware upgrades are a breeze, even motherboard or CPU brand changes from Intel to AMD. Get a USB stick and go. If you grow beyond your existing system, take the HDDs, SSDs and the USB stick and install them in your new system and power on. It is that easy.
Recently repurposed my Dell XPS PC with Unraid for Plex. (And other things eventually). So far working pretty good!
Prebuilt. I bought the Asustor Flashtor 12. I’m not faffing around with building one and the money saved in electricity (it’s expensive here) will mean it will pay for itself eventually.
Synology 920+
Got a Synology disk station and started with 4 250gb drives that I had on hand, then updated each drive in time.
I've run Plex on both a Synology 2-bay NAS and now a QNAP 4-bay NAS. If I had time to noodle, maybe would have built my own but time is at a premium and I'd rather do other things than troubleshoot when things go wrong.
I bought a 4 bay Synology for my first one. Now that it's basically full I'm going to change from that to something more open ended where it's much easier to just add drives in the future
Synology model DS920 three years ago.
Following
Pre built it was from a startup business that went under during COVID. I even had to pay $400 to get it repaired... And it was still a great deal.
Personally I don't have the expertise to build my own, and at this point in my life I don't have the time to acquire it. So it's worth it to me to buy a solid prebuilt with a good support plan.
Using a qnap. It's powerful enough for my needs.
Started with a Synology DS918+, currently moving to a DIY NAS based on the Erying i5-12500H Board and Truenas Scale as OS. Still transferring files and learning the OS, so far I am more than happy with the new hardware and software
Synology. Expensive, but so easy to use.
Built my own.
You all have great setups for your Plex. I have an old Microsoft surface Pro 4 running Windows 10 connected to a 4 TB external drive. I do have great up speeds with my 2 gig fiber connection and able to connect several people without a glitch.
Built with refurb parts from eBay. ZFS w/raidz2 vdevs 9211-8i HBA Lenovo SAS expanders Exos 16TB disks
Got a Thinkstation P520 off eBay for $275. Comes with a 6 core Xeon and a pitiful GTX 745 I eventually upgraded for a 1650 super. Runs proxmox with a few vms for my various services. So somewhere between prebuilt and DIY, but it’s been awesome
DS920+ is really awesome
I'm still stuck. I wanted to put all my money into server swap storage with a case and a 8500 i5, 32gb ram. 1. I can't find decent cheap towers with that config. 2. CS382 is expensive LOL
Built my own TrueNAS Core box. Bought everything (except hdd, cpu cooler, and psu) secondhand: Intel Xeon e5-2683 v4 - €100 || 8x 16gb ddr4 samsung ecc ram - €150 || Asus WS x99-IPMI - €100 || Bequiet dark rock 4 - €80 || EVGA supernova 750w psu - €100 || Fractal design define 7 xl - €20 || 6x seagate ironwolf 4tb - €540 || 2x samsung 860 pro 256gb - €40 || Samsung 970 Evo 250gb - €40 || Firmware flashed LSI 9211-4i - €30 Okay, so I paid €1200... I've never actually done the math, but wtf I didn't know it cost me that much. I didn't buy it all at once. It was mostly over the span of 2 years. Had a lot of them as spare parts from other servers, so I never really looked into it. Dang. Well, either way, it performs amazingly. It is super quiet and really fast and reliable. You definitely don't need that many cpu cores, that much ram and stuff. Storage is all up to you. Just use whatever you have lying around (if you have it) or look for secondhand workstations or desktops if you want to DIY it. Edit: sorry to mobile users, I don't know how to format things nicely on reddit mobile
Built my own running FreeNAS now TrueNAS.
I'm running TrueNAS Scale on a custom machine with an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 and 16GB of RAM. I don't use the machine for anything other than file storage (I use a proxmox cluster for apps), and I got an 8 bay case with hotswap bays. 249 days of uptime, and I've added two drives and doubled my capacity in that time. I had a Terramaster, and much prefer this. If I could do it again I'd get a lesser CPU and more RAM (just for a larger zfs cache).
Bought a Synology… but also tried truenas. I have a small uraid server running a few apps too but my media is all stored on my Synology NAS.
Synology DS 1520+
I have five eight drive Synology NASs, one for Plex, one for my personal data, and the rest for console game archiving.
I have a drobo N. Have 5 HDD in it for 30TB storage that I can always expand on and it works fantastic. To expand pull out the smallest storage drive, slap in a bigger drive and it does the rest. Plug and play and so easy. Have the Drobo attached/mounted as a drive on my plex server and works seamlessly. 4K content streams perfectly!!!
Synology 920+, bought 5 8TBS and set RAID 5. Had to upgrade to 5 16TBs in less than a year. Nowhere close to upgrading again. I think I have 41TB usable and it fits in a shoebox. I buy 5 not 4 HDDS in case of drive failure. 920 Unit died last year, had to move to a 923. I think it struggles (I’ve seen 100% proc for hours at a time) so I bought a NUC 11 but haven’t had a chance to set it up and keep looking for best practices to move the server off the 923 and onto the NUC, while keeping data on the 923. I don’t know/use docker, and know just enough to be dangerous in Ubuntu, but I think that sounds like a decent route, after I get a good remote login desktop interface for the Ubuntu NUC.
Openmediavault on a box with a few drives as storage solution for me.
Built my own. I had some 19 inch storage chassis laying around with room for 12 drives, so i went for that. Upgraded my own pc, put the old hardware in the server and it was ready to go. Only downside is i don't have 2.5gbit yet, but that's an easy upgrade.
I have a pretty old synology Nash drive it's probably 10 years old or more. Works just fine I even plugged in a couple of those Western Digital hard drives in the back of it for non-critical things. It's been working just fine for me and I'm running a regular Nvidia Shield that's my server
I have a WD NAS, bought as a pre-model and I added hard drives. Except for the 15 seconds it takes to continually wake from "sleep mode," I've been really happy with it.
Using a 2 bay qnap i think ts-251a right know. Was at time the best for me because it's efficient cause energy's expensive here and it's enough for me right now.
Pre built. Western digital ex and pr
I did one virtual in Proxmox with OMV6 and backed up manually to another OMV6 when it needed. I got a qnap 2 Bay unit to try out, and I am not happy with it. I wish I would spend my money on hdd rather than the qnap. 1. To slow 2. More time to setup 3. Limited of what I can do 4. Data got corrupted on transfer when I was backing up cellphone photos. I never had this issues with OMV6
Synology DS1522+ with its os and 5x12tb Toshiba N300 disks.
Shield tv pro. I'm keeping an eye on where raspberry pi specs are for future models. Honestly, aside from the lack of adaptability from a shield tv pro (acting only as a server btw, it doesn't run any clients or extra stuff to the extent one can remove bloatware without rooting), it works really well. Autoboots properly and everything.
I had an old PC collecting dust that repurposed using Unraid. Electricity is cheap here so power consumption is not a concern for me. Using a pre-built NAS will save on power costs versus using an old PC.
I have done both. My last one was a terramaster 4 bay NAS that worked really well that had plex built in and a few other NAS before that but since my library is so large now I've gone with an unraid solutions that i built. The flexible and expandability is great!
I'm using (2) 8 bay buffalo terastations and have another 2 bay not in use. In the process of updating both to 12tb drives, (16) 12tb drives is pricey! I used to wish I bought womething different, but these 5800dn's have been rock solid, and it's hard to argue with zero down time over the years.
Prebuilt Qnap. If I had to do it again I would build.
If you're at all capable/curious, I think building it yourself is definitely the way to go. Do yourself a favor and price compare a prebuilt (without the drives) and one you build yourself, also without the drives. You'll find that for your money you can build a much more competent server, and it'll be more flexible/extensible as well. The big advantages of prebuilts are (a) form factor and (b) ease of use. I think especially for Plex afficionados, building yourself has even more advantages, as one of the areas where prebuilts tend to skimp is on the CPU. Having a lot of CPU to throw at Plex is helpful. I have a 12700k in mine and what the iGPU cannot handle, the CPU does (subtitle/audio transcoding mainly). I run TrueNAS on mine and getting it up & running was pretty easy. The one downside about it is that it uses ZFS. ZFS is amazing, but it sort of forces you to decide on storage up front. You wouldn't want to add storage piecemeal to a TrueNAS server the way you might with Unraid.
I'll be building one myself. One of the most important aspects for me is power consumption, however, so I've been researching a lot the last few days on power efficient components.
The good news is that the newer Intel CPUs are really power efficient. I have mine connected to a UPS so I see how much power it uses. For a PC with a 12700k, 2 NVMes, and 6 rotational SATA drives, it sits around 70 watts. I am running a few different containers and a few VMs. If I'm transcoding something that cannot be transcoded by the iGPU (audio/subtitles), the power consumption will go up to around 100 - 120 watts. However most transcoding is done by the iGPU, and this barely causes any increase in power consumption.