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Favorite post:
The author suckered me in with Mac Pro nostalgia, and I stayed for the clean NAS/DAS build. They did a great job in their writing, detailed photos, and puppy photos. I’m a sucker for puppy photos.
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It all started with this guide that I stumbled upon and since then I’ve been slowly upgrading my aging Plex server. For the longest time I thought I was limited to increasing storage in my server by replacing drives with larger ones, but this guide opened up a world of possibilities and more than doubled my previous storage to currently about 95TB. Thank you!
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Really appreciate the efforts you have put in to the resource that is serverbuilds. It is great to find one place for a community of people with a similar approach to my own, albeit often on another level scaled way beyond what I do. The build guides are fantastic and the ability to find and hack together discounted server hardware is incredible. I have enjoyed the NAS Killer series especially [Guide] NAS Killer 4.1 supplemental + deals
Keep up the good work and thanks for being such a great resource!
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[Guide] NAS Killer 4.0 - fast, quiet, power efficient, and flexible - starting at $125
This was the guide that got me going into the adventure of building my second server. It was a great guide and a place to start. I’ve enjoyed my adventures and learning while being a part of this community. It’s always fun and I appreciate everyone’s hard work for what they contribute.
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My favorite post:
[Guide] Hardware Transcoding: The JDM way! QuickSync and NVENC - Builds / Plex Hardware Transcoding Builds - serverbuilds.net Forums
Hardware Transcoding the JDM Way is what lead me here. Didn’t know these boards existed, but have found a wealth of information. Since I already have a home-built Unraid box, I’m generally familiar with a lot of these topics. However, the depth and breadth of information here has been more than a little overwhelming, but also incredibly educational (and helpful).
My preference is Package 1.
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I learned about ServerBuilds by listening to SelfHosted and 2.5 Admins podcasts with JDM, Alex, Chris, Joe, Jim Salters, and Allen Jude.
This led me to ZFS, Sanoid and Allen’s wonderful two “ZFS Mastery” books which I devoured and constantly refer to.
Seeing the bitdeals.tech group-buy got me started as it introduced me to inexpensive used enterprise drives and LSI SAS HBA cards.
The NAS Killer series has been a gold mine of information on hardware and software options:
And the other eye opening guide was Hardware Transcoding with QuickSync:
Utilizing these tools, I built a primary Plex/NAS server based on a G5400 processor,
https://www.newegg.com/intel-pentium-gold-g5400/p/N82E16819117875
4x3TB Toshiba SAS drives set up in ZFS mirror pool (2x2x3TB) running Ubuntu in an ATX case with 8 drive bays for expandability.
An existing Ivybridge system (also with 8drive bays) was repurposed with the same 2x2x3TB hard drive config as a backup (because raid is NOT a backup).
https://www.newegg.com/black-antec-performance-series-atx-mid-tower/p/N82E16811129242
Sanoid and Syncoid are then used to manage rolling snapshots and remote backup, respectively.
My new years resolution will be to make the backup system truly remote and relocate to my mom’s house about 30minutes away. I love wireguard and will use it to securely connect the two computers without opening ports in the firewalls.
Thanks for all the great resources and teaching me fish.
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Probably an expected pick, but I went with the NAS Killer 4.1 thread because it’s how I landed at this community. I was looking into QNAP and Synology NAS solutions because I wanted a data backup solution. I was comparing options when I stumbled upon a reddit thread that linked to the NAS Killer build guides. I’ve finally collected most of the parts I need thanks to the guidance of the forum (and have a lot of future build projects floating around in my head).
If selected, I prefer the 290 bundle.
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I am a longtime lurker that has visited this forum a lot. It’s been a rocking support to my adventures into servers. The knowledge is hard to find, people pay money to read the kind of learning that is being done here. So I would like to show you the post that I feel was most valuable to me, not because it was something I ended up doing (soon will) but because it was what introduced me to this forum. Showing me what made me inspired and knowledgable enough to start my path into servers.
The post is NAS Killer. I won’t be linking which post as the whole series of posts have been shared all across the internet and I cannot post just one of them.
Edit: Please excuse my bad formatting, I am on mobile these holidays.
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I’m still very new to this hobby and I’m learning a lot. I really appreciate all the effort put into the guides here. I find myself going back and reviewing guides dozens of times. I was mostly interested in a plexbox, but reading about building a DAS and what to expect and the different options that it could open up was really interesting. I ended up researching a bunch on SAS controllers afterwards.
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The Aruba S2500 post is my favorite so far. I wouldn’t have had any idea these things existed without the forum and Discord server, so thank you all for making this such a welcoming and fun place to hang out. I was a little late to the party, but was able to pick up a decently priced S2500-24P to support my home camera system. I’ll probably get a 48p at some point, so keeping an eye out.
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One of my favorite guides is the original NSFW guide. Anniversary LGA2011 build — Serverbuilds.net
Building a system that is dual-socket or server type setup allowed me to learn a significant amount of journey. Not just hardware size but afterward I created a server to run a dedicated hypervisor. This single guide is the reason why I am somewhat competent in my role at work. I know more basics and fundamentals about servers and general computing than my colleagues
Not quite related but I very much enjoy reading this post about a chair someone else recommended. Review ErgoChair
It was great seeing someone take the time to write out a long and detailed review. I am probably going to buy that chair in the future since I can feel the damn plastic in my current chair after just 1 or 2 hours of work.
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Not to use a cliche or anything but Unraid gaming is what brought me here. Instead of Parsec I ended up using NoMachine though. Before that I was always aware of the NASkiller builds. I’m sometimes active on Discord but not so much anymore due to having moved from the West coast from the East coast.
I prefer the PFsense box
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I’ll be honest, I don’t know why I didn’t just start looking here. When I was setting up my first Unraid box and finally got an HBA (and enough drives to require it), I was lost. I actually saw someone else link to this article on Discord out of sheer luck. Saved me A LOT of time and headache trying to flash the card to IT mode. That is basically my entire tenure here. Knowledgeable and gracious people sharing their experience, so that I don’t have to slam my head in a doorway repeatedly.
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This one definitely inspired me to start down the path of building my own NAS to replace a current Synology box - although I think I’ve completely diverged in terms of hardware at this point. It was still a great way to help me think about what I’d need!
(preference for package 1, if I’m lucky)
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Dont usually do write-ups but this was a bit interesting to have to do a step-by-step. Should probably clean it up and make it legible with a final recommendation at the bottom.
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here’s the link, the Anniversary 2.0 SNAFU guide
I kept referring back to it A LOT when digging through listings for motherboards and cases for my build. with vast patience I was able to find a poorly labelled local listing and got my 2011-3 motherboard for $35!
prize wise, I would only benefit from the HP 290 in package 1. If I somehow won package 2, feel free to pass me up for the next in line. thanks!
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The good: I learned the correct NIC’s to buy. Also why my pfsense VMs never worked right.
The bad: I had already bought 2 PRO/1000 PT’s for pfsense builds. I can confirm they are temperamental, they are in a Dell sandy bridge era optiplex 990 for double the gremlins.
The hopeful: If I win I will have a good quad NIC and a lower power pfsense box. Mine has a 65w i7 2600 non k CPU which is super overkill.
preference: package 1. But honestly it would be fun to catch the audiophile disease too.
edit:quoting post correctly is apparently hard for me
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Favorite post: all about hardware transcoding. I know it was posted before, but its the best!
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This post, when there was no website and only the discord and the subreddit I think, was my entry to building NAS servers. It was really fun to build with my brother, we only wanted a place to save our media and in the end it turned out to be a lot more than that, Plex/Jellyfin media server, lot of dockers, it’s even an NVR for some cams we bought. Sadly we had to tear it down because of the high cost of electricity here, now we have a lower power AMD based system we built from spare parts.
We would like to win the HP 290 (CARE Package 1), our AMD based build can’t transcode and it has been a pain we thought we would not care about lol.
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This is the post that started me on the right path towards a dyi NAS. Were it not for this, I would’ve ended up dumping money into something I didn’t need. Now I’m up and running on 24Tb with UnRaid and package 1 would be the perfect addition to round things out.
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