And I'm also trying to get the parts that are the best value, that are new. Not bleeding edge, but not crap either - just something that has quite good performance yet is economical at the same time (e.g. ASRock motherboards compared to top-of-the-line ASUS ones).
I expect to need around 40–60 TB usable space, with redundancy (RAIDZ2?, RAID6?)
Parts I already own:
- Case: Cooler Master HAF 932 (older full tower)
Cooling: New H60x RGB Elite liquid CPU Cooler
PSU: New Corsair RM850x
GPU: used 8GB gtx1080 ftw3 edition from evga with a liquid cooler on it
Parts I’m considering:
- CPU: Ryzen 5 5500 ($76)
Motherboard: Asrock B450M Pro4 R2.0 ($80)
NVMe drives: one for OS, maybe one for SLOG/cache (still not sure if I even need this for backups)?
Noctua 200mm fans (to replace the 15 year old 230mm Cooler Master fans)
My questions:
1. What HDD's are the best bang for the buck right now for a backup-focused server? I'm open to learning shucking if that would be a big cost-saver.
2. I've been watching videos on local backup servers but am quite lost... for my application(s), what would be the best software to use? Should I use Proxmox (with something like TrueNAS as a VM), or just run everything bare-metal on Windows/Linux?
(I would also like to be able to remote into this machine, and having it run Windows, to also potentially run Plex and other homelab stuff. I'm still very new to all that, and just not sure where or how to start exactly.)
3. Should I aim for RAIDZ2 (like RAID6), or can I start smaller and expand later?
4. Is the LSI 9300-8i still the best HBA choice in 2025 for ZFS/NAS builds, or is there a newer/better option?
5. I'm aware of ECC vs non-ECC tradeoffs - is it worth worrying about it in my case?
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Looking for advice from people who have built similar setups: is my current path decent, or should I spend differently for better reliability/cost efficiency?
