I’m looking for some recommendations to improve my homelab. But first a bit of history to explain where I’m at and where I’m going. I currently have a super old Odroid C2 and a Raspberry Pi 4B. Everything is working great, but I’m missing two things in this setup: -The ability to transcode -A NAS Now a little bit about me, I’ve been using Linux for more than a decade, so I know how to do stuff, but when it comes to hardware, I have close to zero knowledge… So I was a bit surprised when I plugged 2 external HDDs on my rpi and it shutdown them after a few minutes. I found out that it was a power supply issue, so I did the first thing that came to my mind at this time: I bought another HDD with external power supply, to then find out that having a self powered and an external powered HDD would still fail (although it took longer).
So now I know my mistakes, I should have gone with a NAS instead. I checked the Synology NAS and found out NAS are actually quite expensive. I’m looking for at least 4 bays. I’ve been looking at some DIY NAS, but I’m a bit lost. I found some builds using a Jonsbo N2 that seems cool but at the same time I’m reading the fans are always running at full speed and I’m afraid that the power consumption will skyrocket.
So to sum up, I would like to have a NAS, ideally that can transcode and is low power. In the beginning, I wanted to have a NAS and a mini-PC that can transcode to replace my Odroid C2. But it seems the NAS are far more expensive than the mini PC. What are the recommendations here?
-Synology (Can it transcode?)
-A DIY (Jonsbo with an ITX board that can transcode)
-A DIY (Jonsbo with an ITX board just powerful enough for a NAS) + a mini PC
-Something else?
My budget was 500€, but it seems I won’t be able to do much below 700€
Yeah, I also had issues with raspberry pi 4 and USB drives. Even with working USB drives I prefer SATA by a mile. Like others said, transcoding can be avoided most likely, but you still have to deal with USB…
I ended up recycling old desktop PC components and made all-in-one NAS/media/docker server, while rpi is just 2nd pihole DNS server now. I have ATX MBO with 6 SATA3 + M2 slot and old, cheap intel G3930. The CPU supports QuickSync and it can transcode at least 3 1080p streams at once. I didnt test 4K since I dont have any screen with that resolution. My setup is probably <100€ used without drives. It drains 5x more electricity compared to rpi4, but thats still low IMO ~30W (~30€/year where I live). CPU temp is usually 30-40 C so its super silent (case fans are not even running), only HDD is making noise. It was worth for me, Im super happy with upgrade
Indeed, this sounds nice! I think 30W to power the server + 6HDD is really fine. I didn’t understand what parts you used from your old laptops?
I wasnt clear about that. I have only 2 SSDs and one HDD (thats ~30W), but motherboard supports up to 6 SATA disks. Im afraid power would increase with 6 HDDs. For example, I had it at 22W with 3 SSDs (before I bought that HDD)
I used parts from desktop PCs, not from laptops. So I have:
While it’s not re-using parts, there are PCIE M2 adapters that provide up to 4 M2 slots, so there are ways of increasing storage substantially within limited physical space.
M2 pricing isn’t terrible today, since pretty much all laptops use it now.
There are also cages for mounting 4 SSDs in a single 3.5 mount.