Build Your Own NAS vs Buying a NAS?

Synology/QNAP versus Build Your Own NAS - nascompares.com/guide/build-y...
Jonsbo N2 vs N3 NAS Case - Get It Right First Time! nascompares.com/guide/jonsbo-...
Recommended Jonsbo N3 NAS Builds For $300 - $500 - $1000+ nascompares.com/guide/recomme...
nascompares.com/2023/09/08/to...
I Built the Jonsbo N2 NAS - • I Built the Jonsbo N2 ...
Jonsbo N2 NAS Build Complete Guide UnRAID/TrueNAS - nascompares.com/2023/09/01/jo...
Jonsbo N2 NAS Case Review - Still The Best? nascompares.com/review/jonsbo...
Build Notes for DiY Intel i5 Custom Linux 8-Bay NAS (LINKS INCLUDED)
AUDHEID K7 8 Bay NAS Case B09QKMQ1B1 - $179.99, amzn.to/3DoXahI
MSI MAG B660M Mortar WiFi DDR4 Gaming Motherboard B09PXD16F6 - $179.34, amzn.to/3XNLkpq
Intel Core i5-12400 Desktop Processor B09NMPD8V2 - $182.99, amzn.to/3DobqXT
CPU Cooler with Aluminum Heatsink & Copper Core Base B01LKDS8OA - $14.95, amzn.to/3HAHzOu
BENFEI SATA Cable III, 3 Pack B07JFQ2H9R - $6.99, amzn.to/3kK6vtT
BENFEI SATA Cable III, BENFEI 6 Pack SATA Cable B07JGNM46J - $8.99, amzn.to/3kNBCVq
2.5G NIC Network Card, Dual RJ-45 B09W2PVDPZ - $33.99, amzn.to/3WEZyYt
FSP Dagger Pro 650W Mini ITX Solution/SFX 12V / Micro ATX 80 Plus Gold PSU B07SYSLZDR - $134.99, amzn.to/3RaQbyx
Silicon Power Value Gaming DDR4 RAM 32GB Memory B092ZCVHS8 - $64.97, amzn.to/3wByHBP
Patriot P310 P310P240GM28 240GB Internal SSD B09KY7PMCS - $19.99, amzn.to/3RfpMQ7
-----------
Build Notes for DiY Synology DS923+ / QNAP TS-464 etc:
Topton NAS Motherboard N6005/N5105 4x Intel i226-V 2.5G Nics Dual M.2 NVMe Motherboard - $226.97
Mini ITX 4 Bays disk NAS Case - $57.90
350W Small 1U Flex Full Modular PSU - $47.87
SATA 3.0 III 6Gb/s 40cm Cable - $0.71 (each)
JinyJaier SSD NVME M2 128GB SSD - $9.76
Looking for deals and offers on all things NAS, DAS, SSD, HDD and more? On NASCompares we have a featured DEALS Page that is regularly updated by me, Eddie and many of our visitors. Take a look at what devices are on special offer right now, worldwide, by visiting here - nascompares.com/daily-deals/
Video Chapters
00:00 - The purpose of today's video - DiY vs Turnkey NAS and the Cost
00:43 - A NAS is more than just the hardware!
01:52 - The cost of current NAS hardware vs the Cost of building it. Domestic NAS
03:05 - The Importance of TrueNAS and UnRAID
04:00 - Building a NAS like the Synology DS923+ or QNA TS-464 yourself cheap from scratch
11:12 - Building a NAS setup like the Synology or QNAP WITHOUT the building/tech hassle
14:01 - How much will it cosst to build a NAS comparable to the QNAP TVS-h874?
16:59 - Comparing the Price of DiY NAS versus Turnkey off the shelf NAS Drives
Thinking of buying a product mentioned in today's video from Amazon? If this video has helped you make that decision, you can head to Amazon using this link and we will get a small % profit of whatever you buy, which goes directly back to NASCompares and allows me and Eddie to keep doing what we do here on KZbin and the Blog - amzn.to/3TjM0kj
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Visit the Community Support forum 'ASK NASCompares' here if you need more help - ask.nascompares.com/
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Thanks for watching. Do you still need help? Use the NASCompares Free Advice section above. It is my free, unbias community support system that allows you to ask me questions about your ideal setup. It is NOT a sales platform, NOT a way to push hardware you don’t need and, although it is just manned by me and might take a day or two for me to reply, I will help you any way I can. Below are some more popular guides.
NASCompares Free Advice Area - nascompares.com/contact-us/
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[@sergueivergounov1961]

I purchased a NAS. It was excellent. Years later the maker dropped support. Its proprietary software became outdated. My computers with modern OS do not see it anymore. Not its web-page, not the files. I will not buy a prebuilt NAS again. The other NAS that I built myself, Open Media Vault, is always up to date.

[@HeikosGarage]

That was again an excellent video. The only downside I see with watching your content is that i always want to spend money afterwards. I appreciate what you guys are doing, keep up the good work. Heiko

[@Special_Ed]

Nice, fair comparison. I went through the same debate a few years ago. I ultimately went turnkey for the power efficiency l benefits and that I really didn’t need much performance. But the DIY was compelling at the time just for learning and power.

[@JBlongz]

If you’re tech savvy with some command line skills, and a lot of flexible time, building is better. If you need functionality ASAP, buy a QNAP or Synology.

[@AlmostSickBoy]

Right words, I work as a qa engineer and familiar both, command line and PC building, but I have no idea about most of the zfs stuff and the rest of deduplication part. It can be done, but in some time, it will be more of a project and a toy rather than a working solution.

[@seansingh4421]

You’re monumentally wrong here bud. TrueNAS, Unraid, Proxmox etc have UI. Otherwise you can easily turn any Windows or Linux PC into a file server by slapping on a nice NIC, Docker and Wireguard.

[@FranklySpeaking73]

QNaP and symbology are garbage. TrueNAS is a better option by a long shot if you are buying a hardware solution.

[@seansingh4421]

@@FranklySpeaking73 Umm, not really. TrueNAS is a giant headache, if its not business use then unraid and plain ubuntu with zfs is better

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

​​@@seansingh4421that gui won't get you far if you don't understand at least basic zfs knowledge, and that's multiple hours and still you might make critical mistakes that could cost you performance, data, or countries good spent on forums

[@cameronfrye5514]

Lots of good stuff to consider there. I built my own to learn, but I used some ebay parts and a case and power supply I had lying around. Knowing what I know now... I would have simply bought a Synology for the software package. The services I have on my TrueNAS system do the job, but it took me months to get things to where I'm happy. Thanks for the discussion!

[@kienanvella]

Enterprises aren't buying 'high end' consumer NASs. Sorry, they just aren't. The people buying the high end consumer NASs are consumers with a lot of money, and photography studios. Large enterprises are buying rackmount storage. Sometimes that's the Synology/Qnap rackmount solutions, most of the time it'll be like a Dell R730XD with some expansion shelves running plain old windows, or linux, or sometimes truenas. If you have deep pockets you'll have an EMC, Netapp, HP 3PAR, etc. solution - tons of other vendors. Medium/small sized businesses saving a buck will get a used server, chuck in a bunch of 2 or 4tb hdds and install truenas or have their admin set up something. Personally, I don't care about warranties. They're worthless anyway. There is also a 3rd DIY NAS OS option - OpenMediaVault, which has plugins for ZFS. Or you can set up a synology hybrid raid setup in OMV, by using MDADM, LVM, and ext4/BTRFS - which is exactly how synology does it.

[@evelbsstudio]

Totally agree, also people buy rackmount for home labs. For homelabs you can pick up used rackmount nas from ebay quite cheap.

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

​@@evelbsstudioalso soho

[@JasonTaylor-po5xc]

There is a compelling argument for going DiY to learn more about how computer systems are put together and work - but I don't recommend that for a NAS solution. For me, I build my own PCs for both personal and production workflows. I could have easily built my own NAS but I really like the Synology system - so I got one of their 8-bay systems, added SSDs for cache, and a dual 10g NIC - in addition to fully populating the system with NAS-rated hard drives. As a business expense, I just needed it to work. I also use the Synology mobile apps. Really, I was buying into the software and ecosystem more than the actual hardware.

[@InspectorGadget2014]

Indeed, one pays for the software (license) with a turn-key solution. But I would also dare to say, one also pays for the (often excellent) Support and (2 ~ 3 years years) Warranty. The beauty of DIY is that you can often repurpose older (but powerful) hardware and learn a lot along the way. (but also encounter some challenges along the way, never store your data on such a NAS without a more-then excellent backup! Preferably 2x backups!) With that hands-on-approach you can fit your needs down to the comma's and have a lot of satisfaction of accomplishments. (but also sometimes frustrations). With a turn-key solution the GUI and experiences often are quite smooth. With DYI it might be rough at the edges and be prepared to learn a lot in a relative short time. And spend possibly spend a lot of time in building and fixing/fine-tuning the system. With more than 30+ (turnkey) NAS in use since 2002 (about 2PT to 3PT of data) with less-than-a-handful of issue (2x defective PSU, 1x stuck in bios-boot mode) I believe it to be quite cost-effective and, very important, very reliable.

[@ZajaxFilms]

100% learning more DIY. Before I could afford a proper synology I had to run xpenology on a completely unsupported core2duo chipset. Didn’t know lick about virtualization but had my first exposure cuz it let you run on older hardware

[@ewenchan1239]

I've used both. I started out with a DIY build*, then bought three QNAP NAS servers, to supplement said DIY build*, and then decommissioned all of those NAS systems in favour of consolidating 4 NAS servers down to a single, new DIY build*, and then I had troubles getting NFS and SMB to play nicely with each other for one of the shared folders (yes, I know - NOT the recommended practice, but it's really easy to be able to set up NFS shares and mount them on Linux systems and it's really easy to set up and mount SMB shares for Windows systems). (Yes, I also know that you can mount NFS shares on Windows as well, but there is one extra step that you need to do, vs. SMB/CIFS working, just out of the box, on Windows.), so now I run my consolidated server plus 1 QNAP NAS server. There are certainly advantages to both. I wished that QNAP would keep up with the hardware that's available. The fastest AMD processor that they have that you can buy (as of this writing) is still the Ryzen 7 3700. (There are faster AMD processors out there but QNAP hasn't build NAS hardware around it.) And they are sorely lacking in the PCIe expansion department (vs. a DIY build). But on the other hand, it is also true that for my wife, who is NOT technologically inclined, that she can upload the pictures from her phoen using the QPhoto app, that's a nice to have. Yes, I probably COULD deploy something similar, but it would take a LOT of research on my part, vs. installing the hard drives on the QNAP NAS server, and pushing the power button to turn it on and I can be up and running in about 2 days, of which, about 20 minutes of that is my setting it up, and the rest of the time is the system initialising itself. And then the QNAP also has myqnapcloud.com, which allows controlled access from outside my home network to be able to transfer files to/from my system (e.g. my 72-year-old dad sharing old pictures from when we were little with me), whereas again, I probably COULD set something like that up myself, using the DIY solution, but again, it would take time for me to research what works and what doesn't, and deal with all of the security risks myself (which, as a grossly underqualified sysadmin, I probably SHOULDN'T be in charge of securing m home network). There are definitely use cases for both. *DIY build - technically, someone else built them because I bought the servers used and preassembled, off eBay.

[@tomdillan]

Not sure why my other post was deleted by youtube but for my budget DIY Nas build I went with a Hp Z230 Sff with a xeon e3-1225v3 for ecc support, 16gb ddr3 ecc ram (still plan to upgrade to 32gb) pny quadro p400 low profile for jellyfin h265 decode, 5.25 drive to 1x 3.5 in hd and 2x2.5 ssd adapter, 2x120 ssd in raid 1 boot drive, 3x wd red 10tb in raid 5, pci-e to nvme adapter for a 256 gb nvme cache drive and truenas core install . There is still an open slot for a pci 2.5 gb nic adapter soon as I get a 2.5gbe switch.

[@wsbellin1971]

Nice Video!!! Thank you very much for all detailed information.

[@karl-philipebrice4150]

Awesome video and a well of wisdom. Thank you so much!!!!

[@richardhogben3776]

Really good and thorough video. Thank you very much

[@wertigon]

Biggest lure for me is that DiY allows me to upgrade RAM, hardware and SSD cache however I want. I know I am paying a premium for that, but for something that allows me to set up a few extra server functions like DNS and HTTP proxies it becomes worth it.

[@TOM7952]

Thanks great comparison. Buying a turnkey solution made a lot more sense during the recent Prime Day sales which brought the monetary differences down significantly.

[@BAMBOOZLE7]

Thank you this is still a great video in 2024!

[@aappiah1]

Another great video… thank you

[@astralpowers]

I built my own NAS around the Jonsbo N1 case which can fit in 5 3.5" HDDs. I bought a cheap B550 mITX motherboard, reused an old Ryzen 2700, 16GB ram kit, a 500GB NVME M.2 SSD, and a 512GB 2.5" SATA SSD that were lying around from my old desktop build and the HDD's were from my old backup enclosures. You can really save by building it yourself and reuse a lot of old desktop parts.

[@lahmyaj]

Great video mate thanks 👍🏻

[@Thomasmcse]

I like your comparison. I made that for myself couple of years ago and most likely it's sooo time consuming. That was the reason decided to remove my own Server and replace it with a build NAS. It's just less overhead.

[@TheMuso28]

This video covers the question I am asking myself now, as I have a machine as a file server that is starting to show signs of failure, either in the CPU or the board, I am not sure which. One thing I really like about pre-built NAS is the hardware form factor. Yes, you can get PC cases with a similar form factor, but it seems to me that they end up being a little bigger than pre-built NAS cases, because they need to conform to hardware standards, ITX/ATX motherboards, PSU form factor, etc. My difficulty in deciding comes from a software perspective. I would much prefer to run something other than the NAS vendor's software. I did have a Synology 1815+ a few years ago, and I ultimately found DSM too limiting for what I wanted to do. Ultimately it had a PSU failure, and since then I have put together various DIY solutions that have served me well enough, except for the hardware form factor. I haven't tried QNap's solution yet, but I do like that they support ZFS, as that is what I am using now, so replication from my current system would be somewhat less painful, assuming QUT or whatever it is called allows for this.

[@sashag1547]

Great video. I watched a lot of your videos and last month pulled the trigger on my own build. Nothing I saw pre-built made sense. I wanted a jellyfin media server, and wanted to upgrade a dell micro pc with an i5 8500t and 1 16tb external hdd, to something with parity. The qnap units looked good, but the prices even on the i5 8400t ones are still nuts. Found the Jonsbo n1, and built a i5 12400t on an asus b660 with 16gb ram in it. Added 5x 16tb hdds, and a simple 1x 118gb intel optane ssd. Put unraid on it, learned the system in a few days, and it's running 24x7 with an up time of 1 week now. Total cost with drives was the same as 1 tvs 672 without hdds. It idles at 35w per the ups readout. Highest usage I've seen was 80w. Knowing I have the power to transcode 4k x265 for years to come, and no limit on supported hhds, meant more than the turn key nature of the current pre-built celeron systems, and the savings from the core ix systems.

[@MajorisMons]

You single handedly sold me on building my own. Thanks for sharing!

[@matldn2697]

@@MajorisMons Same here.

[@SpinStreakYT]

Could possibly share me your complete list of your build here? Like which version the b660 did you choose? I’m planning on doing your exact build

[@LoveToMix]

I use Synology at work. It’s expensive but you have covered all the reasons well. I’m using 12 bay rack Mount with dual power supplies and looking to upgrade to a higher range device to have the ability to test VM backups. The NAS alone is about $AU7000, plus disks. This is cheap when I have about 60 machines to backup and Synology comes with software that will do it and luanch the backup in its own virtual environment to test out

[@FARBerserker]

The best "NAS" one could buy was the old Gen8 HP Microserver ProLiant N54L . . I wish there were something like that but more modern AT THAT SAME PRICE POINT!

[@kenwalsh6245]

I had a play using an old PC with a couple of old HDs and used TrueNas a while ago. So it was a easy way to try out doing a home NAS. I guess most people do it this way at first as there is no money outlay just using old non used equipment. It was my time that was only invested. It worked. To buy all the equipment new and start from scratch Im not so sure if I would do it now (like your video) I think Id sooner take the easy way out and just buy a 100% complete NAS as I have done (Synology NAS)

[@NitroModelsAndComics]

For just Plex and maybe some other storage and a small private used a 4 bay ready to go is the answer for me. Very informative...

[@lincolnlohann]

Thank you for helping me make my (so hard) decision! I could decide until I watched your video

[@ntn888]

hey! did you end up with the diy route? with the n5105 board?

[@CapsLock33]

ill spend the extra money and buy a prebuild NAS. Thanks for the info

[@Trains-With-Shane]

You could pick yourself up a used Dell Poweredge server for $300 that probably has 6-8 SATA/SAS slots, a quad or hex core Xeon, and likely 64gb ram that would blow the pants off of any of these options. I've got a trusty old R510 that supports 12x 3.5" bays currently populated with 4tb drives but I can scale that up to 8tb's without issue and run any combination of NAS software and VM's I want. Only reason I don't us because my VM lab machine is a separate box that has 2x hex core xeons and 288gb ram. a Dell R710 in that instance. I think I have $400 total in the R710 and most of that was the RAM as it only came with 64gb. Only downside to going with the old enterprise stuff is power draw, noise (depending on which one you get) and form factor.

[@mattsadventureswithart5764]

The problem with your suggestion of buying an older power edge server, is the sheer amount of power it converts to heat, compared to cheaper systems. I'm not saying it's a bad suggestion, just an expensive-to-run suggestion.

[@ChitChat]

I'm a network engineer and was on a contract where the lead network engineer outsourced his routers to another company. Sometimes that's what you gotta do based on budget and time. You can't always do things yourself. Especially if your time is valuable.

[@Zellonous]

People always do the valuable time speech but I've never seen anyone who didn't make sure they never have time for anything. It's usually psychological

[@trsskater]

I guess it depends on how valuable your time is. My car doesn't have a spare tire and is supposed to have run flat tires. I changed my tires out to a cheaper tire because run flats are very expensive. The money I would lose from work waiting for 3 hours for AAA to pick me up was so much less than buying a new run flat tire. I did the math on it and I save money setting on the side of the road and still having to replace the tire compared to just buying a new run flat tire. So I don't think everyone's time is always worth so much. I think they just like the convenience and it can fit the budget.

[@mtcleric3275]

Thanks for video. End of day to me is still better to go for out-of-box solution like Synology for the ease of setup & warranty support you get from it. The DIY route is great if you want customize better hardware for specific reason. But the built-time, compatibility issues, warranty headache, software support...etc, end of day is not worth the money saved! Is a good route for tech savvy & those wanna do more, but for every day user (home / commercial) the best option is still out-of-box solution.

[@SaiyanJin85]

This is what I needed!

[@210Artemka]

You can get away with even lower price for a PC-like build. I bought a Huananzi QD4 motherboard (the only Chinese mATX board with 6 fully functional SATA ports, however can find even better options if you go ATX or eATX), Xeon e5-2666 v3, 2x16 gb of ECC REG RAM. I got it all under 175$ + ~20$ for some cheap M.2 SSD. Case, PSU and cooling are cheaper to source locally on a second hand market. I got barely used bequite! PSU for almost half the price of a new one. You will end up with not just a NAS, but a mini server, capable of hosting quite a lot of service, including game servers.

[@chrispeart1014]

@NASCompares would you consider doing a video discussing purchasing factory recertified enterprise grade drives? I am seeing factory recertified EXOS drives more than 50% cheaper than new

[@kirksteinklauber260]

Nice video but in case of TrueNAS the recommendation is to go with ECC memory. I know that Turn key solutions like QNAP pr Synology requires ECC memory but the experience and risk of corrupted data is with the DIY build. I will go with an ITC x99 motherboard and Xeon low power (i.e., E5-2650Lv3 or v4) with ECC memory slots.

[@England91]

Yeah, it's recommended to buy/use ECC if you can but you can get by without though

[@richardhoard5951]

I've been thinking about building a 5 drive NAS in a Jonsbo N1. It's a Mini-ITX case that supports 5x3. 5" drives.

[@SrSilverstars]

Great video. I mean that. I also think the components selected were mostly spot on. I think part of the DIY lure is you can have more or equivalent performance from an old pc or laptop. Also... regarding the software. Xpenology anyone?

[@ZajaxFilms]

I’m running xpenology vm on proxmox on an old HP pc as my offsite backup nas. Using a ds920+ as my local nas I get to compare performance. The vm approach is nice cuz if I do want to experiment with truenas or unraid I can spin those up at any point. I’m a bit afraid to run xpenology as my main nas but as a backup it’s a lot of fun

[@Danny-ml2ny]

Hi, I was curious to know what model is the white case on the cover with 4 bay? Thank you

[@57thStIncident]

I'm under the impression that using a USB-connected enclosure isn't typically recommended for NAS where some sort of parity/RAID scheme is in use. Even if performance *might* be adequate the extra exposure to connectivity failure seems dangerous.

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

Most of the external enclosures are quite sketchy and tend to die unexpectedly

[@ZajaxFilms]

Ok again I was researching this last night and this was uploaded today. GET OUT OF MY HEAD

[@SrSilverstars]

Yep+1 He does do that sometimes

[@pantoqwerty]

The one thing not really covered is the salvageable nature of the data stored on TrueNAS, OMV, or Unraid. When a QNAP or Synology box craps itself you need to get another. Yes, you run backups but there’s always data that isn’t backed up - maybe movies, DVD archives, software installers, ISOs etc - because you figure you can obtain it again. There’s also the fact that if you got caught in the QNAP ?72 saga of dying main boards you may not wish to give that company more business. However, your array won’t mount on anything else. That is a show stopper for me. That and embedded credentials, poor patches, too many silly vulnerabilities, and artificial end of lifing products.

[@grahamleiper1538]

Some of us like our Supermicro boards, rackmount cases, and 10Gb networking. ZFS is nice, and 128GB of ECC RAM makes it work quite well, but it's my off line storage as I no longer run it 24/7 due to the power usage. Off the shelf NAS will generally use much less power than an old server board and definitely has its place. Miss the old Windows Home Server. It automated back ups really well and let you add drives like Drobo.

[@gatekeeper88]

I want to build a new gaming rig but harvest the mobo, ram, cpu and cooler into a NAS case. Are there any that support a Matx (The big one, I forget the name) board?, its a maximus vii hero. Thanks

[@michaelbouckley4455]

Decided to go for a DIY NAS, to replace paid cloud services. Bought a used Dell Optipex mini with Haswell Core i3 3.1Ghz for 42GBP. Had 8Gb. memory and 360Gb. HDD from Haswell laptop upgrade. Using OMV and Plex, with external USB3 Crucial 500Gb. SSD. Also runs a webserver mapped to 8080 and 443, and monero mining; AdGuardHome and unbound DNS. Might try to get Open Office document server on port 81. Bit tricky getting nextcloud server as well. Thats possible on True NAS Core, but i don't have or need multiple storage disks, yet. M2 A-E Key slots (WiFi) can have adapter to M2 M Key for NVMe. System runs off 24v solar, using a buck module at 19v (just like the laptop with 16Gb & Samsung 2Tb. SSD Hackintosh Mac OS Big Sur, and external Samsung 1Tb. SSD Time Machine). Router on 12v, along with Satellite box and Android TV box. Network Switch and a Raspberry Pi on 5v running Victron Venus OS for solar & BMS monitoring. Had been running the Crucial SSD on the Raspberry Pi, with rsync. Was looking at more cores on ARM SBC's but they cost at least twice as much.

[@EduardoRubioLogan]

Hey have you been able to take a look to at the NAS from kickstarter Storaxa ... looks very very promising ( and maybe a bit too much )

[@Xtian85]

If I had to choose to go open I would probably get a Terramaster and just change the os to something else. It is the most elegant and most power-efficient solution.

[@davelamont]

Building a NAS is great, if you have the time. I can build my own, but I bought an Asustor 4 bay NAS two years ago. I've had file table crashes on it, twice. Both times I was able to contact support and have them rebuild the tables remotely and restore my files. If I had built my own, I would have been on my own.

[@khawajadotd]

That's alarming. What caused your file table crashes?

[@davelamont]

@@khawajadotd I had removed the cache drives and that screwed up the file table.

[@SrSilverstars]

Also ... please consider doing an up to date full unraid series. I think it could get a good amount of traction.

[@SaiyanJin85]

I second that!

[@mdd1963]

With so many alternatives, the thought of paying for Unraid is actually humorous….

[@SrSilverstars]

@@mdd1963 Unraid is not expensive and much more user friendly than most of the open source stuff. Not everyone is a programmer or a Linux user. Plus it is a one time payment only. Try to be more open minded, it is not because it is no use to you that the idea is ridiculous or laughable.

[@ma3nni689]

Thx so much. I liked the idea of using my old gaming PC from 8 to 10 years ago with truNAS but i am a complete noob and i do not understand anything from docker vm linux etc. So...i go synology coz i only want to save Fotos and record from 2 surveillance cameras at most with it and maybe use plex. Ripping Bluray or Uhd is forbitten in Germany so no need for bis storage. We mainly stream new stuff from Apple TV and Prime App.

[@JasonTaylor-po5xc]

Bit of a nitpick but NUC is the Intel branded mini PC. Beelink (and others) are simply other brands that offer mini or small form factor (SFF) systems.

[@guillermo.gonzalez]

It's a pity HP is no longer selling an affordable microserver. I got my gen8 for less than 200€ and it even included an iLO. With some "tuning" I'm holding 9 HDDs on such a small package. I'm looking to replace it but as you said, DIY prices are crazy these days.

[@hristobotev9726]

Cl 3100 is $300, has 10gb lan and 12x3,5" hdd. If u need just 1-2hdd or less than 40gb external disks is enough. Every one has 24/7 system

[@mebeingme947]

Good Video! I went diy used exactly the same board because of low power consumption...but neighter one of the OS's called for. I installed debian on it and set it up from the command line with btrfs file system and chose for 6 bay box, with currently 4 drives, so have some headroom there. My pain with the total solution boxes is the software. Eventhough based on opensource it became closed source, and I wanna know which data they might be collecting, which is always a kinda grive with companies building these boxes.system is mainly in use as file server, media server and vpn server to access remotely, cloned the nvme and setup snapshotting. Went straight away with other fans as they always turn out to be loud and the system being in the living..that's not what you want. Idles at ~ 15W with 4 drives max seen 25W.

[@MatMarrash]

Great video for anybody wondering about the savings and troubles of DIY! There's a lot of potential for a follow-up or series comparing costs through the lifetime of these systems. How do they compare 5 or 10 years down the road? What systems allow for upgrading components, adding more drives and/or expansion units?

[@InquisitiveSearcher]

By 10 years down the road the technology will have changes so much that you'll most likely have replaced the entire NAS twice!

[@marcus_cole_2]

One of the benefits that you will have with building your own nas.... Not having to buy specific parts "Synology" aka this harddrives not compatible (even though we all know that they if you buy their official branded part it's just a white label hard drive with a newly flashed firmware) I literally had to send for perfectly good red Western digital Nas (18bay compatible) hard drives back just to get a specific listed hard drives to prevent constant corruption head crash beeping or what have you.... If it says Nas on the hard drive it should work without a problem without needing a specific SKU code or listed product in recommended hardware that the system prefers

[@harshbarj]

I'd argue that buying a used server is the way to go. I paid $275 USD for a Dell Poweredge T420. It came with 4 hot swap trays. Buying 4 more trays would be around $60 to fill the hot swap bays. I also upgraded the CPU to a dual CPU configuration with two Intel Xeon E5-2470 V2 (10 core 20 thread, so I have 20 cores and 40 threads. $26.74 each). I also dropped in some spare ram I had and have 24GB of DDR3 ram. I bought a PCIe to NVME adapter and bought a 256GB NVME drive (~$40 total). I also had to pick up another heatsink as the system I bought came with just a single CPU and it cost $25 shipped. So for ~453.48 I have a server than can have up to 8 hot swap raided drives AND run a standard Linux server OS so I can run a lot of standard apps. I plan on dropping another $200 USD on it to upgrade to hot swap redundant power supplies so I can have a few more nice to haves in the box.

[@mil3k]

How much juice your server suck from an outlet?

[@ntn888]

incidentally building a new NAS, I ended up with the same exact shopping basket on Ali... I suppose it's the most cost effective bundle.. Do you have a build run down on this combination? I can watch it till my parts arrive. Thanks.

[@questioning3388]

Now I look at it from an Unraid users perspective. I had an old i5-6550 pc with 6 sata ports and 1gb ethernet and 8gb RAM laying around. I added a 2.5gbe card and an Unraid license. Cost under $100. Can find similar spec pc on ebay for $100 so $200 total. This has superior performance and upgradability to typical commercial NAS. The commercial NAS has a warranty for a period of time then ability to repair win goes to used PC. Bottom line is DIY NAS is the superior choice for anyone with computer building skills and desire to DIY. I started with a Synology 218j ($169) and is now used as a backup to Unraid server so I have experience both ways.

[@RockTheCage55]

Excellent video the only thing missing i think is eBay ( old retired severs)

[@beauregardslim1914]

I usually ask a different question: What can I get for the *same* price if I DIY? With these $500-ish NASes being kind of crippled in terms of PCIe lanes, a bump up to an i3 lets you run NVMe drives at full speed. BTW, never buy China brand SSDs like Kingspec. They are crazy slow and run hot.

[@trsskater]

They also sell SSDs with more storage than is actually on the SSD. People need to stop recommending AliExpress for these items because a lot of them are scams that the average person won't be able to find out until they reach the actual storage limit.

[@clintd1]

I had to take an anxiety pill after seeing how many tabs you have open on that browser!

[@maxgood42]

That was hard to watch .

[@whya2ndaccount]

11:04 343 GBP is roughly 421 USD vs 570 USD or so for the off the shelf option. I suspect you'd "spend" the difference in your own time putting the kit together (with attendant warranty issues, etc.) as opposed to a one stop shop approach with one POC for warranty, support, etc.? And of course at 17:29 you cover those exact points. :)

[@RoastLambShanks]

As a first timer, getting into NAS, this is just what I need to know. Now which turnkey do I want?

[@SteelWolf13]

So i took all my spare hard drives laying around and saved the keep stuff on one 5tb HD. So NTFS HDD 3Tb used out of 5. Now my question. If I build my own NAS and put that drive in the NAS will it format and set it up the way the NAS wants? Or will it use it as is? I suspect formatting. So i'll have to use the spare 5Tb to set up the NAS with one drive. Copy the data over to the NAS either by PC or by direct connection. Then lock that drive away in a drawer and go buy a new 5tb to use as a raid 6.

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

It will format it, of course.

[@PaulBunkey]

Hi, you did not listed the option of turning "old" PC into NAS. Then it's "my working hours to turn it into NAS" vs "prebuilt NAS" competition. The "old" 8y old PC is still something like i7-4770 with 16GB ram. And it's free, just laying around. Next in price rating option is buying old PC or even "after upgrade" enterprise server for very cheap.

[@210Artemka]

In Amazon build (16:25) you should probably also have some kind of PCIe - SATA expansion card, as a consumer grade motherboards don't usually have enough SATA ports.

[@England91]

Most I've had like like 2-4 on the low end boards even

[@mil3k]

LSI SAS controllers not SATA. Stay away from this cheap shit.

[@bryanswaggbeast4594]

I would like for you to actually build it and compare it to the nas. Also, would you leave the pc on or is there a way to program the pc for it to boot up directly into plex? More user friendly and with the lowest power consumption? Also what would be the best operating system for this, windows, linux, or is there nas dedicated OS? Thanks in advance!

[@AinzOoalG0wn]

if people don't want to deal with assembly, researching which components to get, self troubleshoot issues; then ya the DIY route then installing either unraid or truenas is probably good. But for the less tech savvy user, then they want to stick to qnap, synology or asustor. whicever you decide to go with, don't make the mistake to expose the nas online. and don't expect the nas standalone in raid is considered a backup (it's not). A backup is saving a copy of that data in at minimum one other storage device, usually either an external hdd, another nas, or the cloud (ideally encrypted if doing offsite).

[@matikaevur6299]

ICY BOX IB-2280SSK ~ 150€ Used HW RAID card with battery backed cache ~80€ (~50€ for 2 port 8G FC adapter if you want SAN instead of NAS) And as all heavy lifting is done by HW RAID, not much is needed in CPU or RAM ..

[@oldwizzy]

I've been in this PC business since 1968, first as a hobby later for work (supposedly paid for my hobby, now retired and supposedly experienced everything). ICT is a difficult concept for many, so oh we do that is often the failure of your life, especially if you have to take a long time to understand everything, then rather buy ready-made, for those that is precisely how it is made. If you are handy and you understand everything without a hitch, only then you can start self-building, the result is there, it works the 1st time without fail. My last diy server is retiring this week, after 15 years of service, a treunas system from which only the hard drives have been upgraded. The new one will be a TreuNas Ryzen5 3600, immediately nice and modern and good for the next 15 years hopefully, who knows, the last one for my coffin, chuckle.

[@StuartEdick]

saved me from going down a rabbit hole trying to build my own, because the additional cost of ready to go is preferable to building what would become an expensive external hard drive.

[@mithubopensourcelab482]

All turnkey solution combining hardware and software is nothing but a trap. A sweet trap. I have build a nas with standard debian (bulls eye) using 45 drives management stack, ZFS, and cockpit. No going back. Performing really well. I am able to do what I need. Earlier I have evaluated Synology, Qnap, Truenas core, Truenas scale... I took the decision after evaluating each and every aspects. My nas specs are Core i5 10 th Gen, 32 GB Ram, 2 X 480 GB SSD [ raid 1] and ( 10 TB X 7 Drives -6 drives -raidZ2 - 1 hot spare , HBA card, dual port Intel 10 G card,450 Watt power supply, tower cabinet -12 bay ] - Application - samba file sharing + nfs for my virtulisation server + docker + portainer + nginx proxy manager. All on one box. Updates on monthly basis. Result : 100 % value for money + 100 % satisfaction + 0 % worries.

[@nascompares]

I see your point. But what about users who are not as tech savvy or their are already heavily time-invested in a different industry. They haven't the time or inclination to build a solution...much like any other areas of the business or consumer landscape - those users choose to pay more for convenience. From console gamers to PC gamers (the later have better graphics to play with and mods..but not the easy of play or stability of console hardware levels). Then you have video editors and professional photographers. Alot of these users want a 'setup and forget system' and pay for that convenience. For an experienced home lab veteran...yes...this looks alot like a trap. But then, I imagine alot of car mechanics think that about the bells and whistles of cars to upsell them are...or a highly experienced knitter/seamstress with their yarn looks at the cost of clothing. Ultimately, putting a pricetag on your knowledge up to this point needs to be a factor.

[@SuperFredAZ]

The Intel CPU you picked comes with a fan/ cooler

[@aephix73]

Thank you for doing the research for this. But I, like a lot of people, have older hardware that is way more powerful than the processor you did this video on. For instance, I have recently upgraded from my Ryzen 3700x to a 5800x3d. I upgraded everything, so I have that Ryzen 3700x, m-itx motherboard, ram, power supply, etc, that I could use to build a NAS that I don't have to worry about being bottle necked by the hardware, like a dedicated NAS. In my situation, all I need is a new NAS case and software.

[@MultiRanman]

I think that’s the key here. If someone is building a NAS, they tend to have spare parts laying around to offset initial costs. In my case, I built a NAS as a backup to my QNAP TVS 672 that inexplicably died a week after the warranty expired. QNAP, to their credit, did replace the unit, but I was out of a NAS for weeks and almost lost my data.

[@iluvmusicqwe]

People who suggest building a Nas assumes that everyone has high end PC parts just laying around

[@MultiRanman]

@@iluvmusicqwe good point. I think that once you build a computer, at some point, you’ll build another. In my case, we’ll, I needed additional parts to build my additional NAS.

[@eazysnatch]

Hey Buddy im not from UK and I was wondering for my country we are paying the VAT directly in Ali I don't see that in with you. Are you paying the VAT when parcel arrive at customs ? Because from my end the price is much higher.

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

That's country-dependent. Fire example, on Mordor we used to have no tax at all on int'l purchases when in was less mordorish. Then they introduced vat on purchases exceeding eur iirc, payable on receipt. Then they lowered it in several status until it's 200 eur now. They suck at keeping track of it though, so unless a single purchase exceeds this value, they usually don't bill you.

[@kurtnelle]

I think there is a lot more to explore in this category. Question: How much power is actually required to operate 5 3.5 Inch drives?

[@sandrorocha790]

It depends on the category of discs. Common desktop disks consume an average of 3 Watts.

[@rickyr67]

Thanks for the videos Mate very helpful. I have a Synology DS1019+ Plex media server and having some trouble playing back 4K videos what would you recommend as a upgrade?

[@Carittech]

Shield pro for the client

[@rickyr67]

@@Carittech I already have the Nvidia shield but not the pro version.

[@Carittech]

@@rickyr67 the pro version supports more ; I upgraded to this and have had zero issues.

[@rickyr67]

@@Carittech Ok thanks I will look into it.

[@cali4tune]

"learning" is a very valuable part of DIY

[@mikemines2931]

The hard way with all these drives.

[@nyccontrabass3489]

So I bought a dell T620 with 6 500gb drives and 256gb of memory for $400. Yeah, it’s loud… but boy is it fun to explore. Running truenas scale on it.

[@HartenDylan]

Great video and definitely a question that I think a lot of people mull over when assessing their NAS options! A question I have is how the DIY solutions interface with the motherboard? I've seen other systems using hardware RAID cards or HBAs depending on compatability requirements, or servers that have backplanes that connect directly to the power/data connectors on the back of the drives. Was curious which of the two previous examples or some other method is required for the DIY 8 drive enclosures (I can't find many/any 'budget' motherboards with more than 6 SATA ports. Thanks for the video!

[@c0p0n]

You do not need 16GB of ram for TrueNAS. Deduplication and ZFS ARC cache are the two things that need RAM when using ZFS. Deduplication is often not worth the trouble and ARC is adaptable to half of your memory by default. You can get away with very little if you don't need ultra performance. And do not cheap out on the PSU!

[@deadlymarsupial1236]

I went with:- - TrueNAS Scale - CASE 4U RACK MOUNT ANTEC 4U22EPS650 (Repurposed, I've had two of these cases since on/around 2008) - PSU ANTEC HCG1000 1000W Gold - STORAGE - 2 x SATA HDD CAGE, HOT SWAP - ICY DOCK 5x3.5" in 3x5.25" Black - up to 10 drives - 5 x 20TB WD Red Pro Drives - 1 x SATA HDD CAGE, Hot Swap - ICY DOCK 2 x 2.5" SATA/SAS/SSD for 3.5" Front Device Bay with Key, Black Industrial Full Metal - 1 x SSD 2.5" 500G, SAMSUNG EVO PRO (Repurposed for OS) - CORE - Intel Server Motherboard M10JNP2SB - 4 1GbE NICs, - 1 1GbE Admin NIC, - 8 SATA - Intel Xeon E-2236 Server Processor 6 Core 12 Thread - Micron MTA18ASF4G72AZ-3G2B1 32GB (1x32GB) 3200MHz ECC UDIMM DDR4 I don't go minimalist as components that need to be upgraded can be repurposed, such as the mainboard/processor/ram for say a pfSense firewall or an app server. Adding headroom into the speccing adds resilience. I have got 10+ years out of systems which have been more accommodating to increase in changing demands. I had to wait for some bugs to be resolved in TrueNAS Scale due to it being still a work in development.

[@jdkingsley6543]

While I enjoyed the video, I think you could have gone even further with PC form factor NAS builds. This is what I did, I went with an older board, some non ecc ddr3 memory, a core I5 and 10 18 tb hard drives ( iron wolf pros), runing on Openmediavault. the processor is a core i7 4th gen and so far so good.

[@Kosh42EFG]

Personally I'm buying the Fractal 304 from Amazon for a case. And I never plug anything from Ali into the wall. But you pay your money, you take your choice.

[@maxgood42]

I have to agree Ali is not the best way to shop when you want a reliable storage solution, But if you have your own un used pc/nuc and the external bay mentioned here looks to simple for Ali to screw up. Did notice it said "No Raid"? is that becouse it's just a HUGE external enclosure ? does raid come from the pc/nuc connected to it ? Say I have a nuc and use it to build my own DIY NAS and I want raid10 (2x2) then my cost should be Case and 4 x ssd ? (and cables as needed)

[@jj-icejoe6642]

Openmediavault ? Nextcloud ?

[@bretthibbs6083]

I was actually thinking about building my own NAS and I bought a mb cpu and ram since I already had the case and psu but I did more research and found out it was beyond my skill level so I went out and bought a 2 bay zyxel nas and 2 hdds and I spent 250 usd on the nas and hdds

[@feralshad0w]

I just want to know why there isn't any drive cases that include a pi mount.... My solution so far is to get a drive cage with a fan mount, then tape the pi case to that... a 3.5" tray mount for a pi would be the perfect thing to complete this.

[@bluesquadron593]

Hoped to see the actual hardware….

[@Nitroburner01]

Better get a processor that supports ECC RAM if you want to use Truenas. You might regret it later. Just changed my system from i3 to Xeon from Ali

[@McmeYTman]

Just me over here running Open Media Vault on a raspberry pi and 2.5” drives via sata to usb adapters 😅

[@GrillerGT]

So I guess I'll get the UGREEN NASync DXP4800 plus... fingers crossed

[@nnoonnaa818]

I got an HP server with 15 TB of HDD and 128 gigs of RAM, been sitting there since 2020 when I got it, I guess I found a use for it.

[@MyNameIsBucket]

Another question: why is it so damned near impossible to find NAS enclosures made for 2.5" drives??

[@johncalla7893]

I have the same question. Not everyone wants 3.5” HDDs.

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

Cause nas manufacturers are used that people will buy their overpriced cr$p anyways. Little competition. Also, until recently it made little sense to use 2.5" drives since 2.5" hdds are small, only now it makes some sense if you want to use SSDs in that form-factor, but let's be honest, not many people have know-how, need, and cash for such an extravagant solution

[@derJackistweg]

When you rightclick on each foto on each webside and store it into a powerpoint slide, each on another page and copy paste the spec... ... you end with a way better to watch video than a permanently sliding mouse over the picture which than zooms in.

[@stanislavtrifan96]

This doesn't keep up with the time. As example, I really want a ready solution with stable software, Synology is a good one. But is somehow is 2023, and they have 1gig interface, almost lowest possible processor (which is fine for simplest devices that they offer). But doesn't work well if you want little more than 2 hard drives. So you buy 8 slots device with almost no cpu and ram, with almost no options to upgrade... So you can add an extension thing with additional bays, that simply cannot be used at the full potential, because of hardware limitations. I mean what they offer is OK, but really not for medium load. Is like, if you want little more, then go enterprise which is not suitable for home use. Kind of forcing to go self build (even if you are willing to pay for a ready solution). Shortly, if you are OK with weak hardware, then go synology, want something mediocre - simply no choice(custom or refurbished servers or similar), for big load go enterprise grade stuff which is different kind of expenses. Would be really cool if Synology can offer subscription for their os, so you can build a custom thing and use their os on own hardware.

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

There's the not-quite-legal but still quite popular xpenology route.

[@mikepxg6406]

Openmediavault vault is the best DIY NAS OS.

[@dannyschrooten8269]

For a home user, i use now a western digital my cloud ex2 ultra 12 Tb nas for 399 euro = 341,95 pounds . My old western digital my cloud mirror 4Tb nas dit is job for 7 years . Ideal for Photo and data storage. And have cloud acces. I have also an Proxmox and Unraid server , and i use my nas as backup.

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

Wd is vendor-dependent though, iirc you need online access even to change settings on it, it has no web interface

[@jamesl.5849]

Benefits of self build is upgrading, need faster cpu just replace it, need more bays - buy bigger case, need fast network add new card. After warranty expired the system can be repaired by swapping components

[@pantoqwerty]

When using mdadm RAID that is a massive plus to the DIY route. Just add a drive until you need a bigger case or replace all drives with bigger ones…the choice is yours.

[@coolstuff_.]

Cool

[@07Review]

It is better for to buy a nas, even I can built it due to all the stuff included, Just the OS (Synology or Qnap) the time consuming if we talk about hours/paid for it. The possibility of a hardware failure. No.... no build a Nas is NOT the same as build a PC.

[@dell177]

Six years ago i went through this same exercize. The prebuilt home servers were all about the same price (Case, PS, MB, CPU, 4GB ram) all were close to $500. Tiger was selling the Base HP Proliant server for $200 , it was a PC with 4GB and a i# 3.7GB 4 core cpu. If I was going to knit my own I was going with FreeNas and I knew it need mucho ram but was supposed to be very robust - the server OS ran on redundant 8 GB thumb drives . I knew I needed more ram and 16Gb of DDR4 ram was not cheap. All said and done the PC, 16 additional ram cost me $389. That was cheaper than anything prebuilt and I'd still need more RAM for them. I didn't need anything screaming fast so i decided 5400 rpm drives would be fine and the sweet spot for drives back then was 3GB WD red. I ordered 6 of those and put it all together. That gave me10.5 Gb of fault tolerant storage in a HP server funning Freenas - it's been running for almost 6 years without any problems. Over that time I've lost power a few times and that server has always come right back when restarted.