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Advice Needed: Multi-Purpose Server Build (~10,000 NOK / ~900 USD)

BuildQuest

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Heya,
So, I’m planning to build a multi-purpose server and would love some advice on ensuring everything checks out.
Here’s what I’ll be using it for:
  • A personal storage server (accessible remotely).
  • An archive for large files like live streams.
  • Web hosting for:
    • My personal website.
    • A few project-based websites (with low traffic).
  • Running graphical tasks in the background (e.g., rendering shadows, light computation, video rendering etc—no gaming).
  • Hyper-V VM and hypervisor tasks
The system will handle approximately 40TB of total storage, split between personal storage and the archive. I’m planning to buy five Seagate BarraCuda 8TB HDDs for this (details below). HDDs are not included in the 10,000 NOK budget but are listed for reference. My priorities are reliability, quiet operation, and future upgradability.



Planned Parts List:
ComponentModelPrice (NOK / USD)
CaseBe Quiet! Pure Base 600 (Sort)1,190 NOK (~100 USD)
PSUCorsair RM750e ATX 3.0 750W1,271 NOK (~110 USD)
MotherboardAsus TUF Gaming B550-Plus1,769 NOK (~150 USD)
CPUAMD Ryzen 5 5600X 3.7GHz Socket AM41,690 NOK (~150 USD)
RAMCorsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 3200MHz 2x16GB819 NOK (~70 USD)
GPUGigabyte GeForce RTX 3060 Windforce OC 12GB3,390 NOK (~290 USD)
CPU CoolerBe Quiet! Pure Rock 2 Black499 NOK (~40 USD)
Storage DrivesSeagate BarraCuda 3.5" HDD 8TB x51,989 NOK x 5 (~170 USD each)
Operating SystemMicrosoft Windows 11 Pro 64-bit0 NOK (already have it :D)

Total Cost (Excluding HDDs): 10,628 NOK (~900 USD).
Total Storage Cost (HDDs): 9,945 NOK (~850 USD).

So, a couple of questions.
  1. Is the RTX 3060 a good fit for the light graphical computation I’ll be doing, or would something cheaper suffice? (I did look into a 1660 Super, but for some reason all the ones I found on "prisjakt.no" were more expensive than a cheap RTX 3060)
  2. Is the onboard RAID on the Asus TUF Gaming B550-Plus good enough for this storage setup, or should I consider adding a dedicated RAID controller?
  3. Are the cooling solutions sufficient for quiet and stable operation?
  4. I have (PcPartPicker has) checked the compatibility of the different components, but there could easily be something I've missed, so does it look like everything fits together?
  5. And most importantly: Does this build seem balanced for the intended purpose, or are there areas that could be improved within the ~10,000 NOK budget?



Thanks a ton for taking the time to help out! As this is only the second machine I ever build, and the first one I'm building alone, I’d really appreciate any feedback, suggestions, or critiques. Please please please let me know if you spot anything that could be optimized or if I’ve overlooked something important :love:
Cheers!
 
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Is the RTX 3060 a good fit for the light graphical computation I’ll be doing,
Anything less than a 3060 and you might have trouble running the likes of Topaz Video AI, Adobe Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve or similar software. I've just upgraded my RTX 3060 to an RTX 4070 on Black Friday.

Is the onboard RAID on the Asus TUF Gaming B550-Plus good enough for this storage setup, or should I consider adding a dedicated RAID controller?
I've used hardware RAID controllers from Adaptec (SCSI) and motherboard RAID controllers many years ago, but more recently I switched to software RAID (TrueNAS Core) on LSI HBA SAS controller cards, flashed to IT-mode (Initiator Target). On older motherboards, an HBA is often faster when addressing multiple drives simultaneously. It's what they're designed for.

I know you're using Windows 11 so TrueNAS is not an option, but SAS controllers work equally well with SATA drives and you can attach eight hard disks to a $30 LSI/Dell/HP HBA card purchased on eBay. There aren't many modern motherboards that still come with 8 to 10 SATA ports. You can get HBAs with 4, 8, 12, 16 and 20 drive capacity. Avoid LSI SAS HBAs flashed to IR mode (hardware RAID). It can prevent your choice of RAID from accessing full SMART data.
https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...and-hba-complete-listing-plus-oem-models.599/

When considering hardware RAID, you need to plan for possible hardware failure. If your motherboard dies and you want to resurrect the array without resorting to backups, you may need identical hardware. I had to buy a second-hand mobo with a Silicon Image controller chipset to continue using a quad drive array. Software RAID is more flexible.

I assume you'll be keeping at least two other copies of all your important data elsewhere. Remember, RAID is not a backup. As its name implies, it merely provides Redundancy in case a disk fails, giving you a chance to replace the dead drive if you're quick enough. I run RAID-Z2 (equivalent to RAID6) on multi-disk arrays (6 or 8 drives per array). In theory (but not always) I can afford to lose two disks before my data vanishes. In practice I back up to LTO tape and other drives.

I'd strongly recommend avoiding SMR drives in RAID. Stick to CMR/PMR. My choice of TrueNAS Core is particularly susceptible to problems with SMR, which can result in resilvering taking days instead of hours, or just failing completely. You might not encounter any problems in your setup with SMR, but it's a risk you should consider.
https://www.servethehome.com/wd-red-smr-vs-cmr-tested-avoid-red-smr/2/

planning to buy five Seagate BarraCuda 8TB HDDs
Check the Backblaze statistics before buying hard disks to see if they've had problems.
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q3-2024/

Are the cooling solutions sufficient for quiet and stable operation?
Make sure the hard disks have fans passing plenty of air over them. Keep the drives below 50C. I'm not bothered by fan noise. The Delta fans in my HP servers scream like banshees. Buy a quiet case, not one full of holes that let noise escape. Most of the heat will come from the CPU and GPU when you're rendering files. My system consumes 400W from the mains but survives 36 hour runs (includes 5 hard disks).
 
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System Name D.L.S.S. (Die Lekker Spoed Situasie)
Processor i5-12400F
Motherboard Gigabyte B760M DS3H
Cooling Laminar RM1
Memory 32 GB DDR4-3200
Video Card(s) RX 6700 XT (vandalised)
Storage Yes.
Display(s) MSi G2712
Case Matrexx 55 (slightly vandalised)
Audio Device(s) Yes.
Power Supply Thermaltake 1000 W
Mouse Don't disturb, cheese eating in progress...
Keyboard Makes some noise. Probably onto something.
VR HMD I live in real reality and don't need a virtual one.
Software Windows 11 / 10 / 8
Benchmark Scores My PC can run Crysis. Do I really need more than that?
Got slightly confused because I don't actually speak Norwegian but managed sans translation.

https://www.prisjakt.no/product.php?p=12260456 this CPU beats whatever <= 8 core you can slot into an AM4 board. Gaming is irrelevant for you so X3D chips don't count.
https://www.prisjakt.no/product.php?p=12369682 this motherboard is fairly decent, AsRock make good stuff lately. No worse than ASUS for that matter. AM5 will allow you much more upgradeability.
https://www.prisjakt.no/product.php?p=7276297 I don't think you'll need anything fancier than that because none of your tasks imply stupid speed being a necessity. 5600 MT/s will suffice just fine.

It just slightly goes beyond your budget, but trust me, it's worth it. Especially considering you had a Corsair RAM kit on your list, these are notorious for instability on AM4 systems.

As for RAID, I recommend investing in a dedicated controller, those on mainboards are for scenarios more simple than yours. And I double down on the recommendation by @Harlow to avoid SMR HDDs, they are godawful.

The cooler from your list will be more than fine for a 7500F. However, wouldn't expect it to run anything double CCD with any certainty, you'll require a more powerful cooler for that. That is if you upgrade to a Ryzen 9 CPU.

And yes, don't go any lower than 3060 12 GB. Better to squeeze more quid for a 4070 of course but I know, it costs money. Also wouldn't recommend Gigabyte, they're infamous for poor RMA and overall victimblaming policy. Better go Palit/Zotac/PNY/Gainward.

You can save a dozen dollars by going for a slightly weaker PSU. It's overqualified for what you have on the menu anyway.

Also can save a little cash by going for a cheaper case. I own an obsolete version thereof and can't complain about acoustics. But that's me, I'm the TA for server fans. Unless it can wake me up (8x Vega 64 Reference mining rig can't), it's fine and dandy in my book.

Also, this HDD is a very good option. You might buy just three of those so you get 36 TB but with much, much better speeds, responsiveness and reliability. Or four, for a grand total of 48 TB. You do you. WD Ultrastar and Gold are generally recommended for what you're cooking.

Can't say more than this.
 
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def buy a board that can do ecc & buy ecc memory
 
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def buy a board that can do ecc & buy ecc memory
A sensible suggestion for a dedicated server/NAS to reduce potential "bit flips". I have two TrueNAS builds on Xeons with ECC and two without ECC.
https://www.itsupportguides.com/blog/what-is-a-bit-flip-causes-consequences-and-prevention/

The downside of ECC is likely to be cost and the system being proposed is general purpose, not a dedicated data repository. Still, if a motherboard and CPU can accept ECC RAM and it's not too expensive, it's worth considering.
https://www.reddit.com/r/truenas/comments/segnjc
Also, this HDD is a very good option
I have a few Ultrastars and Golds myself but they're not cheap. The drives you suggested are 3,599 NOK each, so three drives will eat up the 10,000 NOK budget on their own.

I made a poor decision some years ago and bought six brand new Toshiba 6TB N300 NAS drives. Recently, one of the drives in RAID-Z2 started developing Pending Sectors after only six days of intermittent use. Perhaps if I'd spent double the amount on WD Golds I'd be happier (but much poorer) now? Main thing is not to buy SMR with TrueNAS.

My advice is buy what you can afford, make at least two other backup copies and don't trust RAID to keep your data "safe".

You can save a dozen dollars by going for a slightly weaker PSU. It's overqualified for what you have on the menu anyway.
I sometimes end up with a more "powerful" PSU than I need on server builds, just to get enough SATA power connectors. With 6 to10 SAS/SATA drives, many smaller PSUs just don't have enough power connectors, unless you resort to cheapskate splitters which can pose a fire risk.

When choosing a PSU, I look carefully at the number of SATA connections and check if I can buy more modular cables, to boost the number of SATA outputs. I discard multiple PCIe GPU leads in favour of more SATA leads. Take care to get compatible cables from reputable sources. Choose the wrong lead for a modular supply and it's spectacular.
 
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Location
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System Name D.L.S.S. (Die Lekker Spoed Situasie)
Processor i5-12400F
Motherboard Gigabyte B760M DS3H
Cooling Laminar RM1
Memory 32 GB DDR4-3200
Video Card(s) RX 6700 XT (vandalised)
Storage Yes.
Display(s) MSi G2712
Case Matrexx 55 (slightly vandalised)
Audio Device(s) Yes.
Power Supply Thermaltake 1000 W
Mouse Don't disturb, cheese eating in progress...
Keyboard Makes some noise. Probably onto something.
VR HMD I live in real reality and don't need a virtual one.
Software Windows 11 / 10 / 8
Benchmark Scores My PC can run Crysis. Do I really need more than that?
The drives you suggested are 3,599 NOK each, so three drives will eat up the 10,000 NOK budget on their own.
Five 8-TB BarraCudas will eat up about as much so that's not a huge premium for having LESS drives (=less SATA heads needed, less power needed) with much better quality and suitability. That is also the reason why I allowed myself to recommend having a cheaper PSU because any PSU can feed four SATA drives. At least in the "I have money" segment.
 
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[ ... ]
The downside of ECC is likely to be cost and the system being proposed is general purpose, not a dedicated data repository. Still, if a motherboard and CPU can accept ECC RAM and it's not too expensive, it's worth considering.
[ ... ]
all ryzens support ecc, not all boards support it tho (might want to look it up b4 you buy), and the required unbuffered ecc is abit of an unicorn but yeah
 
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Five 8-TB BarraCudas will eat up about as much so that's not a huge premium for having LESS drives
That is indeed true cost-wise, but the OP was asking about RAID which implies the possible use of parity. If so, with only 3 x 12TB drives in RAID5, total usable capacity would be reduced to 24TB, whereas with the original 5 x 8TB, you'd still have 32TB available. Do you buy quality and hope for long life, or cheaper drives and get a bit more space?

because any PSU can feed four SATA drives
It all depends what you mean by "feed". Not all PSUs come with 4 SATA connectors. I bought a cheap and cheerful Corsair CX550 for an old build, in full knowledge it only has 3 SATA power connectors. The CX550 does have 2 Molex connectors, so you could add Molex-to-SATA adapters if you trust them, bringing the total up to 5.

For multi-drive TrueNAS Core servers, I use the Corsair RM850 with 12 SATA power connectors. Horses for courses.

the required unbuffered ecc is abit of an unicorn
I probably wouldn't bother upgrading my Ryzen builds with ECC RAM. I have a bunch of old Xeon servers, with support for DDR4 UDIMM, RDIMM and LRDIMM, so upgrades are relatively cheap if you're prepared to buy second-hand RAM and test it.

If cost was no concern. I'd probably buy a ThreadRipper for my next rig.
 
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Messages
3,584 (4.98/day)
Location
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System Name D.L.S.S. (Die Lekker Spoed Situasie)
Processor i5-12400F
Motherboard Gigabyte B760M DS3H
Cooling Laminar RM1
Memory 32 GB DDR4-3200
Video Card(s) RX 6700 XT (vandalised)
Storage Yes.
Display(s) MSi G2712
Case Matrexx 55 (slightly vandalised)
Audio Device(s) Yes.
Power Supply Thermaltake 1000 W
Mouse Don't disturb, cheese eating in progress...
Keyboard Makes some noise. Probably onto something.
VR HMD I live in real reality and don't need a virtual one.
Software Windows 11 / 10 / 8
Benchmark Scores My PC can run Crysis. Do I really need more than that?
Do you buy quality and hope for long life, or cheaper drives and get a bit more space?
I choose to overpay a bit and buy four 12-TB drives so I get more quality, more space and less SATA cables needed. Surely it's gonna cost more money but at least it's comfortable.
 

BuildQuest

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Thank you all so much for all the valuable information!
I've gone over all the posts so far and did some additional research using your advice as a guide. Here's the updated build configuration based on everything I’ve learned:




ComponentDetailsCost (USD)Cost (NOK)
CPUAMD Ryzen 5 7500F 3.7GHz Socket AM5 Tray~175$~2000 NOK
MotherboardASRock B650M PG Lightning~150$~1700 NOK
RAMKingston Fury Beast DDR5 32GB (2x16GB) 5600MT/s~120$~1400 NOK
GPUGigabyte GeForce RTX 3060 Windforce OC 12GB~330$~3800 NOK
PSUCorsair RM750e ATX 3.0 750W~110$~1300 NOK
CoolerBe Quiet! Pure Rock 2 Black~40$~500 NOK
CaseStill selecting (recommendations would be very appreciated :))TBDTBD

Total Cost (Excluding HDDs): 11,200 NOK (990 USD)
HDDs: 6,000 NOK (500 USD)

Note that I did decide to downgrade my storage amount, to only 5 x 4TB Seagate IronWolf drives as I only need ~20TB of space. From what I could tell these are NAS-optimized and use CMR, which is apparently ideal for RAID setups; though I did consider the Seagate Exos instead, I decided to opt against it, since my use case is more of a 'general-purpose server' and my focus is, at least to some extent, on balancing cost with reliability, the IronWolf drives seemed like the more practical choice in this scenario, though I could have easily missed something.

As for the RAID controller, after listening to what you've suggested and doing a bit of my own research on what a dedicated RAID controller actually does for my usecase, I think the motherboard's built-in RAID support should suffice for my current setup. I do see the benefits that a dedicated RAID controller can bring though, but the added cost and complexity didn't align with my current needs. I may revisit this decision in the future though as my storage needs grow.

As for the case, I didn't actually find anything that's very suitable and cheaper, so unless there is a suggestion from here, I'll probably just go with the `Be Quiet! Pure Base 600`
(I haven't switched the PSU for the same reason, the ones I did find were roughly just the same price, I also don't want to reduce the quality of the components too much...)

PcPartPicker says these fit together (unchecked CPU cooler and RAM slots tho...), so it should fine...



Again, thank you all for your insights and recommendations, I'm really looking forward to building this, and would still appreciate any further advice or critiques you may have :)

Cheers!

(Note: If anything I've said has come across as boastful or dismissive, I want to clarify that this was not my intention... and sorry if anything I've said felt as though such an intention was carried with it, ref: --> `At least in the "I have money" segment.` <--)
 
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5 x 4TB Seagate IronWolf drives as I only need ~20TB of space
Please remember if you're going to run any kind of "redundant" array, you're going to lose space to parity. If you use RAID5 and 5 x 4TB, you'll end up with only 4 x 4TB = 16TB for data. The remaining 4TB is consumed by parity. If you run RAID6, you'll get 3 x 4TB = 12TB data and 8TB parity. Just thought I'd mention this in case you really do need 20TB of space as you implied.

I run RAID-Z2 (equivalent to RAID6) under TrueNAS Core, on 6-disk and 8-disk arrays. It's more costly in space "wasted" to parity, but gives a better chance of re-silvering an array if a drive dies. It's not unknown for another drive in an array to go bad during resilvering and if you're using RAID5, data loss is likely without backups elsewhere.

Some pundits recommend not buying all the drives for an array from the same supplier/batch. They argue that drives from the same batch will age in a similar fashion and when one drive goes bad after a few years, others may follow soon after. Re-silvering an array places additional work on the remaining drives and if you haven't been running regular "long SMART" tests, you may be in for a nasty surprise when Pending Sectors or Bad Blocks (which have gone unnoticed) stop the repair. I'm not that sensible/paranoid, but I do have many backups of important data scattered across numerous devices.

https://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?t=147018

As this posting below implies, you may not be able to run SMART tests on some RAID configurations if your controller does not pass SmartCTL commands through to the disks.
https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/7yzl1l "The only way you're going to be able to see the SMART data is if your RAID card is supported in SmartCTL.
Otherwise, the host cannot access the individual drives to query the SMART data, as the raid card intercepts that information (or simply is incapable of accessing it if it's a poor card).
A better solution would be to use a HBA card that passes all the drives individually to the host and use something like MDAM, ZFS, BTRFS, or some other modern filesystem RAID solution."


I'm probably taking things out of context here, but it's good to be aware of potential problems before they arise. I have 5 hard disks in my main video editing rig (2 x 4TB, 1 x 6TB, 2 x 8TB) and none of them are in RAID. They're just used for storage. Each drive is backed up several times to other computers/servers and critical data is saved to 800GB LTO4 tapes.

Don't set up RAID on your new machine and expect it to stop you from losing data. RAID is not backup. If your system is online, you could suffer a Ransomware attack. Your PSU might explode and kill all 5 drives. You might press 'Del' accidentally and send a large number of files to oblivion. Flood. fire, theft. There's no way to secure data if you only have one copy. Factor in how you're going to backup all your important files to at least two other devices/locations. I don't use the cloud, but you should find enough free TB to backup some files. Have fun!
 

BuildQuest

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Just thought I'd mention this in case you really do need 20TB of space as you implied.
Ah, that was my bad, yes, I took losing 50% storage into account in my `~20TB` estimate.

Each drive is backed up several times to other computers/servers and critical data is saved to 800GB LTO4 tapes.
From what I've read about LTO tapes they sound like a pretty good idea, will look into that too :)



I already have cloud backups of my most important data.



Thanks for all the help tho!
Will definitely be using a lot of this knowledge!

Cheers!
 
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From what I've read about LTO tapes they sound like a pretty good idea, will look into that too
Unless you've just won the lottery, you probably won't be able to afford LTO9, but drives and tapes become more affordable as you drop back down the earlier generations. I bought a couple of Quantum external SAS LTO4 drives back in 2018 for the equivalent of US $100 each (second hand on eBay). A cheap second hand LSI SAS controller with rear panel SAS port in each computer and a SAS cable completes the builds. I also have an internal full height LTO4 drive bought for the equivalent of US $30.

Some tapes I bought brand new in packs of 5 (around $80 per pack 2018 prices), others were barely used second hand for around $2 per tape. You need special backup software capable of writing to tape with LTO4, but LTO5 allows direct writing to tape from Windows File Explorer. I don't bother with so-called 2:1 1.6TB capacity compression on LTO4 because my files are not compressible, so I stick to 800GB native capacity per LTO4 tape.

Check out LTO5 or LTO6 prices, especially second hand. Tape capacity usually doubles with each new generation. The figures shown below for LTO5 are native capacity 1.5TB and 2:1 compressed 3TB. LTO6 is 2.5/6.25GB. If you enable compression and save zip, jpg, raw, mp4, etc., you'll probably get less out of your tapes than in native format with compression switched off.



Your computer needs to send files to tape at continuous high speed with no pauses. My LTO4 drives write at 80MB/s. OK with JPGs down to 12MB each, fine with 50MB RAW and very happy with 12GB MP4 4K video, but with hundreds of small files less than 10MB each, the tape drive suffers stop/starts known as "shoe shining". You may find that LTO5/6 needs a continuous 120MB/s or faster. For large folders full of small (sub 10MB) files, I create a single big zip or rar archive with WinRAR. Buffering small (sub 10MB) files on fast M.2 NVMe makes little difference. Higher speed tape drives might need SAS 3.0 12Gbit/s controllers as opposed to SAS 2.0 6Gbits/s. SAS 3.0 controllers are more expensive.
 
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