Debated between a used Dell PowerEdge and building my own NAS for 6 months

I needed a home server for Plex and file storage, so I spent forever going back and forth. The PowerEdge R730 looked like a steal on eBay at $350, but the noise and power draw scared me off. Ended up building a FreeNAS box with an old Ryzen 5 1600 and 6 used 4TB drives for about $500 total. Three months in and it sips power at 65 watts idle, which saves me around $15 a month compared to what that Dell would have pulled. The setup took 4 hours of fiddling with the TrueNAS install, but now it just runs. Anyone else go the DIY route and regret not just buying enterprise gear instead?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_derek1mo ago

Three weekends? Man, I thought my four hour fight with TrueNAS was bad. I had to reinstall the whole thing twice because I messed up the pool layout on the first try, and then again when I forgot to set the boot drive correctly. The part that really got me was realizing I'd been running without ECC RAM the whole time, which everyone on the forums acts like is a crime. But yeah, once it's humming, it's humming. I just checked my UPS readout and it's sitting at 63 watts right now, which still feels like magic after reading all those PowerEdge horror stories. I don't miss the idea of a jet engine in my office one bit.

olivia4781mo ago

You went with the Ryzen too? Same here. Took me like three weekends to get my FreeNAS box dialed in but once it's set up it just hums along. No regrets at all, especially when I look at my electric bill.