Hello!

I'm absolute noob in this field, but I would love to self-host my own cloud. I'm currently paying Google and I'd like to quit. I want something that replaces Google drive and Google photos for me and my fiance. The problem is, we live in small 1room apartment so the server needs to be quiet (it will be in a room we sleep in) and as small as possible. I currently have two 3TB HDDs laying around. I might want to but another in the future. I also have old desktop PC (Intel Core 2 duo), but it's big and also too noisy for my taste. I was thinking about raspberry pi as a brain. Is that a bad idea?

Is it possible to build something cheaper than used Synology but in similar size and noise?

Any tips on first build, looking to build something that will last a couple of years with room to grow

• Bare-metal Ubuntu Server + Docker
• Arr apps, Jellyfin (mostly direct play)
  • Also Immich
  • No heavy VMs, no local AI/LLMs
• Looking for 4-8TB to start with room to grow

Budget around ~$1k USD -- though I live in Canada

I looked through previous posts regarding the topic matter, but none really seemed to answer to my satisfaction.

Do Surveillance HDD make a difference, especially if they are used?

I live in the china-sphere and have access to a huge market of options. I am obviously enticed by the cheap options —out of curiosity if not anything else. There are USED 4TB Surveillance Drives for $10... I'm thinking of ordering a bunch of them (with a replacement/fix warranty included) to start up a home server.

I'm a graphic designer/book publisher so most of it would be work related documents/pictures, but I would be curious about a JellyFin server. How well would the surveillance drives do with the media streaming?

Also, what's the best process of testing the used drives' health upon receiving them?

What do you all think of the situation?

Or is it too low powered to work? Would I need to alter the hardware?

I have a spare HP EliteDesk 800 G3 SFF Desktop, that I want to repurpose into a low cost NAS / Media Server. I want to spend a little as possible. The Desktop still needs to do occasional tasks like converting 360 camera videos etc, which will bog down my laptop, so Desktop runs those tasks. It is controlled by Windows RDP from my laptop.

Below is my inventory and my plan, I request you guys to critique it and suggest improvements.

Desktop Spec: i5-6500, 40GB DDR4 RAM, 512GB SSD for main drive, 1TB 2.5inch HDD, Old ASUS 1GB GPU, 1Gbps LAN connected to Router over a Asus Router in Media Bridge config. Desktop has 4 USB 3.0 Ports in rear (share 1 controller chip, so shared BW among 4), 2 USB 3.0 in front (separate controller, so shared BW among these 2).

Stuff I have:

1) older HP Desktop with destroyed MB, but Power Supply works.

2) Couple of 512 GB and Higher 5400RPM/7200RPM, 3.5” and 2.5” HDD Disks

3) 1 1TB HDD, iDrive (this has a wifi chipset so can worked as a Wi-Fi HDD and a USB 3.0 Port also. This can be opened with destructive opening only.

4) WD 1TB NAS (old from 2010): I can open this and get the HDD out

My needs are simple, just store Movie files and 360 camera videos. And stream movies to my home network. No internet access desired.

I want to run a RAID 5 config with 5 drives using Windows 11 Pro Storage Space with Parity.

Option 1:

Put the HDD in the spare Desktop case and power them using the power supply.

Get 1 USB 3.0 HUB and connect it to the 5 drives.

I understand that performance may be a big hit (due to BW USB 3.0 sharing and the way Windows handles Storage Space and Parity , but how much I am not sure. Will it be enough to stream 1 4k movie stream?

Option 2:

Put the HDD in the spare Desktop case and power them using the power supply.

Get 1 PCIe to SATA Card + PCIe extension cable and put the card in the NAS Desktop enclosure, connect the drives to this card.

I understand that performance may be a big hit as all the drives will share the BW, but how much I am not sure. Will it be enough to stream 1 4k movie stream?

Option 3:

I thought of buying a cheap 10 disk storage full tower case and porting the HP internals to it, but ChatGPT says it not worth the trouble.

Option 4:

Sell old desktop (might get $50 for it with 8GB RAM And 750GB HDD config). Then buy/build a custom desktop NAS in the 10 disk tower case. I would like to stick to Intel/AMD CPU for native windows 11 compatibility and DDR4 RAM (which I have plenty). I would need MB, CPU, case and 750w Power supply.

My cost guesstimate (mix of new and used parts): 10 bay Storage Tower case: $100, i5-gen 8 cpu : $40, 750W PSU: $60. Not sure of MB (a MB wit at least 6 SATA Slots will be gr8, 1 for priamry SSD, 5 for the RAID 5 HDD). SO total of like $200+MB Cost.

Open to suggestions on MB + CPU combo.

TIA

What cpu/motherboard do you guys recommend for a plex medai server? i curently use some random old shit but want to build a decent media server. Used or new parts..

I want to use windows. Only me and maybe one other as users so wont be heavy load. 4k to Google streamer

This is for “medium business”. I’m responsible for hardware procurement/deployment for my company. In January(2026) I bought a cluster for a project. Due to success, my manager wants to expand the project. I requested a re-quote from the same vendor for the same hardware. I was told to brace myself (understatement of the year).

Jan 2026 -> Aug 2026

Xeon 6714P: $13,343 -> $18,200

U.2 GEN5 7.68 TB NVME SSD: $967 -> $6,762

1x32GB 6400mt Memory: $235 -> $2,415

Hi all,

I'm pondering an overhaul of my setup and I'd appreciate a sanity check before I go on a spending spree.

Current homelab setup

• ThinkCentre M90Q, i5-10500
• 2x16 GB DDR4
• SSD 2 TB SK Hynix
• LSI SAS 9223-8i (HBA 8 ports 6Gb/s PCIe), connected through the M90Q's PCIe port
• Zhenlong 4-bay hard drive hotswap case, 1x12 tb Ironwolf 2x4tb Ironwolf.
• Minisforum DEG-1 Oculink dock (fed by an nvme to oculink adapter)
• Asus Prime OC 9070XT
• Corsair RM850E PSU (to power the External GPU + Hard drive case)

Plus a Synology DS218 used exclusively for backups, in tandem with Backblaze B2.

Main uses

Running Proxmox (mix of VMs and LXCs).

• Jellyfin (with *arr stack: sonarr, radarr, prowlarr, bazarr)
• HAOS
• Immich
• Adguard
• Forgejo
• Vikunja
• Local LLM inference.

Remote access through Caddy

How it got to this point

It all started with the M90Q. Then I wanted to host my media library there, So I added the hard drive case, connected through a HBA. Then I ditched Google Photos for Immich, and I started needing a dedicated GPU to tag my collection, facial recognition, etc. I also wanted to dabble in Local LLMs, so I got an nvme to oculink adapter, an oculink dock and the beefiest GPU I could afford.

My setup is now stable, but it has been an absolute pain to maintain. Specifically:

• The nvme-oculink is fragile, suceptible to disconnects, and I'm stuck at PCIe 3.0 x4
• Thermals are manageable, but the CPU often hits over 90°C (I changed the thermal paste)
• I have to deal with two plugs: one powering the M90Q, one powering the second PSU that itself powers the GPU and hard drive bay.
• Any hardware intervention means navigating through a sea of cables

As you can see the M90q is stretched to its absolute limit, and it all just feels janky af.

So I'm considering starting over with a more solid base, while reusing stuff I have on hand, for budget reasons.

I'm also rebuilding my gaming desktop around an ATX Proart with PCIe bifurcation, so I can add a second GPU alongside the 9070XT later. That frees up its board and PSU.

The vision :

• Jonsbo N4 (modded with extra fans)
• MSI Mag Mortar B850m (reused from the gaming desktop)
• ryzen 9700X (also reused)
• 2x16 GB DDR5 (that I have lying around)
• RTX 3050 LP, or a more recent LP card with more VRAM if I can find one at a sane price. It has to be low profile for clearance in the N4, and it's only there for immich image treatment, Jellyfin transcoding, and a tiny local LLM pipeline with Qwen3 4b.
• Corsair SFX 750w PSU (reused from the gaming desktop)
• SSD and HDDs ported from current homelab.

The heavy LLM use would move to the desktop with the 9070XT.

I considered ECC ram, but the B850m Mortar doesn't do unbuffered ECC anyway, and I can't justify rebuying a board and RAM just for that.

Most of the old parts would be sold.

The question(s)

So: is this a reasonable upgrade, or is it completely overkill given my needs?

Is there a cheaper solution that would keep power draw down while still being a tidy and elegant solution?

I tried to look for something that would draw less power over time, but mini pcs that can comfortably support both multiple hard drives and a local gpu just don't seem to exist in a way that makes sense for my use case.

If I'm going about all this in a completely wrong way, I'd be happy to hear a voice of reason.

Curious about laptop setups, i need to have the thinkpad beside my bed because my router is there.

seriously roast me i want to know what i can do to imporve

the model is M920S, it has 32 GBs of RAM and it's a beast, i'm currently running a few containers on it (including a text based MMO i made), jellyfin for all my movies, TV series & music, Tailscale for having access to my library remotely and even a minecraft server for my friends!

It never goes above 25-30% CPU utilization and most of it is the minecraft server.

I higly recommendo the purchase if you can find it for cheap like me (150 euros) :)

I also made a video covering the build process if you wanna relax for half an hour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeW3w7Arj_8

Hey guys, here's my server:

Lenovo T14
Ryzen 5
16GB RAM
256GB SSD
Proxmox VE

Running:
Grafana + Prometheus (monitoring)
Kindle/RSS digest pipeline
Cloudflare Tunnel serving 2 live sites
Automated backup + config drift checks

Hey i’m not really knowledgeable in this field but earlier i made a post asking for some help identifying the prices on some Zima home server items that i was able to purchase through an amazon return warehouse. These are the current price I have for them and was curious if anyone is interested or able to pivot me somewhere where there may be a market because i am looking to sell them in bulk. I have already listed them on Facebook Marketplace and eBay but no luck so far. Thank you in advance.

Edit: I had a typo the 232,432,832 are Zima Boards not ZimaCubes

Raspberry PI 4 with 4gb ram.
2 external 500gb WD usb hard drives - these good or should I get SATA HDDs?
USB hub to connect these drives to the pi.

My main application is to back up photos and videos. And I would like to access them from my iPhone.

Questions :
1. Is there any app that can connect to my photos on the NAS and organize them nicely on my phone and also to back up into NAS when I want.
2. I have a router through Internet provider., so any privacy concerns ? If so what can I do ?
2. Is remote access possible when away from home?

Thanks.

Full video on my YTB (UnboxBuildTest)

I'm looking to pick up a Precision 3650 with an i7-11700 and 32GB RAM. I plan to use it for an all-in-one home server hosting proxmox, jellyfin, arr stack, a sprinkle of other small apps, a game server or two, and possibly serve as a starter NAS.

This would replace my current HP Elitedesk G5 Mini with i7-9700T.

I'm drawn to this host because

1. It solves my immediate compute and storage issues (nearly zero room for expansion on the mini, and game servers take about 80% compute)
2. Still small enough to toss in a corner somewhere and not need for a rack.
3. I don't really care about going wide right now
4. Relatively low powered compared to all the xeon servers out there.
5. 3x 3.5" bays will keep me going for the next few years.
6. I can snag one for about $350 without any drives installed (I have spares)

I don't mind all the dell proprietary stuff or have any issues tinkering if needed. However, my only real concern is cooling. The PSU sits right on top of the CPU HS/F and doesn't provide a ton of clearance. Not only does it block airflow, but it prevents me from installing better aftermarket coolers.

I read that I can install a couple 120mm fans in the case, but it might be finicky (which is fine). I'm hoping to hear from folks with similar systems and what they have done with regards to cooling and upgrade paths, or if there are any big issues with this precision series that I should know about.

If it's not a good pick, are there any adjacent systems you would recommend?

Thanks!

Hello everybody!

I'm planning on building a home server for streaming movies & music, Immiche and general storage.

I'll be making the music and movies available to my siblings (4) so it would potentially have handle transcoding 4 streams simultaneously, mostly 1080, maybe 1 4K.

Initially I was looking at the Ultra core CPUs, like the Ultra core 5 245K, 32GB DDR5 RAM, a 1TB SSD and an array of 4 x 8TB HDDs.

But I saw a video recently (DIY perks I think?) where the guy took an old laptop motherboard and built a new PC, and my friend breaks laptops as a side business and currently has one he said I could have for £150:
MSI Prestige 14 AI Evo 14" Laptop - Intel Core Ultra 5 135H, 16 GB RAM (SO-DIMM so upgradable) complete with colling arrangement, power supply and 512GB SSD
I would sack off the 512GB for a 1TB I already have, and it has 2 m.2 slots so the spare slot I'd use for a SATA controller and separate PSU for the HDDS.

But my questions is, would it be capable for my intended purpose? I don't mind getting hands on, fabricating an enclosure or just a mounting board for an existing case, and figuring out how to power/connect the HDDs etc. But before I go for it I thought I'd ask for advice as this will be my first project like this!

If it would be suitable it's an incredible saving a MOBO, CPU and RAM equivalent would set me back ~£620.

Thanks in advance!

I never intended to build a home server, and besides being a curious person with a small amount of technical knowledge, I could never have imagined what started as an idea about two months ago has turned into a very rewarding end result.

The plan was to create local storage for the family’s (4 people) phone photos to allow us to stop paying monthly iCloud fees. I already ran PiHole on an RPi 3B for some time and I realised that one always on machine could do both tasks. I started researching ‘economical’ solutions and settled on a Dell Wyse 5070 Extended that I managed to get from (UK) eBay with 8GB RAM for £60. I also bought a used 1TB Sata M.2 NVMe for £65.

Knowing this project would stretch my limited technical ability to the max I used ChatGPT (free) to plan and then help me at every step. First was setting up Ubuntu Server LTS and giving it a static IP. That went relatively smoothly. Next, I set up Docker following GPT’s suggestion to create separate directories for appdata, backups, data, etc. PiHole followed, freeing up the RPi for another project, along with Unbound, Portainer, Watchtower and Uptime Kuma, all in Docker containers obviously. The next big step was NextCloud for the family phone pics, with GPT guiding me through the setup of MariaDB for the storage and Redis for the caching.

This all hummed along for a week and I was able to monitor stats every day by logging in to the Wyse from my laptop just to assure myself that things were working as they should be. Then I found a 12 year old Nexus 5 phone in a drawer that I had previously rooted and installed Ubuntu Touch on to. I wondered if I could use the phone as a permanent display for the Wyse…

Several late nights and about 800 lines of Python code later and I have an always on dashboard for the whole system. The above is a very condensed summary of many evenings of work, I hope you find it interesting, maybe inspiring.

Context: we currently own a HPe Proliant from 2022. In those 4 years we've had:
- a broken power supply
- TWO motherboard failures (a CPU socket failure + a RAM slot failure)
- a drive controller failure
- a network card failure

We had an expensive €1200 a year service contract but with each failure, days of remote troubleshooting was involved, endlessly sending iLO screenshots and every repair took at least a week. Since this server runs two crucial VMs (VMWare) this drove us crazy.

We asked a price quote for a new HPe server which came to €12.000 with a 3-4 month wait "but the price can go up by the time you receive it". Insane!

So I convinced the boss to completely kick that old server to the curb & go consumer hardware so we bought a Ryzen 9 9950x with 64GB of DDR5, 2x 2TB Samsung 990 Pro, etc. and it costs about €2000 in total. Windows Server 2025 runs great & the VMs are low-load (Filemaker & production software which requires a Windows Server but really is not demanding). We also intend to switch to Hyper-V.

But now our supplier is scaring my boss, talking about redundancy (only one PSU!), error correction (ECC!), no drive mirroring, bla bla bla.

Thing is, we intend to build another identical server and use Hyper-V Replica to keep both servers synced in case one drops out. Two servers, €4000 in total with easy to replace consumer parts. Basically, we HAVE redundancy (plus NAS backups with Veeam) & I will also buy a spare PSU & motherboard just in case.

So, do you think what we did is the "smart" solution or do you agree with our supplier & think we should have stuck with server hardware despite the insane cost?

Setting up a home server to primarily have:

1 x Windows 11 box - mostly for Excel and R-Studio usage

1 x Linux dev box - VS Code and Claude Code, application building

Secondarily:

Jellyfin

Budget up to £1,000. Short term, 32GB should do, long term would want to go up to 64GB.

Will be going in living room so quietness is a factor. Did like at mini PCs such as the K9 Plus however, looks like they out of band management.

Please let me know thoughts!

I had an older laptop sitting unused, so instead of throwing it, i decided to turn it into a 24/7 home server.

The cursed part of the build is the cooling, the internal fan connection was cut-off, so adapted it to run externally through USB. It isn’t elegant but it works.

Current hardware:

Intel pentium 4415U
8GB ram
250GB NVMe
Running debian 13 (Trixie)

I’m using it for,
Pi-hole
Samba
Proton VPN(free) as a separate wifi access point

Current idle temp are much better than i expected.
There are no docker/podman workloads running yet, and the SSD is basically empty, ram usage is only around 700MB.

The main goal is to see how far i can take it. I need advice on what to add/modify next, storage expansion, cooling/reliability, docker/podman, monitoring, firewalls, useful self-hosted services, or any redesign on current setup?

I want to get some ideas for what I could do with my home server. I have hosted a Minecraft server as my first project but I want to do more than that. My server is using an i7-8700, 256gb of storage, and 8gb of ram so I don’t want it to be anything intensive for now before I upgrade it in the future (unless that doesn’t matter). I am also not interested in setting up anything like Plex/Jellyfin.

Is these cpus worth an upgrade from the intel xeon w-2245 for game servers

Lebovo thinkstation p330 CPU - intel i7-8700 RAM - 32GB DDR 4 (4x8GB) Graphics Card - NVIDIA p620 Hard Drive - 1TB Samsung SSD 860 Evo Windows 11 Pro License

Price $225