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I'd recommended building a custom one, if you're technically inclined. But off the shelf ones are fine, just not as cost-effective, but they are smaller though!

I'd recommended building a custom one, if you're technically inclined. But off the shelf ones are fine, just not as cost-effective, but they are smaller though! I previously had a HP N54L with FreeNAS, modded with extra two extra drives to get 6x4TB and that setup was very simple to do. Now I moved over to a custom one which is a Fractal Node 804 case, i3 8100T, C246M-WU4 mobo and 32GB ECC DDR4 RAM. It has a SF450W Platinum PSU, and it pulls less than 40W in use - could get it lower with some underclocking. This runs Debian Buster with ZFS on Linux, and it's been rock stable for over half a year now - moving the drives over from my N54L was surprisingly simple. Plex transcoding works fine as well. Definitely recommend it.

yumraj 6y ago
Could you share roughly how much did it cost to put together that custom box?
- execution 6y ago
  Here's the part list: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/fcxgk6 https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/fcxgk6 I shopped around and waited for sales/price drops and got it all for under £500 (not including drives). I don't the pricing if your're not in the UK, so it may be cheaper elsewhere to do another combination. As for drives wait for good deals on WD Elements/My Book Desktop External Hard Drive and shuck them. Note, only do this for +8TB drives (these are CMR drives atm) as under that size the drives are SMR which you should avoid like the plague for RAID/ZFS as they have been reported to fail if you ever need to rebuild. So then you're looking at 4x£120 which is another ~£500ish investment. If you want to save money get a preowned box like the N54L off eBay at ~£100, and spend the money on drives, then stick FreeNas on it and if you're only file-serving the box is good enough. I think the custom box is a bit overkill but it's got so much room for upgrades, I plan on getting 8x10TB drives in there one day, plus you can run VMs on it as the i3 processor isn't too bad.
- Rebelgecko 6y ago
  FWIW I out together a ragtag NAS (recycling CPU and PSU from elsewhere) for around $400. Even if you start from scratch, the main cost is storage. If you're not afraid to void some warranties, you can get 8TB drives for around 30% less by shuccing WD external drives

yumraj 6y ago

Could you share roughly how much did it cost to put together that custom box?

execution 6y ago
Here's the part list: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/fcxgk6 https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/fcxgk6 I shopped around and waited for sales/price drops and got it all for under £500 (not including drives). I don't the pricing if your're not in the UK, so it may be cheaper elsewhere to do another combination. As for drives wait for good deals on WD Elements/My Book Desktop External Hard Drive and shuck them. Note, only do this for +8TB drives (these are CMR drives atm) as under that size the drives are SMR which you should avoid like the plague for RAID/ZFS as they have been reported to fail if you ever need to rebuild. So then you're looking at 4x£120 which is another ~£500ish investment. If you want to save money get a preowned box like the N54L off eBay at ~£100, and spend the money on drives, then stick FreeNas on it and if you're only file-serving the box is good enough. I think the custom box is a bit overkill but it's got so much room for upgrades, I plan on getting 8x10TB drives in there one day, plus you can run VMs on it as the i3 processor isn't too bad.
Rebelgecko 6y ago
FWIW I out together a ragtag NAS (recycling CPU and PSU from elsewhere) for around $400. Even if you start from scratch, the main cost is storage. If you're not afraid to void some warranties, you can get 8TB drives for around 30% less by shuccing WD external drives