This is a recent one (and technically one I haven’t quite started yet), but I’ve read through it multiple times and am really excited to get started. The biggest reason for me is that it is partially a gift build - this is going to go in my parent’s home for their personal use, and perhaps also as a remote backup endpoint for myself and my sister.
While not my first time cobbling together hardware for my homelab, the Anniversary 1.0 gave me an easy to follow guide that got everything up and running with very little hunting. The 2.0 guide is even more focused and gives a ton of options to get everything you would need in a home server. I’ll often refer back to this thread, to see what I may want to swap out in the future.
Hope this isn’t a boring link, but I’m going to use the original nk 4.0 thread, because that’s what originally got me to find this awesome site.
I’ve said this before, but I think that the diversity that’s found on this forum is it’s strong point. I’m hanging out in the discord, soaking up knowledge, learning from everyone from networking pros who don’t know the first thing about hardware, to linux gurus, to people like me who have a very basic working knowledge of linux but no mastery, people who are hardware pros but novices at software.
I’m hugely appreciative of this community and all the help everyone has given me.
Once I learned about the power of Quicksync I have come back to this post time and time again. Any time a friend asks about building a Plex box I send them to that post before doing anything else. Thank you so much for this reference!
I feel a little guilty submitting the post from the landing page but it is just such an incredibly well-written, fool-proof guide. I would especially highlight the pre-built subsection for anyone still uncertain about their first build. If you follow the links for ebay listings you can find a killer deal, and it really helps lower the bar of entry. Fair warning though, once you’re in there’s no going back!
The NAS Killer 4.0 Post was how I found out about the ServerBuilds community. This post is very detailed and after reading it I decided to go with the prebuilt option of a Dell Poweredge T110 ii for my NAS to get the most bang for my buck. I found one on ebay with the SAS card for $72 which was a steal. I bought 4 8TB HGST drives for $90 each on ebay that were recommended, these ones: HUH728080AL5205, for plenty of room to grow. I followed the guide to flash the SAS card that came with my prebuilt server to IT mode as well. I never would have figured out how to get a prebuilt server and turn it into a killer NAS at a fraction of the price of a synology or qnap. Just want to say a big thank you to @JDM_WAAAT for this guide.
It’s great to see people overcoming challenges of home nas/server solutions. I would never even think of cooling issues but then again I’m looking for a low power (meaning low heat) server solution.
I’d be fine having a miniatx in my living room for now. But as it grows I’ll need to do more research.
One guide I found helpful was something small, but still taught me a lot. It was the heatsink information guide and explanation of different types of M.2 connectors. I ended up buying one of the heatsinks from the guide and have been happy with it! But of course now I want to buy another NVME drive for my server, and I’m gonna have to get another one, same color to coordinate of course…or I could wait for the next 14TB Easystore sale…these are hard decisions!
This is the thread that got me looking at moving my plex server off of my main desktop. I’ve only been looking around here this past week, but it looks like I still have so much to learn that I never even thought of.
This was my first small project once I got Unraid up and stable that wasn’t just a simple click and confirm configuration. It was the gateway to other items like cloud backups for config. Details and support on the questions I had were great.
After discussing the pihole build I was considering and the cost for the hardware to make it happen, a few other users suggested skipping all of that and investing in a pfsense build. For that reason, my preference is package #1.
Thanks for a great SB year in 2020. Looking forward to 2021 projects.
I heard about serverbuilds.net on the self-hosted podcast awhile back but dismissed it as something that would be too advanced and too expensive for me (never built any sort of machine before). Came across another reference and decided to check it out. The price, information, and community support around the hp290 has been a real eye-opener! Thank you for everything you do and the community you have created!
I’m going to say anniversary build as well since it was my first foray into server builds and had tons of useful information for selecting and setting everything up.
Throwing MBP some love here. Obviously some great posts by JDM and others that were already mentioned and that I use frequently, but its the little posts like these that showcase the character of the community and its members. Secondary shout out to mthrboard’s post here that got me out of a jam.
This is my favorite thread (and discord channel) on the site. There is so much cool hardware out there that people are practically giving away and it’s awesome to see folks think outside of the box to put it to use in their rack. That thread has also caused my crippling addiction to searching ebay for weird old network/server gear.
This post caused me to really dig into the power of Quicksync and was a complete game changer in my system strategies this year. I had previously always used software transcoding. With increased “covid load” on the server, I was hitting the hardware limits of a Plex + Gaming + PVR stack + home assistant + other VMs all in one build. Plex was struggling leading to poor WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor). It’s now on a separate micro Optiplex Quicksync box that I got for a song on eBay, and the whole stack is working better than ever! I later got one of the cheap HP Prodesk boxes to put in place at my parent’s place to handle cable video transcodes and it’s been wonderful too. Thanks so much for this site!
