This is something I want to get as an alternative to commercial NAS like Qnap/Synology for my family. Don't need more than 4 bays. It needs to be of similar size, power/noise levels and I don't need ultra fast cpu.

 

If there is some SFF pc which comes with a motherboard/cpu combo (like NUC's do) and has 4 drives, that I can just buy, I'd really prefer that. I am under time limits as I'm traveling this weekend, and I cannot ship parts where I'm going.

Just about any mITX motherboard is going to have 4 SATA ports and so all you need to do is find a small mITX enclosure with room for four 3.5" HDDs.

 

Lots of other options - hot swap? tower vs. shoebox vs. flat case design? IPMI?

 

Getting an NUC with a separate Thunderbolt storage box would be an option too.

Edited December 6, 20178 yr by Smitty2k1

Do HP still make a Microserver?  They are 4 bay and low power,  no hardware build required other than installing hard disks.  Assuming they are compatible with unRAID.

Edited December 12, 20178 yr by Chris Pollard

The new Microserver (Gen 10) is back to an AMD SOC like the old NxxL series.  Problem is, the SATA controller on the Gen10 is Marvell-based, so perhaps not so compatible with unRAID due to reasons.

I still use an older hp n40l and a n54l microserver. A year ago could find a used n40l for about $100-125. Small size, its quiet, I don't hear it in the room. 4 drives in the bottom bays, and you can stick a parity drive in the top. So 5 drives easy. About once or twice a year, I open it up and clean out any dust.

 

Here is a huge thread on the hp microservers,

 

Edited December 16, 20178 yr by korith
added link