BUILD Help me be lazy - any good completed mid-range builds?

[gribbler]

I'm looking to put together a system for a friend, he was over at my place and lost his shit when i showed him all I'm doing with mine - I'd think he'd want 16-24tb of usable storage, I just am hoping there's a few completed builds around I could just copy? Thanks, and apologies for my laziness.

Would be used for plex server without transcoding, kodi client, a few home machines for light access, a few time machine backups. I currently have a ok build for myself:

FreeNAS 11.1
ASRock: H97M-ITX/ac
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4460 CPU @ 3.20GHz
16gb ram

2x4tb - main storage
2x128gb ssd's - jails

Running plex server, coutchpotato, sabzbd, rutorrent and sonarr, time machine backup for 1 mac

No issues the whole time I've had it.. (almost 2 years)

 

[Chris Moore]

What is the budget?

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[gribbler]

What is the budget?

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Ah yeah. US$ - 700 - if that's reasonable? More than that is ok, I'm not paying for it but I am trying to considerate


PS - drives not included obviously in that price

 

[Chris Moore]

New or used?

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[gribbler]

Either is fine.

 

[Chris Moore]

Take this server:
HPE ProLiant ML30 Gen9 Server
and upgrade the memory to between 16GB and 32GB.
and put 4 x 8TB (the best bang for the buck right now) hard drives in it along with a small SSD for the boot drive.
Done.

PS. The Western Digital WD Easystore 8TB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive is a real bargain (shuck it out of the shell) if you can find them on special around $160.

 

[gribbler]

Wonderful - thanks Chris...

 

[LIGISTX]

I am running a proliant ml30 gen9 and am loving it.

I did have to use a different case and PSU (I had both laying around, so not a big deal) and had to get a SAS card, but for the ~190 I paid for the server itself, I am quit impressed. Three 16 GB more of ECC ram at it for a total of 20GB and it’s been a trooper. I run a windows 10 LTSB VM with an occasional Fedora VM, handles both like a champ with plenty of headroom for normal day to day operations.

If heavy use because a common occurrence can always throw more RAM at it which is almost always the answer, or or need be a low/mid tier Xeon would be a lot more horsepower. But for me, the i3 has been just perfect.


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[Chris Moore]

If heavy use because a common occurrence can always throw more RAM at it which is almost always the answer, or or need be a low/mid tier Xeon would be a lot more horsepower. But for me, the i3 has been just perfect.

The one I linked to already comes with a quad core Xeon. I couldn't find the less expensive model in-stock.

 

[gribbler]

Thanks guys.. I imagine transcoding a few streams wouldn't hit that too hard?

 

[LIGISTX]

Thanks guys.. I imagine transcoding a few streams wouldn't hit that too hard?

Not at all. I can transcode a few streams on top of my VM’s running and I have the i3 version. Any Xeon is almost twice as powerful in that regard to my chip. Won’t be an issue at all.

Just to bad the i3 version isn’t in stock, I got mine to my door for 190 bucks and change!!!

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