Anyone done any new builds in the last year?

[jeffself66]

My current setup is from 2016. I'm running an ASRock C2750 (yes, the infamous one). I have TrueNAS 13.0-Stable running on it and it runs ZFS. It has held up very well after some initial problems. I want to build something new and run TrueNAS Scale. I would be moving my current 8 hard drives over and importing the Zpool. I can't afford 8 x 8TB drives right now. I want to know what everyone else has built their own servers is using?

Is it possible to build a server with a server motherboard, a Xeon processor, and support for at least 8 SATA drives for a reasonable price? It seems like my choices are either SuperMicro boards or ASRock boards. Not interested in the latest systems running DDR5 memory. Don't feel that's necessary at all for now.

I want to do the standard file server and possibly run one or two virtual environments. I'm think a low-power Xeon system. Does anyone have experience running the AMD Ryzen's? I've heard they don't necessarily support ECC memory but also don't dislike ECC memory either.

 

[Whattteva]

Look at the first system in my signature. I built that in January of this year using all used parts (yes even the HDD's). The only new thing is the case cause I couldn't find a used one. I'm not sure if it fits your definition of "reasonable price", but considering the specs I got out of it, I thought $1500 was quite the steal. It's quiet enough to run in the bedroom, 2x 10G copper, reasonable power consumption, plenty of RAM (224 GB), plenty of compute power, and plenty of room to expand still both in storage and RAM (4 unpopulated DIMM's and 4(5?) PCIe slots.).

Might be tough to get that mobo+CPU combo deal I got for reasonable price though. Supply was pretty low last I checked on ebay.

 

[StrangeOne]

Ryzen doesn't "officially" support ECC. They just didn't do any testing to confirm. However many in the community have. But ECC should work as long as the motherboard specifies it. So just check.

If you are only needing a file server with a few VMs. Ryzen seems like a fitting platform. You could also go another route like 1st gen EPYC and grab an SM H11SSL-i. For about $400 you could snag a 7551p, the board, and some ram.

But again if you have no plans of expandability and want power consumption to the minimum. Go Ryzen. Just know that if you want the fancy features like IPMI then your going to pay for the board.

 

[sfatula]

Used motherboards and CPUs can save a fortune. A couple hundred bucks you can have an IPMI board and CPU. And very good performance at that.

 

[sos_nz]

My build from earlier this year is in my sig.

AMD 3600, Asrock rack x470D4U2, 64GB ECC, NVIDIA 1060GTX, 6 x 4TB EXOS in RAIDZ2

Waaay overkill for my home NAS, but plenty of headroom to run a couple of VMs (Home assistant and Nextcloud), as well as Jellyfin and a few *arr's.

Idles along pretty efficiently with the 3600. You do have to be careful which Zen CPUs support ECC....I got burned by a 5500, which doesn't - but the 5600/5700 do. Non-pro APU's such as the 5600G or 5700G do *not* support ECC RAM.

 

[NugentS]

I spent about £1000 on HairyNAS in my sig. Not including storage

 

[MrGuvernment]

I think I am at around $1100 CAD for the rig in my sig now with all I added to it...I already had the 2 x 980 PRO NVMe's, but everything else was bought used, 2 of the spinning rust HD's I had from my QNAP so I bought 2 more new.