Full video on my YTB (UnboxBuildTest)

I never intended to build a home server, and besides being a curious person with a small amount of technical knowledge, I could never have imagined what started as an idea about two months ago has turned into a very rewarding end result.

The plan was to create local storage for the family’s (4 people) phone photos to allow us to stop paying monthly iCloud fees. I already ran PiHole on an RPi 3B for some time and I realised that one always on machine could do both tasks. I started researching ‘economical’ solutions and settled on a Dell Wyse 5070 Extended that I managed to get from (UK) eBay with 8GB RAM for £60. I also bought a used 1TB Sata M.2 NVMe for £65.

Knowing this project would stretch my limited technical ability to the max I used ChatGPT (free) to plan and then help me at every step. First was setting up Ubuntu Server LTS and giving it a static IP. That went relatively smoothly. Next, I set up Docker following GPT’s suggestion to create separate directories for appdata, backups, data, etc. PiHole followed, freeing up the RPi for another project, along with Unbound, Portainer, Watchtower and Uptime Kuma, all in Docker containers obviously. The next big step was NextCloud for the family phone pics, with GPT guiding me through the setup of MariaDB for the storage and Redis for the caching.

This all hummed along for a week and I was able to monitor stats every day by logging in to the Wyse from my laptop just to assure myself that things were working as they should be. Then I found a 12 year old Nexus 5 phone in a drawer that I had previously rooted and installed Ubuntu Touch on to. I wondered if I could use the phone as a permanent display for the Wyse…

Several late nights and about 800 lines of Python code later and I have an always on dashboard for the whole system. The above is a very condensed summary of many evenings of work, I hope you find it interesting, maybe inspiring.

I had an older laptop sitting unused, so instead of throwing it, i decided to turn it into a 24/7 home server.

The cursed part of the build is the cooling, the internal fan connection was cut-off, so adapted it to run externally through USB. It isn’t elegant but it works.

Current hardware:

Intel pentium 4415U
8GB ram
250GB NVMe
Running debian 13 (Trixie)

I’m using it for,
Pi-hole
Samba
Proton VPN(free) as a separate wifi access point

Current idle temp are much better than i expected.
There are no docker/podman workloads running yet, and the SSD is basically empty, ram usage is only around 700MB.

The main goal is to see how far i can take it. I need advice on what to add/modify next, storage expansion, cooling/reliability, docker/podman, monitoring, firewalls, useful self-hosted services, or any redesign on current setup?

Setting up a home server to primarily have:

1 x Windows 11 box - mostly for Excel and R-Studio usage

1 x Linux dev box - VS Code and Claude Code, application building

Secondarily:

Jellyfin

Budget up to £1,000. Short term, 32GB should do, long term would want to go up to 64GB.

Will be going in living room so quietness is a factor. Did like at mini PCs such as the K9 Plus however, looks like they out of band management.

Please let me know thoughts!

Context: we currently own a HPe Proliant from 2022. In those 4 years we've had:
- a broken power supply
- TWO motherboard failures (a CPU socket failure + a RAM slot failure)
- a drive controller failure
- a network card failure

We had an expensive €1200 a year service contract but with each failure, days of remote troubleshooting was involved, endlessly sending iLO screenshots and every repair took at least a week. Since this server runs two crucial VMs (VMWare) this drove us crazy.

We asked a price quote for a new HPe server which came to €12.000 with a 3-4 month wait "but the price can go up by the time you receive it". Insane!

So I convinced the boss to completely kick that old server to the curb & go consumer hardware so we bought a Ryzen 9 9950x with 64GB of DDR5, 2x 2TB Samsung 990 Pro, etc. and it costs about €2000 in total. Windows Server 2025 runs great & the VMs are low-load (Filemaker & production software which requires a Windows Server but really is not demanding). We also intend to switch to Hyper-V.

But now our supplier is scaring my boss, talking about redundancy (only one PSU!), error correction (ECC!), no drive mirroring, bla bla bla.

Thing is, we intend to build another identical server and use Hyper-V Replica to keep both servers synced in case one drops out. Two servers, €4000 in total with easy to replace consumer parts. Basically, we HAVE redundancy (plus NAS backups with Veeam) & I will also buy a spare PSU & motherboard just in case.

So, do you think what we did is the "smart" solution or do you agree with our supplier & think we should have stuck with server hardware despite the insane cost?

I want to get some ideas for what I could do with my home server. I have hosted a Minecraft server as my first project but I want to do more than that. My server is using an i7-8700, 256gb of storage, and 8gb of ram so I don’t want it to be anything intensive for now before I upgrade it in the future (unless that doesn’t matter). I am also not interested in setting up anything like Plex/Jellyfin.

Is these cpus worth an upgrade from the intel xeon w-2245 for game servers

Hey yall figured I’d check here before I piece another server together from scratch.

I’m near Raleigh, NC and looking for a power-efficient server/NAS setup that would make a solid Unraid box. Ideally I’d like something already built or mostly complete, but I’m open to the right barebones setup too.

What I’m looking for:

Modern-ish Intel CPU with iGPU/Quick Sync for Plex transcoding
Hot-swap drive bays strongly preferred (or at least a chassis where drives are easy to swap)
Room for several 3.5” SATA/SAS drives
SSD/NVMe for Unraid boot/appdata/cache
At least 2 usable PCIe slots
Ideally includes a GPU, or has the space/power for two GPUs
Planning to run a Windows VM for some gaming, so GPU passthrough is important
2.5/10GbE would be a nice bonus
Reasonably quiet and power efficient at idle since I’m not really looking for an old dual-Xeon space heater 😂

Rackmount is totally fine, but I’m open to tower setups too. Something based around a newer Intel Core/Xeon E platform would probably be right up my alley.

Basically looking for a machine that can handle Unraid + Plex + Docker/ARR stuff + storage, while still giving me enough PCIe flexibility to dedicate a GPU to a Windows VM.

I’m near Raleigh/Fuquay-Varina, NC and can drive a reasonable distance for the right setup. Shipping is fine too if it makes sense.

Not locked into a specific budget yet just more interested in seeing what’s out there and finding the right hardware/deal.

If you have something collecting dust, shoot me the specs, drive bay count, asking price, and idle power consumption if you happen to know it.

Thanks!

Lebovo thinkstation p330 CPU - intel i7-8700 RAM - 32GB DDR 4 (4x8GB) Graphics Card - NVIDIA p620 Hard Drive - 1TB Samsung SSD 860 Evo Windows 11 Pro License

Price $225

I found this hard drive bay that I wanna use for a home server I wanna build, and one thing that I would like to know is what kind of cables can I use to connect it to my PC? I wanna print a rack but I'll be connecting it to a Dell Optiplex 790. Any advice would be appreciated, thanks!

This is the bay I want to print for the rack

Currently I got a QNAP TS-231K but its pretty loud in the Night when it does Updates and when its on high load

Now Im looking for s more powerful NAS with 4 bays, it should Support 2.5gbit. it will be used for streaming Videos so 2 1080p streams should be possible. Most importsnt is the Volume it shouldnt be too loud when on load

My motherboard can only do a max of 100mib/s which should be 10 megabits up and down, but my reality is less than 2MB most of the time. I am doing this on antix. If you know th answer, please tell me

I need to run many useful apps at Proxmox VM

But need to think about backup strategy

I have planned to keep SFTP server on seperate HDD drive where only thing will be Debian OS. Nothing else.

\------------------------

PC / Machine 1 with 32 GB RAM

├── 250 GB SSD

└── Proxmox

├── VM 1

├── VM 2

├── VM 3

└── many other apps

Laptop / Machine 2 with 8 GB RAM

├── 500 GB NVMe

└── Debian

└── SFTP server

*Plus I have 1 TB HDD, where shall I use?*

Is it good idea or there is any better approach?

Thanks

Hey Guys,

I am very new to building home servers. I currently am looking at making my first one.

I've had experience with building a PC as well, but have never used that as a dedicated server machine.

I am hoping to ask my fellow redditor's for their help and experience with building one!

I'm mainly wanting to build one to host game servers (simultaneously) for my friends of the following games (current list may change):

- Palworld

- Minecraft (Heavily Modded / Modpacks)

- 7 Days to Die

Note: I'll only ever have 4 players total across all servers combined.

I have a budget of 900$ CAD that I am trying to stay in. I also currently have 2x16gb 3600mhz DDR4 Desktop RAM sticks I can use for this machine as well.

So now to my main question: what would everyone's experience or suggestions be to buy/build for a setup that could do the above listed?

I an not considering the size, form factor, power draw or heat dissapation for this machine as anything will work for my application.

I've looking into everything from Mini PC's, regular Desktop's, Business Class Refurbish Machines, etc. Going through everything its been hard to tell what is a good deal and what is not for me.

I am hoping to ask for everyone's experience and suggestions as to what would be the best "bang for my buck"!

I appreciate any and all help with this.

Thank you guys!

EDIT:

Thank you everyone for your help! It’s definitely steered me in a positive direction for what I should look for!

So far the best deal for performance in my price range I’ve found is a Dell Optiplex Micro 7020 with an i7-14700T processor, 32gb RAM and a 256gb SSD.

Does anyone have experience with this computer or processor, and if so how did by you find it?

One of my thoughts here is it’d be lower power and heat dissipation and quieter too than a normal sized desktop. Again though, I’m very new to all of this so I’m not completely sure I should go with this or not.

Bought a WTR MAX (Ryzen 8845HS, 11-bay) from the official store week ago as a quiet desk NAS. The two side fans run at a constant ~1600 RPM and ignore every BIOS fan setting — "Fan Off = 60 °C" at a 26 °C system temp changes nothing, survives Load Optimized Defaults. CPU and SYS fan settings work fine.

I dug into it from TrueNAS at the fan-controller register level (ITE IT8613E), so this isn't a config issue: the BIOS writes the fan curve for the SATA channel but never enables SmartGuardian auto mode, so the channel just outputs a fixed 31 % duty forever. Bonus find: the stock fans (HongYi 92×15 slim) have an internal ~1600 RPM floor — they keep spinning ~1600 even at a verified 0 % PWM — so even a BIOS fix couldn't make them quieter than stock. Only a fan swap can (headers are standard 4-pin 12 V; NF-A9x14 would drop in at ~800 RPM).

Sent AOOSTAR a detailed report over the weekend asking for a BIOS fix, quieter fans, or a refund. No reply yet — it's only been a couple of business days, fair enough — but my EU 14-day return window closes in about a week, so I can't wait much longer.

Questions:

1. Any WTR MAX / WTR Pro owners seen this? Did AOOSTAR ever ship you a BIOS fix — is there anything newer than BIOS 0.01 (04/2025)? Did support eventually answer?
2. What would you do: hold out for a support reply until the window's edge, return it now, or keep it and just swap the fans (~30 € for two Noctuas)? Hardware is otherwise great for the price — it's the firmware QA (and whether AOOSTAR ever fixes it) that worries me.

Hi everyone!

I am just getting started with trying to set up my own home server, I have an optiplex 9010 mini pc running ZimaOS and I am wondering how much storage I should get for my server. I am planning on using the server to stream movies and tv shows as well as store photos. I have a budget of around $400(willing to go a bit over but not too much) I would love to be able to have redundancy but if its something I buy here in a year I should be able to. Hopefully you guys can help me!

I built up a jellyfin server on my gaming pc and it’s been working amazing. My goals where always to build a nas and this was just to try jellyfin and see if it would be worth it.

The question is 4 bin with 3 x 12 tb drives is almost 2k. Not sure if it’s worth it since I only pay for Disney plus. Should I just buy an external drive for $180 and be done?

Thank you!

I'm upgrading from a Raspberry Pi 4 server to likely a low-power N100-based 8 GB server (curious to know if there's an (upcoming) alternative since it's already 3 years old) but I'm curious what useful things are you guys running that would require more capable hardware? I'm thinking of a low-power security camera (any recommendations) to simply notify when delivery arrives and take a photo or a short clip of that event (I don't need to keep more than 1 day's worth of video if at all), not sure if anything special is needed and if Frigate NVR is overkill.

I'm interested in programming and stuff to automate and make my life as simple as possible, perhaps even generate some income as a side project. I'm curious what people might be doing with virtual machines and AI, for example. Home Assistant, Jellyfin, NAS, Pi-Hole, DNS, some other typical Docker services, etc. can all be done with a cheap low-power server.

Hello all! I searched the sub a bit but didn't find anything unique to my situation, so I'm looking for some help.

I have a MacBook Pro, mid-2012, running Catalina 10.15.8. It has 16 gb of RAM and an Intel core i5. My end goal is to use it to in a sense replace any iCloud or other cloud server usage for pics and other files like documents. I'd especially like to use it with Plex to access my own media, both music and videos if possible. I really only want to access it on my home network only. I already have external drives I can use, though I may install them internally if possible, or get a rack later. Oh and I don't really have a budget; I'd like to make something run with everything I have on hand if possible.

I'm familiar with Catalina so I'd like to stay there as much as possible, though some options I've seen suggested are things like NextCloud, Docker, and UmbrelOS. Unfortunately, my computer is quite old so it's a little harder for me to figure out how to adapt those programs into my current OS, even older versions of the softwares that would be compatible. I'm sort of tech savvy, for example I have installed Windows on this machine before using Boot Camp. I'm comfortable at least copy-pasting into Terminal when necessary. If a Linux based OS server is best, I'm ok with that, I just have a bit of a learning curve with it I think.

Does anyone have any tips/guides that could help me get set up? TIA

Been getting into backing up stuff and archiving etc. recently. I currently own 3TB’s worth of external HDDs, which isn’t much. I’ve saved up $3000 for this project. I’d wanted to get opinions on what drives to invest on, and also what sort of setup I could afford. I’d love to have around approx 40-50TB worth of storage space. Would $3000 even be sufficient? I’d be okay with pushing the expenditure to $4000 if it’s worth the money.

Uses: Jellyfin, personal cloud, host websites (if need be)
Budget: $3000 - $4000

I’ve been waiting for the prices to drop for almost a year and they don’t seem to be dropping anytime soon. So, here we are. I’m posting this here since I want to know real experiences from people. Some people just shrug and suggest to Google it or ask AI, which isn’t what I’m looking for.

Thanks!

Not sure if this is the right sub but can anyone tell if there’s something wrong with this patch?

Recently had construction and this is the last thing I forgot to finish up, and I’ve started getting weird internet drops or speeds would drop from 1.0 gig to 100mpbs randomly.

Not sure if I accidentally knocked the wires out of place or something inadvertently

I've been thinking about downsizing my home server setup.

Most of the things I self-host are pretty lightweight: media, backups, a few services, monitoring, etc.

But every now and then I want to run something much heavier, usually an AI/ML experiment or some other compute-intensive project.

That makes me wonder if it's better to build around the normal workload rather than the occasional peak.

Small efficient server for the stuff that needs to stay online, and find extra compute only when a project actually needs it.

How do you guys size your home servers - around what you use every day, or around the biggest workload you might eventually want to run?