I currently have a Synology 220+ and a couple of VPS’s, and I’m looking to consolidate, while getting out of Synology’s walled garden. I’ve already got a couple of 3.5’s in the Synology, and 4 2.5’s lying around and I’m planning on running a number of docker containers and a couple of vms.

That said, I’ve never built anything before, and basically just went to PCPartPicker, started with the case, and checked 5-stars on each component and went from there. So… how absurd is my build?

PCPartPicker Part List

Type Item Price
CPU AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 3.7 GHz 6-Core Processor $135.00 @ Amazon
CPU Cooler Cooler Master MasterLiquid 360L Core ARGB Liquid CPU Cooler $90.71 @ Amazon
Motherboard MSI MAG B550 TOMAHAWK ATX AM4 Motherboard $165.99 @ B&H
Memory TEAMGROUP T-Force Vulcan Z 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory $26.99 @ Amazon
Storage Seagate IronWolf NAS 8 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive Purchased For $179.00
Storage Seagate IronWolf NAS 8 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive Purchased For $179.00
Storage Seagate IronWolf NAS 8 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive $159.99 @ Adorama
Case Fractal Design Meshify 2 ATX Mid Tower Case $173.89 @ Newegg
Power Supply Corsair RM650 (2023) 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply $89.99 @ Corsair
Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
Total $1200.56
Generated by PCPartPicker 2025-05-23 19:32 EDT-0400
  • killabeezio@lemm.ee
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    19 hours ago

    I just built a NAS not too along ago, so I’ll just say what I would have changed in my build. Maybe it will help you.

    1. Get a server you can manage over something like ipmi or similar. Look at ASRock rack or super micro.
    2. Try and get something with a lot of pci lanes or at least bifurcation. This way you can expand and use more nvmes
    3. Go with nvmes first if you can. Depending on what you go with for a filesystem, will sort of depend how many you should start with.
    4. If you go for 10gbe, don’t use ethernet unless it’s onboard, otherwise go with sfp card and switch. It runs cooler.
    5. Try to find something with rdimm. Cheaper than ecc dimm and easier to find.
    6. Don’t forget a UPS. Protect your investment.

    One thing to watch out for. Some of these server motherboards expect the smaller higher rpm fans. This means you may have to fiddle to get the fan curve corrected with normal fans.

    If using something like zfs, you may want to have a bigger raid to start with. Otherwise you can do mirrored vdevs and combine them. But it can be a bit costly since you need 2 drives every time you want to expand and won’t get as much space as say something like z2 (2 parity drives)

    Nvmes will run cooler, longer, and faster. They also take up way less space.

    Make sure you have backups. You could probably use your Synology for this or some old computer parts you have lying around. But if you do use something like trunas, it makes it very easy to backup. This server you can use platter drives.

    16gh of memory is not enough. If you want to run workloads on there and if you do use something like trunas, you want as much memory as you can get for caching.

    Also, just buy used. You can find cheap servers online or just the parts on like eBay or even AliExpress.

    Good luck!