Hi everyone!

I saw this video yesterday (https://youtu.be/vjDoQA4C22c) showing a nice custom homelab build that’s a lot of bang for the buck, and I felt that it was time to replace my tired old Asustor NAS with something more fun. But I would like your wise advice and experience. 😊

Purpose:

  1. Torrentstation - automated with Sonarr, Radarr, Prowlarr via qbittorrent and through Wireguard VPN.

  2. Media server - I am currently running Plex Media Server on the NAS, but it sometimes struggles. I can imagine moving over to Jellyfin.

  3. File backup - standard, photos, etc. Local backup mirrored to cloud service.

  4. Other bits and pieces such as Home Assistant, AdGuard/PiHole, tinkering with some Linux stuff [insert your best tip here]. 😀

In the video, he builds his own NAS based on an n5105 NAS motherboard. I’m looking at the new topton i3-n305 mini PC maybe, which is said to have slightly better performance (?). Both seem to be energy-efficient, quiet and very good value for money.

But I am open to other suggestions. Preferably as small a form factor as possible as I would prefer to hide it away in the small junction box cabinet or in the TV cabinet.

I’ve also been looking at an Intel NUC (i5 or something) and just throwing in my two NAS HDDs into a two disk Raid enclosure and connecting via USB-C. Yes/no?

Then OS and software wise. What should be the base on this thing? Ubuntu? As I mentioned I want to set up qBittorrent, Sonarr and Radarr like I have to today. Get them to work downloading the media I want and then run a Plex or Jellyfin server on the machine simultaneously that my Nvidia Shield Pro can connect to and run the media to my TV.

Thank you in advance! 😊

  • SayCyberOnceMore@feddit.ukEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    A little late, but saw this and thought I’d chime in… be interested to know if you made a choice

    You have a couple of opposing points here… For anything “media”, and “photos”, I suspect you’ll want long-term, slow, bulk storage - so consider what you’re going to need.

    The n305 mini PCs looks great for a small, cool, firewall or small VM host (I’m considering getting one, hence searched and found this thread) - but you’re not going to have lots of bulk storage connected to it.

    I have the Node304 case with an ASRockRack Mini-ITX mobo for a NAS and it’s a great case, nice mobo, plus plenty of space for drives and space for cooling (I like the large fan mod on that video!) - so - IMHO - I’d recommend this route…

    The Node304 also fits into Ikea Kallax shelving BTW 😉

    As for OS… stability… you don’t want something that’s going to break every week. So, I would go with Debian… if you want a better all-in-one solution, I can recommend OpenMediaVault… I used it for years before creating my own from scratch. The reason I did that was that some OMV plugins were getting too complicated for my own personal use.

    • Emptiness@lemm.eeOP
      1·
      11 months ago

      Hi!

      Thanks for taking the time to answer. I ended up buying an Asus barebone with an i5 CPU. An ssd for OS and since nothing else fit an M2 for storage. Installed Ubuntu since I’m a noob. Then docker, then portainer. Set up all the “arrs” (sonarr etc) in containers. The M2 is short term current media I’m watching and deleting after watching. The old Nas is mounted as more long time legacy storage.

      It’s far from perfect but that’s how it went.

      Next time I’ll probably build a big all in one rig from scratch on a mini ATX base with space for all kinds of storage. But that’ll have to be a project for future me. 😊