this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2026
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New update: my current setup is a dell power edge t310 with 6x4tb SAS, zeon CPU, and 12gb ECC all parts stock. No hardware raid. 2.5gb network card. Should I just replace the 6 drives? With larger capacities? That will probably be more than $10/tb... I didn't buy the 16 drives yet, they are used SAS drives 4tb each, turn to be about $40 each.

Current storage 8tb used out of 14... And lots of cold drives waiting to get copied... 10tb+ probably. Is it worth copying all the cold storage drives to the redundant nas.

Update: budget(200-600), the reason for the build is I found cheap 4tb drives for almost $10/Terabyte. So I want to use as much of them as I can

I am trying to build my final NAS build as a beginner.

I have a 6x4tb dell server, but it's not enough.

I am currently trying to build the final boss of my nasses. 4x16tb with truenas with raid

I am unsure of what parts to buy as I am a complete beginner.

I found a case that can hold all 14 drives.

I need a motherboard, CPU, ram, PSU

I am on a budget, kind of.

What motherboard do you recommend? Pulled from a workstations with CPU and ram? A server board? Normal consumer with normal consumer CPU? Motherboard should have some pcie slots for 2 sata cards and one 2.5 GB card.

What CPU to run all these drives?

What ram and how much? 16? 32? Ecc, non ecc? Ddr4? Ddr3?

Power supply: 850w or more?

All parts should be able to support the 16 drives with headroom...

I would appreciate any help on this build, I want to build this as soon as possible.

Thanks

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[–] Humanius@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

There is no real clarification what that budget is, so I will assume that the budget is tight.
My advise is assuming that you are looking for the best bang for the buck.

The case looks like a good option, assuming that those are 3.5 inch bays.
It should give you plenty of space for expansion in the future if you want to do that

RAM prices are pretty nuts right now, so I would definitely not go balls to the wall with 128 GB of RAM.
16 GB of RAM should be more than plenty for a NAS server. Maybe you can even get away with 8GB?
I'm using 16 GB of DDR3 RAM in my own NAS server (which is also running Jellyfin and Nextcloud) and it's running fine.

Speaking of DDR3.. Have you considered buying your CPU, motherboard and RAM second hand?
From what I hear the prices of DDR3 RAM are not nearly as elevated as those of DDR4 and DDR5 RAM, and DDR3 is plenty sufficient for a simple NAS.

Be sure not to skimp on the power supply. Most consumer power supplies are not built for running a NAS worth's of HDDs.
I'm running a Corsair RM550x in my server, which is capable of supplying 130W on the 5V rail.

Good luck with your server build!