I’m pretty new to self-hosting, and the NAS I’m using right now has been a pain since the moment I bought it. The Synology DS220+ just doesn’t have enough CPU power for my needs, and I’ve recently used up all the disk space I installed, so I’m looking for a new server.

Unfortunately, all the options I’ve found online prioritize storage space over CPU, and I haven’t had much luck finding anything that fits my needs.

Requirements: CPU: Intel Core i3 or higher, but preferably Core i5 GPU: Not needed RAM: max 64 GB, min 16 GB Storage: max 32 TB, min 10 TB Network: 10 GB SPF+ Price: max 6K CAD, preferred 3K CAD

I’m hoping to run TrueNAS Scale with Plex and Nextcloud installed, and my media library isn’t likely to get larger than 5 TB, so CPU is really the main limiter of my current NAS.

As an example of something almost perfect: The TrueNAS mini X+ and R varieties would work excellently, but don’t meet the CPU requirement. I wanted to look at the other systems on offer from TrueNAS, but they don’t list out CPU specs for anything more advanced than the Mini line.

Of the Lenovo stuff, since it was one of the few websites with a filterable picker, the ThinkSystem SR630 V2 was the closest of fitting my requirements. It comes short on the CPU, though, and is verging on the price limit too. I also don’t need 12 TB of RAM, or 1.2 PB of storage.

What do you use? Can you recommend any websites I can go to find something that fits my needs better?

  • SparkyEnglish
    1·
    28 days ago

    Maybe building one yourself might be a good idea. I found someone’s old desktop with an 8th Gen i7, 32gb of ram, mobo and Gtx 1070 gpu on the side of the road while on a road trip. Thing was sitting in the rain and slightly rusted, but when I cleaned off the corrosion, stuffed it full of hdds and set it up with truenas scale it’s been running flawlessly with an uptime of almost a year. Been running like that for about 5 years now with the occasional maintenance.