Hey guys, i have been wanting to build a home server/ NAS/ Streaming server for a while now and i have just purchased some budget hardware to dip my toe in and see how i get on. Hopefully i get on well with it and i will be putting some more money into it. I'm no newbie to the gaming PC hardware scene and have been working with them for 12 years now but am pretty new to the whole server/ networking side.

 

I have settled on Unraid because i would like the option of using hardware acceleration with plex, i would like a consumer friendly GUI and i would like the option to slowly upgrade which i think is Unraid to a tee.

 

 The hardware i have purchased:

• ionz KZ10 Mid tower case - £29 - A little small i know but i need the wife approval, it has great airflow, looks and feels great for a budget case and with a little modification (it's not a real build without some modifications) i feel it will hold a total of 6-8 3.5" Hdd's and even more SSD's.
• ASUS P8H61-I LX, i3 3220, 8GB elixir DDR3 bundle - £40 - Just a starter board as not enough expansion and the ram is a little anemic but for £40, not a bad starting and testing point i think.
• NVIDIA QUADRO K620 2 GB - £37 - I know what your going to say, its not a P400 or a P2000 but for £37 i think its a gamble. I have heard the performance just for plex matched the P400 and i know im going to upgrade to the P2000 when the server is at a good point anyway. Plus, this card will never go to waste, i am always building projects
• 4TB Seagate Ironwolf NAS - £104 - will be used temporarily as my parity but will be replaced by an 8TB eventually and the 4 will go into the array
• Kingston A400 240GB SSD - £20 - Will be used as a temporary cache which will be upgraded as needed and maybe used after as an unallocated plex appdata drive
• Already owned - 450w seasonic fanless platinum PSU, 2TB seagate Hdd, 128gb Samsung pro SSD.

 

This will saturate my motherboard for now and will allow me to actually play and not just research. I already have a 3tb library on a standalone NAS containing 1080P and 4k media so i have plenty of files to play with and when the time comes and i expand, this will be migrated over as my main media server.

 

Please let me know your thoughts and give me a helping hand if you can (suggested media player and library, suggested dockers, plugins, whatever)

 

Thanks all

 

Mitch

 

Seems like a good start and if you eventually need more Unraid will be fine with whatever hardware changes you make. I have changed mobo/CPU/RAM more than once (not to mention upsizing all disks along the way more than once).