How to Pick Parts for your HOME SERVER

[@RaidOwl]

Fyi I’m now noticing I grabbed the Xeon version of that ASUS “Threadripper” board I showed 😂. My point still stands.

[@keven-matthewlarrivee-font2678]

I like the no bs approach of this video. We all know there are intricacies to each part but you just went over everything quickly and efficiently for somebody building a first home server.

[@DanceingDragon]

"where paychecks go to die" Might be a good thing that I don't have a Micro Center in Wisconsin.

[@nadtz]

I could walk to the one closest to me, it's very dangerous having a Microcenter that close.

[@CtrlAlt_Eric]

My thoughts exactly. so many bad choices would be made if we get one in WI. i would be there every weekend.

[@Bagley2014]

Oh, I was just there yesterday. And the day before yesterday. My paycheck did die but my homelab was given new life.

[@RaidOwl]

money is just paper

[@TenFoot]

This is the way.

[@galaxyrapid4234]

I have been looking for a video like this for so long. I'm savvy enough to build my own PC for gaming and work tasks but I've wanted to get into home servers for a while and I didn't know where to start. I can't wait to start building my own server following the ideas you laid out here.

[@DrRussell]

Literally building my first truenas machine and you drop this. Love you man. Houston to London is a short flight; for all the amazing value you have given, at the very least my family and I will happily offer you a quiet place to stay in London if you ever need to visit, as long as you like! Thank you Brett! Also, whilst I’m obviously far from Microcentre, 100% they should carry EPYC CPUs!

[@tompacker3384]

I love the guy who came around the corner and was looking at power supplies and just DGAF that you were filming hahaha

[@genesisit]

Great video, really good for someone just starting out home-labbing. One point I’d raise with HDDs it’s worth noting that while “more TB is more better” for bulk storage, you should also look at a few other factors for example NAS-specific (WD Red/Seagate IronWolf or Exos) drives are typically more reliable in a server that will be running 24x7. Also, watch out for CMR vs SMR drives for a server (hint, you want CMR!) Keep the content coming Brett!

[@eriv0id]

I love the editing in this video, really makes me laugh

[@TazzSmk]

quite important thing about chipset is, all the connectivity that goes through it is limited to those 4 lanes of PCIe, so for ex. if your mobo has 3x NVME slots, SATA ports and network provided by chipset, speed (of all those combined!) is hard capped to ~3500MB/s - which is terrible for any higher load, performance consistency or even process/task stability

[@Stay6xy]

It was epic meeting you at micro center while making this video! I meant to ask, what do you recommend for a van-life home server? Low-power consumption, small, etc. Zima blade?

[@RaidOwl]

Hell yeah! Thanks for saying hi. For a small, low-power server the ZimaBoards are hard to beat, especially with that pcie slot. It really comes down to what you wanna do with it. Feel free to hop in the discord and we can discuss it further.

[@Movingfrag]

Intel HEDT is not dead, it is alive and well with Xeon W processors like a 60-core Xeon W9-3595X and workstation class motherboards from usual vendors. Like the one you were holding - it will not run server grade processors, it is designed for Intel HEDT Xeon W.

[@RaidOwl]

Yeah they moved from X series cores to Xeon W...its just a mess

[@moebius2k103]

Some advice that I would add is to get a case with a HDD backplane if you plan on having more 3.5" HDDs than your power supply has connectors for. I've had endless trouble with 8+ drives and it all came down to power stability to the drives. All the issues went away when I got a SilverStone CS382 case. It's expensive but the cost is in the backplane and it was well worth it. I spent nearly $2000 on premature drive replacements before I realised it was caused by bad power distribution to my drives. With the same power supply but a good backplane for the drives to plug into there are no more issues.

[@lexshizumdot2115]

That' is a video that makes you want to build a home server even if you don't need one 👍 . Great video, thank you !

[@isaacstyles92]

Felt the need to point out that most all AMD Ryzen supports ECC. Not just Threadripper or Epyc

[@nadtz]

Official ECC support and 'it works with some motherboards but isn't officially supported' are 2 different things depending on your needs/enviornment.

[@isaacstyles92]

@nadtz True. Ryzen may support ECC (see motherboard for full compatibility) but only Epyc will report ECC errors on IGMP. So if you want true remote monitoring, only Epic will do.

[@DrRussell]

Agreed, however I think the other restriction which pushed us towards Epyc was the limited availability of ECC UDIMMs required by Ryzen vs the free availability of RDIMMs for Epyc, or have I just confused myself?

[@nadtz]

@ no you haven't, I have a xeon that needed udimms. The cost for 64gb ddr4 was the same as 128gb rdimm ddr4 for Epyc.

[@rizz0d]

my server parts picked me, it's made from parts people gave me free instead of throwing out and junk i found in my collection. hopefully one day i can pick out the parts i actually want!

[@Monarchias]

I am glad that there is still some cases where the front panel is actually on the front and not on the top to collect dust onto those usb openings.

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

This makes sense only if you keep your PC on the desktop for some reason. If it's on the floor where it belongs, top makes big sense. And dust is not a big deal unless you're PC is in a woodworking shop...

[@clomok]

Great video! I love the choice to go with a 12gb 3060

[@dragonmaster1500]

I would shop at Microcenter, if we had those in Canada. Cmon guys, bring us a store of 9 already.

[@zag288]

I just set up my old razer blade laptop ontop of my air purifier, hoping for the best lol

[@RaidOwl]

god speed solider

[@Tennysonism]

I didn’t realize you were in Houston. Hello to a fellow Houstonian!

[@RaidOwl]

Howdy

[@ToucheFarming]

i'm actually building my next workstation with some older Epyc chips, they're great for PCIe lanes

[@clomok]

How did you manage to make it through the storage section without talking about 2 spinning drive mirrors being the most upgrade friendly solution?

[@clomok]

How did you manage to make it through the motherboard section without talking about IPMI?

[@WilReid]

@12:30 That's Raid 3. Raid 5 distributes the parity stripes across all drives.

[@fireflyw4079]

Frankly Intel 10th gen is a golden spot for home servers you can get the i9 processors with 12 cores for an affordable price (used) and they don't have the big little architecture that can cause issues It is what I am currently running and it is new enough to have a lot of features but old enough to find cheap ryzen 5000 is also an amazing option for this as well but not as great transcoding onboard

[@Marauder-q2v]

I’d argue even 8th gen is fine. I got an entire i5 8500 system for 120$. the IGPU is also new enough to support HVENC 10 bit

[@dalirl3502]

I would love to see this but for mini rack setups. Pdu, pi vs h100, mini itx board, switches etc. Home server+

[@icdeadpipol]

for a file storage it is getting more difficult to find mainboards with lots of SATA ports. an old H97 for a haswell system of mine had a total of 6 SATA ports (last 2 gets disabled if you use the M.2 slot) while a midrange board nowdays usually just have around 4 SATA leaving less expansion later for HDD. Also most cases nowdays only provides a single or at best 2 HDD bays.

[@SuburbanBBQ]

I didn't realize you lived in the Houston area too. Stay warm. It's about to nasty over the next 24 hours.

[@RaidOwl]

Yessir. Got a brand new generator with a gas line ready to go.

[@SuburbanBBQ]

@@RaidOwl I'm still working with a portable and extension cords. 😁 I keep saying I'm going to move up, but I haven't pulled trigger on it yet.

[@ZachariasEnislidis]

what is the best server for home, simple answer, the one pc you already have, that old dusty core2duo, just max out the ram, feed it with many sata drives and extra controller and you are good to begin. Just do no waste any money at all on new hardware.

[@RaidOwl]

Ehh maybe for some people

[@ZachariasEnislidis]

@@RaidOwl yes, the poor ones, like those struggling with 40k per year but still love technology. I bet the majority of your audience might be in this demographic category. Here is an idea make some content for poor techies.

[@RaidOwl]

@ I mean I have videos about how to build a $100 and $200 server so I'm well aware that servers can come in all price ranges. I have something coming up next month that I think you'll enjoy ;)

[@Cary_mac]

Kind of silly but I am swapping my old e5 2667v2 with 128gb 1866mhz ecc ram and a 1050ti for transcoding out for a 12500 with 32gb ram ddr4 3200mhz ram and will transcode on the UHD770 iGPU. Likely should have gotten the 12700k bundle but I didn’t particularly care for the basic basic MSI board they were offering.

[@Darkgx5]

@RaidOwl how much would be the monthly power cost for something like this?

[@RaidOwl]

Assuming it’s gonna pull around 100W and you’re paying 0.16c per kWh, about $12

[@Darkgx5]

@@RaidOwl thanks man!

[@pieterveenders9793]

@@RaidOwl I think that's the big distinction between North America and (Western) Europe, and something I've noticed from a lot of the homelab KZbin channels. With the exception of Wolfgang and Christian Lempa, many big homelab channels seem to be US-based. Considering the much higher electricity prices in most Western European countries, especially those on a budget and when going the secondhand route, it's more economical to either go for consumer hardware like Intel Core or AMD Ryzen, instead of old Xeon-setups, even though Xeon-based setups are super affordable to buy and unlock much more possibilities such as ECC and many more PCIe lanes. I've had a 55" LG plasma tv for about 12-13 years or so, and although the step up from 1080p to 4K is really nice, the main reason I'm finally going to buy a new big screen tv coming month isn't more pixels but the fact that old plasma chungus guzzles up 450W/hr, which certainly adds up if you watch a few hours a day like I do. Just the energy savings alone of a new LED tv in the same dimensions or even bigger than my old tv already are worth the expense of a new tv.

[@9klincoln]

I have an old ryzen 9 5900x will that work for a game server?

[@ChromeBookChuck]

Do people not know Microcenter is the world’s greatest pc store??

[@RaidOwl]

They do now

[@morsikpl]

Because it''s just american greatest pc store :)

[@refractairebrique7486]

Super vidéo avec les pistes audios pour moi Français ! 👍

[@csd4ni3l]

Well, for RAM, you dont really need 32Gb. For example, i only use 24gb, and i dont even use it all up, even though i have a lot of docker stuff, php, nginx, NPM, opnsense, 2 minecraft servers, etc. Some people might use less. If you are only hosting media, or you just have some docker services, you might even fit in 8gb. Of course, it depends on your usecase for your server.

[@sku2007]

well, for RAM, for me 128gb wasn't enough and I upgraded to 256. usecases may vary a loooooooooot :D

[@daklhs6460]

If you use ZFS you'll need more RAM. I have 3 virtual machines, truenas with 2x4TB and devian with some services and another devian for experimenting and 20GB are barely enough.

[@pieterveenders9793]

Just with web browsing alone I often already fill up 8 GB. I'm the stereotypical ADD'er, and just like inside my head it's not uncommon for there to be two dozen or more tabs open in Mozilla Firefox, which takes up about a quarter of my 32 GB. Pile on to that having a lot of simultaneous torrents being downloaded and you can take up another 8 GB. Then there's VM's running in VirtualBox (or Proxmox, VMware, you name it), which depending on the VM's can be another 2-8 GB. If the computer in mind is a headless server (which you're not going to do any web browsing on, and so you can scrap the 8 GB or so required for that), and the VM's you would be running are fairly small and light and would only be 1 or 2 of them, 16 GB would be a comfortable amount of RAM for a home server. Anything more intensive planned and you really ought to go with 32 GB.

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

Ram is relatively cheap, better have more than not enough. I have 64gb in my desktop PC, and I've had tubes when it helped (extremely intensive browsing with lots of tabs, very large excel files)

[@robster7787]

My biggest concern is operating system. I actually own several legit product keys for windows server, yet I’m curious if its worth to just use linux or regular Windows 10/11 Home/Pro

[@RaidOwl]

I use Windows Server to host an RoCE file server but other than that I’m a Proxmox guy as my server OS.

[@robster7787]

⁠@@RaidOwlHmmm Proxmox is not something I considered. I’ll give it a look. Edit: It seems that you’ve already talked about it in a 3 year older video of yours. I’ll give it a watch.

[@Toliman.]

You can run Windows Server, or just regular Windows 11, it's an option, but software RAID isn't as common. You usually have to get apps which cost $ to do the things that proxmox, TrueNAS or Unraid, OMV, or others do for free. Replicating ZFS in windows has been tried, I don't think they got very far in the last 10 years though. Windows NAS is doable with 3rd party software to combine mirror/pools and run Parity, send SMART warnings, run backups, use parity and recovery parity, like SnapRAID or balancing, mirrors, moving files between hot/warm storage, cloud backups with Stablebit DrivePool, and others. This way, the "NAS" is just windows doing windows things, and an invisible layer hides the drive letters away so you just have a single combined drive. The downside is, you have Windows issues. Server, is more designed for software / user security, user storage and PC/Client Management, not NAS/Fileserver tasks. Cache isn't used the same way, tasks are often run on cloud services now, and Servers don't work the same way as they used to. Mixing SnapRAID and Drivepool is also possible, Drives that 'soft fail' with SMART errors or throttling, performance problems, can be handled by moving files onto the other drives in the pool before the drive can be swapped out. The new drive will then be 'balanced', a form of defragmenting or moving files to even out the pool use of each drive in the pool. Balancing also allow TRIM and defragment processes to happen as well, something other OS RAID options don't have or don't bother with. The issue is one of reliability and parallel tasks - the hypervisor for windows is unreliable at times on larger server hardware, especially that the kernel can panic or disconnect and lose data. RAM is often used for the system instead of cache or Read/Write caching *unless you use 3rd party software to run a RAM drive/write cache like IntelliCache or other RAM drives. The other advantage of BTRFS, ZFS is snapshots. If you need to undo data, CoW is able to restore data that is 'gone' in snapshots that can go back months. If you 'need' windows, go for it. The stablebit scanner is also good for getting alerts and temperature monitoring, along with CrystalDiskInfo sic.

[@romayojr]

seattle still needs a micro center 🤨

[@jeffmstella]

So does Connecticut

[@darthkielbasa]

Microcenter: Morgantown, WV or Pittsburgh, PA. If you build it they will come. Tons of nerds and nerd-curious folk. Trust me.

[@bearde_mut9731]

No matter the CPU you aren't going to beat the Hyper 212?! My brother in Christ, Thermalright would like to have a word with you.....

[@TheAsjdj]

For asus if you gp with a CSM board they will support ECC on all of them. CSM is there pro like of boards for servers or other IoT that needs eec for whatever reason For ram, for each tb of storage in a ZFS storage syatem you wanna follow the 1GB per tb. So if you got a volume of 32tb you would ideally go with 32 gb of ram for just the ZFS. Else it can start struggle a bit . Thats my opinion experience at least

[@nadtz]

1gb/TB is a myth, that was the recommendation for deduplication back when ZFS was fairly new, not in general (and of course friends don't let friends run dedup). Obviously with ZFS more ram is better but you don't need 1gb/tb. My current NAS is ~72tb and runs fine with 32gb memory, if it were actually busy that might be different but for home use with a few clients it's been fine.

[@Echromum]

1:25 , from now on you are my dad XD

[@ryanfowlow8034]

"Where paychecks go to die" Oh how true..

[@FakeName39]

hard drives need to come down in price, 8tb should be like $100 brand new, for me I think thats biggest part of the budget which kills my wallet and constantly just look for renewed or used drives

[@Monarchias]

My dad is Brett Homelabber! He is not that yellow, and you can only call him Mr Homelabber. Or, my dad! Is that right, father?

[@AlfaPro1337]

That motherboard that you picked is Intel Xeon, Intel HEDT

[@darklord2703]

they need to stock EYPC chips!

[@20windfisch11]

Biggest problem especially in Western Europe is power consumption as our electricity prices are on the rather high side compared to other countries. The Enterprise level stuff is usually very power hungry. I'd wish for smaller components with less power, like even the Intel N100 which is sufficient for many applications, but with all the nice things like IPMI or support for large amounts of memory and more PCIe lanes. Those two are the main bottlenecks.

[@pieterveenders9793]

You beat me to it. I read in the comments how Raid Owl was quoting €0,14($0,16)/KWhr electricity prices. Hahaha, if only. More like 2,5-4x that, depending on which Western European country you're in. That really plays a big role in your component choices, and it's why unlike in North America going for old second hand Xeon-based setups just isn't a good option for most Western Europeans, even if they're dirt cheap and still pretty decent in computing performance and PCIe options.

[@20windfisch11]

@@pieterveenders9793another thing to consider is the electric installation in rented flats. Normal outlets are rated 16A, if you hook up several fat Xeon servers and stress them enough, that might trip the breakers sooner or later. But to be fair, if you live in your own house and are able to install solar panels and have an extra circuit for IT, that old enterprise hardware can still be feasible.

[@zenith251]

Intel's integrated media encoder is *better,* but AMD 4000g and newer encoder is fully supported under Plex and Jellyfin out of the box. I am having zero problems with Jellyfin on my 4650GE Pro.

[@RaidOwl]

Good to know

[@andrewperodeau2589]

I’m trying to build a plex server that runs 4K and then besides that runs truenas for 8hdd in the 45homelab hl8, anyone got any recs on what to buy?

[@zenith251]

Also also, "the speed of your RAM doesn't matter." Except when stability is key, like with ZFS. Get the *SUPPORTED* BASE SPEED. Not XMP/EXPO speeds.

[@RaidOwl]

I mean...for the most part any modern ram is gonna be plenty fast

[@zenith251]

@@RaidOwl I'm advocating for *slower* RAM. To avoid faster, technically OC'd RAM. DDR5 5200 for Zen4, for example. And thanks for interacting with your audience!

[@w3isserwolf]

Why is no Micro Center in Germany 😢 i would feel so happy to be in an Store Full of pc Parts.

[@hofweb]

From what I have seen, GN pretty much 💩s on every case that isn't obsessed with airflow.

[@dikranpoladian4724]

TrueNAS = ZFS which needs ECC no?

[@RaidOwl]

No

[@dikranpoladian4724]

@@RaidOwl Maybe the correct word is recommended? I know it can run without but there always seems to be two camps on this and I'm curious. Thanks for taking the time to answer.

[@WilReid]

There is not a single piece of software ever written that "needs" or "requires" ECC to run and run correctly, except for maybe ECC monitoring software obviously. ECC can simply prevent a crash by correcting a bit error/flip, and that crash might cause data corruption if it happens at the wrong time. That's why it's recommended, but required is way too strong a word. And it's super ironic ZFS zealots are the ones most often saying you need ECC. FFS, the whole point of FS like ZFS is redundancy to protect data integrity via software.

[@dikranpoladian4724]

@@WilReid Thanks for the info, just having such a hard time making this last call for the box I want to build. I have my old desktop that is a 9900k with 32GB which I was thinking of converting to a TrueNas box but didn't have ECC support so i thought maybe of putting together a cheep Ryzen 5 or 7 rig with ECC instead. I'll be importing my 5x8TB Z2 from my old Thecus box. That thing was a quad core atom with 4GB non-ecc which I was curious to why they went that way as it was a Premade box.

[@cupzthemilkman1455]

"Holds a bunch oof anime" shoot thats all you had to say man

[@johntanner611]

Wish they did carry server CPUS!

[@sherbiee]

i love you raid owl

[@Fasthandsslowlaptimes]

Shout out to your wife for holding that big ol' camera for you!

[@RaidOwl]

hahahah her arms were shaking during the end of a few shots...had to wrap it up

[@HHX_H]

I didn't think you go outside 😂🤣🤣

[@RaidOwl]

I get 5 minutes per week

[@jayb94htx]

That’s the Houston micro lol

[@RaidOwl]

It is

[@paulct91]

14:00 - Still funny... why is Bronze still something a vendor 'wants' to put on a box, only 3rd place... (yeah yeah Titanium, Platinum...)

[@RaidOwl]

Cuz it’s still a quality standard

[@Beefadon]

Dem prices… New Zealand being en el culo del mundo makes the build a lil more pricey.

[@RaidOwl]

Yeah maybe I’ll come visit and do a video

[@soul_maestro]

10:40 : hi person behind the camera in the reflection on the left

[@RaidOwl]

hello

[@TrevorLV702]

Microcenter is awesome but get EPYC level!!

[@hornetbad]

So i am a "Prebuilt system" ha? OK

[@RaidOwl]

As your dad, yes

[@hornetbad]

@@RaidOwl:P

[@gamergamer2990]

great video love it give me those hard drive :) kidding

[@computerenthusiast402]

Why are Hard drives so Expensive ?…….thats the most Expensive components about building a NAS

[@fireflyw4079]

Find a refurbisher for enterprise drives it think it is the only way to get it cheap these days

[@TenFoot]

19:30 cries in European😢 Jelly

[@neelaveronte745]

Home server - this isn't a gaming just... Home (not office).

[@Rayu25Demon]

Asus on a server build? 😂

[@RaidOwl]

Yea

[@Rayu25Demon]

@RaidOwl good luck with motherboard problems.

[@RaidOwl]

Thanks

[@karimthecaveman1500]

11:51 !

[@steveblake8766]

Thumbs uP

[@brunosurkov]

Dude, please, disable auto dubbing. It's awful.

[@RaidOwl]

done

[@fwiler]

Dad?

[@RaidOwl]

Go to your room

[@2sumu]

3 33

AMD is better for pcie splitting (bifurecation) on intel is just nah, at least 10gen is egg.

[@RaidOwl]

I can agree with that

[@shephusted2714]

this was basically a commercial

[@RaidOwl]

This is basically a comment

[@darthkielbasa]

@@RaidOwl You can do no wrong. Love you.

[@MegaAshabasha]

DO NOT BUY CONSUMER GRADE!! THIS IS A VERY STUPID IDEA!

[@RaidOwl]

No it’s not lmao 😆😆😆

[@killmerfamAZ]

how much in endorsement earnings are you getting for wearing TrueNas apparel?

[@RaidOwl]

0 dollars and 0 cents