This guide is one that I have had up on my computer for months. It is a well written guide, really helped me build a system that does everything that I needed it to do and more. I think that it really exemplifies the community that JDM_WAAT was looking to build. Where people can come to talk about a great hobby get advice and share ideas.
This case is without doubt the best deal and most flexible for a whitebox server build. Glad I grabbed one of these when I could, it can hold all the drives necessary for my NAS as well as enough headroom for any PCI device I want to plug in and pass through to my proxmox VMs. Might get a spare in case I want a future build down the road 
I couldnāt have found serverbuilds.net at a better time! I was between a Synology or trying to cobble together something that looked like a recommendd build from the FreeNAS people. But someone linked serverbuilds.net in a Reddit thread (thank you, kind stranger) and my eyes were opened.
Iām extremely impressed with JDMās ability to reply to practically every post with endless knowledge and experience, always pointing in the best direction!
So the guide I link is the 4.1 Supplemental, and just placed an order for one of those Chenbro servers, and Elite 350 case (the one with the 500W power supply, btw, only $75 on B&H as of a couple days ago), and some shuckable drives!
First NAS, second computer build, first with anything server/enterprise grade, but I know Iām in good hands here if I run into any issues. Oh and of course Unraid all the way!
Happy holidays to all! Iād be thrilled with any prize package 
I absolutely love this community, and honestly sad that Iām just finding how awesome it is in the last few days! ~2ish years ago I watched JDMās tabletop build of the GA-7TESM, and really found it helpful. I already had a couple x5680ās and a bunch of ram from a HP Z800 I recycled from work, but wanted more drives than it could support, which lead me on my google search to find his vid and also how to flash IT mode onto the SAS controller. The one gripe I always had about the board was that Iād get the dreaded āBMC SEL area fullā message when Iād reboot, and then have to drag out a monitor and keyboard to get it to boot (since I couldnāt get the KVM redirection to work due to the button being greyed out). Low and behold, I come here and thereās this awesome article on how to keep the event log from getting greyed out, AND in the discord @rosegold came up with a sweet tampermonkey script to avoid having to manually edit the page HTML to get the KVM to work. This community is a dream for people like me who like to tinker and build systems 
Merry Christmas everyone!
Iād love to build something new. Problem is the current stuff still works too well to need replacingā¦
Preference to #1
Welcome to the forums, and thanks for sharing!
I have to go with the remote gaming guide. Even though my initial attempts at a remote gaming build were not successful (couldnāt get GPU passthrough working) this is a concept that Iāve been a fan of since before joining this community. I will be making another attempt in 2021 with some different hardware. Looking forward to another year hanging with you guys!
This is the post that started it all for me. When I came across this post and the discord, I had no idea how much my life would change. I was working at the time in a NOC doing NOC stuff and not really progressing. I imagined saving up to get a server and start learning more than what I knew already about Linux and hosting services. I just couldnāt pull the trigger and my own ignorance kept me desiring homelabs like you see in r/homelab.
With this article, I took the plunge on the Ideapad to setup my Plex. That made a world of difference and as the cliche goes, it was the gateway drug to learning more. Since then I bought 4 HP290ās that I set up as independent servers, then got into docker, then podman, then learned how to SysAdmin the correct way. Which now has changed my career for the better. Since this started I have become a SysAdmin at my job. Experimenting with containers has opened the door to training with the cloud infrastructure team. In 6 months, and a ton of hard work, I am sure I will get a position in that team and continue to reach my goal to be a Cloud Architect.
With all this said, just want to thank the community here that helped me in my journey and showed that expensive gear is not necessary to learn. A homelab of cobbled together of laptops/hp290s can and is more than enough to hone your skills.
Thanks and happy holidays!
The Intel QuickSync guide has been my go-to post on this forum. I could have referenced the whole topic but this particular section describing the ins and outs of QuickSync was extremely well put together. I have read this particular section of the guide at least 25 times and reference it constantly as Iām trying to put together a cheap but fully-functionally Plex transcode QS box. I appreciate the work of all in this community to openly share information for all to learn. Happy 2021 All!
This post was my entry into the serverbuilds world because I was trying to figure out how to improve my data storage/Plex setup.
Now because of the 4.1 and 4.0 guides, the drive shucking thread and the Quicksync guide - Iāve got a ridiculous server in a Rosewill L4500 an HP 290 driving everything and 24TB fullā¦ so back on to the shuck-watch I goā¦
On top of that the help getting it all going at the start was phenomenal and the guides straightforward enough that Iām at 214+ days of uptime (next shut down will be the next drive upgradeā¦)
This is a recent one (and technically one I havenāt quite started yet), but Iāve 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 parentās home for their personal use, and perhaps also as a remote backup endpoint for myself and my sister.
Iām surprised it took that long for someone to post the U-NAS thread.
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. Iāll often refer back to this thread, to see what I may want to swap out in the future.
Hope this isnāt a boring link, but Iām going to use the original nk 4.0 thread, because thatās what originally got me to find this awesome site.
Iāve said this before, but I think that the diversity thatās found on this forum is itās strong point. Iām hanging out in the discord, soaking up knowledge, learning from everyone from networking pros who donāt 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.
Iām 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 youāre in thereās no going back!
Prize Preference: Package #1
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.
Itās great to see people overcoming challenges of home nas/server solutions. I would never even think of cooling issues but then again Iām looking for a low power (meaning low heat) server solution.
Iād be fine having a miniatx in my living room for now. But as it grows Iāll 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 Iām gonna have to get another one, same color to coordinate of courseā¦or I could wait for the next 14TB Easystore saleā¦these are hard decisions!
Oh, and preference for #1
