I dived into the selfhosting rabbit hole once again and again I am stuck at the hardware part. I’d like to start small-ish to make it realisable. I thought about a NAS (Openmediavault probably). First I wanted to do it on a Raspberry Pi with an external hard-drive but then I read USB connected drives are unreliable and so on. Mini PCs are too small to house internal drives so should I go with a (refurbished) business PC from ebay and add some drives to it?But they usually come with Windows 10, which I wouldn’t need but makes them more expensive. I also have at least one old PC case laying around but no mainboard or CPU for it, if that info might be important. Thank you in advance for helping a noob out!

Edit: What I want to achieve: I would like a NAS and (separated) a server with some small services (pi-hole or adguard, syncthing, jellyfin (getting the data from the NAS), and so on). I thought about running the small services with docker on a RPi 4 and the NAS on a refurbished business PC with SATA drives in the case (I checked ebay and there are mainboards with 4 SATA III connectors and PCI so I could even add more SATA connectors). In a second moment a backup server (maybe with borg) would be a good idea but I could also do manual backups with an external USB HDD for the time being.

  • ___@lemm.eeEnglish
    2·
    5 months ago

    I would recommend getting a “forever” case like the Node 304. You won’t regret the purchase and you can use for any future upgrades. It stores 8 (correction, 6) 3.5 drives, so you can add on as you grow.

    Find a used a motherboard like this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/235546915389?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=GP45S9r5R6-&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=uaLd2h3oTQO&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

    With a cheap GE (low power version) AMD processor and 16/32gb ram and whatever nvme ssd you can scrounge.

    It will cost you maybe $100 over some alternatives, but you can use it for years and keep upgrading as you go.

    Most Dell and OEM parts won’t work on standard cases, FYI.

    • ShepherdPie@midwest.socialEnglish
      2·
      5 months ago

      The Define series of cases from Fractal are also an excellent option. I have 9 HDD and a 5.25" optical drive in mine (Define R6) with room to spare and the whole thing is silent.

    • theorangeninjaOPEnglish
      1·
      5 months ago

      This case looks good but is a bit out of my budget for now. But to understand this properly, the Node 304 fits a micro-atx mainboard? Which this one from gigabyte is, right?

      Most Dell and OEM parts won’t work on standard cases, FYI.

      This was very helpful, thank you! I would have spent money for nothing!

        • theorangeninjaOPEnglish
          1·
          5 months ago

          Sounds good, I will check how much that would cost and consider it. There are probably plenty of resources going over low power cpu right? Thank you!