The original NSFW build was designed around the Gigabyte GA-7PESH2 – a great board, but getting a little hard to come by with increasing prices. An alternative is given in the build guide: Supermicro 2U CSE-826 SAS1/SAS2 chassis with X9DRI-LN4F+ and rails. I went this route! It comes with a decent motherboard, a solid chassis, and a pass-through hotswap back-plane, plus it include redundant power supplies. All that, and it’s still pretty cheap! The big downside is the 2U form factor, which forces you to use low profile cards. It’s also loud if you dont plan on replacing the high pressure fans or burring it far away from your earholes.
Here’s my TL;DR specs:
Cost: $1327.21
Processing: 1.8GHz, 48 threads, dual Xeons
Memory: 128GB Reg ECC
Storage: 36TB SAS Array + cache
GPU: GTX 1050Ti
On to the cost breakdown
| Part | Item | Seller | Price | Shipped |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Barebones Kit | SuperMicro 6027R 2U Server | TheServerStore | $279 | $318.74 |
| Motherboard | SuperMicro X9DRI-826A | INCLUDED | $0 | $0 |
| Chassis | SuperMicro CSE-826 2U | INCLUDED | $0 | $0 |
| Backplane | SuperMicro BPN-SAS-826A | INCLUDED | $0 | $0 |
| Heat Sinks | SuperMicro Passive | INCLUDED | $0 | $0 |
| Power Supply | 2x 920W PWS-920P-1R Redundant | INCLUDED | $0 | $0 |
| CPUs | Dual Xeon E5-2651 v2 (24thread, 1.8GHz) | eBay | $190 | $190 |
| Memory | 128MB 12800R ECC Registered 2RX4 | eBay | $180 | $180 |
| SAS Controller | 2x LSI SAS9201-8i LP | eBay | $40 | $40 |
| Cache Drive | ADATA Ultimate SU800 3D NAND SSD 2TB | Rakuten | $162.50 | $188.48 |
| Storage | 12x 3TB 7200RPM SAS Drives | eBay | $110 | $110 |
| GPU | MSI GeForce GTX 1050Ti LP | eBay | $170.99 | $170.99 |
| Software | Unraid Pro | unraid | $129 | $129 |
| Total | $1261.49 | $1327.21 |
Here she sits in all her glory in my “secure subterranean server” (aka laundry) room on my “server rack” (aka gun safe):
One caveat is the storage cost: I got lucky and someone sold a bulk batch of 11 drives in a poorly listed auction that I got for $51.10 shipped – 8 of them worked, so around $6/3TB drive! Otherwise, expect to pay around $20 each for similar drives. I already did buy a few to get started, but hey now I have 4 spares for when things die.
Because of the 2U form-factor, using a LP GPU limits you to the 1050Ti. I just use it to pass-through for remote gaming via steamlink, which works pretty well for couch gaming. If you don’t want this, you can nix the GPU all-together. Also be sure to get the LP versions of your SAS controllers! Here’s my internal layout:
The server has been running for several months. I’m hosting a 7-node ARK: Survival Evolved cluster which is already one of the top-ranked PvE modded clusters. Come do some dino stuff on the Survival of the Litest cluster with me 
It also runs my home media server with Plex, Sonaar, Watcher, etc. A Linux development VM, OSX Hackintosh VM, and WIndows gaming VM run in the background, along with my Algo VPN server VM. With all this, I’ve never seen CPU usage exceed 20%, and memory usage usually sites under 50%.
(ignore the error, it just ‘overheats’ being an SSD and all)
Really happy with this beast so far! Huge thx to everyone in this community - you all rock 
