This build has undergone multiple iterations and upgrades throughout the years. A brief history:
v1 “PiBox” (2016-2017) : Raspberry Pi 2 with a 1 TB (later 4 TB) external USB drive, running Raspbian.
v2 “BigBox” (2018): PC Tower (AMD FX-8300, 16 GB RAM, grew to 20 TB of hard drive storage), running UnRAID
v3 “BigBox 2: The Bigger, Blacker Box” (2019-2020):
Specs:
- Rosewill RSV-L4500 4U 15-bay chassis ($120)
- AMD Ryzen 7 1700X ($150)
- Cooler Master Hyper T2 CPU Cooler ($28)
- ASRock AB350 Pro4 Motherboard ($65)
- 32 GB G.Skill Ripjaws V Series DDR4-2400 ($200)
- Kingston A400 120 GB SSD (~$35)
- WD Blue 500 GB SSD ($66)
- EVGA 430W 80+ PSU ($65)
- Dell PERC H200 HBA Card ($45)
- currently at 84 TB usable space across 13 2/8/10 TB drives (mostly shucked WD EasyStores)
v4 “BigBox 3: The Biggest, Blackest Box” (2020-present): Server remains in v3 form factor and parts, but disk storage relocated to Supermicro SC847E16-JBOD 4U 45-Bay storage chassis with SAS2 backplate, connected by 2 SFF-8088-to-SFF-8087 external-to-internal SAS cables.
(The plan was to move everything from the Rosewill to the Supermicro, but because I opted for the 45-bay rather than a 24- or 36-bay, there’s no room inside the case for a motherboard et. al. I didn’t know that when buying it, oops. So rather than consolidating, I now have two server chassises that combine to form one complete server)
Rack is a 12U adjustable StarTech mobile rack.
Server mainly used as a Plex Media Server, personal NAS, VM host and data hoarding web scraper.