Building a HOME SERVER on a BUDGET 

It's always refreshing when people demonstrate that you can play and learn this tech on a pocket money budget. That's how I got into tech when I was a teenager anyway.

This was essentially the start of my home Server Rabbit hole. Other tip, check with your company. They I managed to get about 7 fully functional Delll Optiplex i5 systems free just by asking my IT department what they were doing with the old systems they just switched out. This was at a sporting good store. Many places don't want to pay to get rid of these systems.

Finally, broken down so I can digest it. Everyone else explains it like you've had five years experience. Thank you.

Thank you for this video! Always fun to see projects like this!

Man, I appreciate your videos, simple fact that you are not meticulous makes the video enjoyable and educational while in a relaxing enviornment, even if I am not building a server---really just learning. Anyways, thanks for going slightly over the 100$. Great Video.

Another great video! nailed it on the budget as parts are getting cheaper for older off-lease workstations that you can always use for something to scratch that HomeLab itch. I would have done the 2TB drives to add a little extra later for other parts or more memory.

This is a great starter homelab for just building out a home cloud for remote office apps, self hosted email client or media streaming. Cool video

really good video! I'm finally seeing the need and practicality of a home server

First time watching your video and you answered my every questions. Instant sub.

Love this video. These old PCs are like horses anymore.. they used to run the world but now are just sitting around with nothing to do. Personally, I think it's virtuous to find a job for an obsolete but yet amazingly powerful and high tech machine and put it to practical everyday use.

Network Chuck: Currently unboxing and building one of the largest “home” servers of all time. RAID Owl: Pfft, watch this.

Great video. You can learn so much from self hosting. I have an old an HP N40L Microserver running Unraid for my NAS. I prefer to keep my NAS separate from everything else. I also have a Dell Wyse 5070 Extended with upgraded RAM and SSD as my real "home server". It runs Proxmox virtualisation and various containers including Nextcloud for self hosted cloud storage. Using ex-corporate SFF systems like the Wyse is a really good way of getting a cheap system which also has a low power consumption. I leave the N40L powered off unless I need to use it but the Wyse consumes less than 10w so I leave that powered on all the time.

Thank you very much. As always, really like the vids.

I had my wife's old Dell laptop biting the dust and it had Windows 7 SP1 on it. Added a 2TB SATA SSD and upgraded it to Windows 10. Then installed Ubuntu on it and installed Docker. Power consumption during idle is around 8-10W. Peak usage goes close to 35W as it's an Intel Sandy Bridge i5 processor and got QuickSync. Plenty fast and one device saved from the bin and performs really well with downloads and streaming!

My server has been running now for about 4 years, built from pritty much the same as you did here! 3770K, 32Gb DDR3, 120SSD and 3x16TB discs

I always love these videos. New project that I will start but then abandon. 🤣

I have a hp z240 running unraid as a backup server. Similar specs as the box in the video. Fantastic machine.

“With my ‘talents’” Song plays. Actually laughed. Subbed.

My first "dedicated server" was a similar setup. A Dell SFF unit with an i5-4500 CPU (4c/4t) that came with one 8GB stick of RAM. I dropped in a second 8GB stick, and ran it as an Unraid server for a few years. Plex with the 'arr's, a few other Docker apps, two Linux VMs (Debian and Arch), and a Windows 10 VM. Bumping it up to 16GB made all the difference. Since I have Plex Pass, I enabled hardware transcoding on the iGPU. That at least allowed two simultaneous transcodes.

4:28 loved the bald sign

My unraid server is running on an HP Z4 G4 workstation. picked it up for around $400 and it was a steal, then I picked up a 3 drive bay that sits in the two 5.25 drive bays on the front, for a total of five 3.5 drive bays. Pretty fun using a normal workstation as a server, and I'll probably do that again in the future.

That's what I started homelabing on, with OMV 😁 Worked really well. Now use it as my daily driver, more than powerful enough as I don't do games

I love doing home servers on a budget. I've been meaning to make some videos about things like this myself, but keep putting it off. I need to stop putting it off, lol.

I did something similar with the same pc but 2 used 14Tb retired video surveillance drives for a movie server for my family. Freebsd+ jellyfin is rock solid. Only caveat is edit rc.conf to set fsck to run automatically after power outage. I think it was fsck_y="YES" but check to be sure. I installed the os on the spinning rust which is less common today but it really makes no difference for a headless appliance. Another pro tip: zfs raid the 2 drives abd temporarily install a 2 or 10gb nic to copy the files faster, then pull it when the tank is full.

5:01 - there are actually 4 spare drive screws that are screwed into the front of your liftable drive tray, pictured on the far-side shot of the timestamp.

Hey that's great! Thank you! I will go and get one!

Don't mind the CLI, ProxMox with out VM does make a good storage solution. Samba and CIFS, and then everything can talk to it and it super lite os.

Sir, I'm going to need a P.O box to send a lawsuit to, since I snorted my drink out of my nose and proceeded to have a wheezing attack trying to control my laughter when you said "Go.. mow the world's smallest plot of grass". Seriously, where did that even come from?

There are some screws in the fold up hard drive Caddy to put the second hard drive in. I had the same issue a few days ago and was surprised to find them there.

When you said talents and that sound played it sent me lmfaoo😂😂😂

I’ve used a few second hand HP proDesk and eliteDesk PCs as servers, running windows server 2016/2019 and running 24/7 for years, amazing value.

23$ for a 3 tb HD... what a place to live! here you got to pay 90€ for one of those🤦‍♀🤦‍♀

great video. what about running rockstor ?

wife's boyfriend 💀

Love the vid! I was thinking to myself for a video idea, do an upgrade video and use the same system and upgrade it with like an additonal $100 or something

That was swell guy. This lowers the bar for entry for a lot of people. I have been thinking about doing something similar but with a budget of $250 to build a simple 2 user/4 device home server. I have seen some stripped out models with the I7 6700 for under $75 with no ram or drives.

That opening…. GD! lol!

I just bought an HP elite desk generation 3 for like $145 Going to use it as a backup NAS I7 7700 16 gigs of RAM with a brand new 500 gig NVMe drive pretty sweet deal

Dude! Where did you get that Docker whale thing in the background on your shelf? Do you have a link?

For the Plex transcoding your i5 has an Igpu so with Plex pass it should be able to transcode without any issue

Great video. This particular setup , would you recommend for a small 5-10 person office to act as a file server that only will run mysql or sql server. It would host an rdms for the most part for an app im building.

It's a great video! Sir how connect this server from outside (or remote like as cloud) if you completely build all with Unraid? Second question but Unraid is paid and is there Unraid completely free version?

I did build a $0.00 home server, to be honest more a backup server. It consists of the motherboard, CPU and memory of a 2003 HP d530. I had to re-erect it, because since 2 - 3 months ago I had contact problems with the IDE disks. I bought some contact spray and Monday and Tuesday I got it working again. The HW is a Pentium 4 HT (3.0GHz); 2x 512MB DDR (400MHz); 2x IDE HDDs 3.5" (250+320GB) and 2x SATA HDDs 2.5" (320+320GB). The 20 years old server runs the latest FreeBSD 14.0 on OpenZFS 2.2.0, released Nov 2023. It runs from the two striped 2.5" HDDs (zroot) and many of my VMs are backed up there too, the remainder is on the striped IDE HDDs (apool). At a >95% CPU load on one thread the Pentium is capable of reaching a transfer speed from 28 to 30MB/s for the "send | ssh receive". For the initial backup it took a day, also because of some power fails, that required some re-sends from e.g a 220GB dataset. Samba is working also, I only have to change the permissions of some of my ZFS datasets on zroot. Looking at the storage with one snapshot I have 30% free space on the datapool zroot and just 14% on apool, so I'm limited to 2 maybe 3 snapshots. The apool contains VMs and data that does no really change anymore (MB not GB), like VMs past receiving updates and my data like wma copies of my LPs and CDs, I don't buy LPs anymore :)

I was considering getting an optiplex for my truenas. While their cases can be cool, they usually only hold 2-3 drives max. I ended up just snagging a used supermicro board with 64GB of ecc ram and a 10 core Xeon cpu. Definitely not the most efficient for what I need but it’s definitely more fun and more badass. I’m excited to learn about the motherboard and and all the little jumpers. Also I’ll be learning a bunch on truenas scale. Once I saw the optiplex workstation prices, even on the used market I opted to just build with used components and have more fun.

I would go with a hp's z230 sff, grab a xeon, ecc ddr3, 2x120 ssd's, 5.×2.5 to sdd/3.5 adapter, used quadro p400 (for h265 encodingg) 3x 3.5 inch hard drives, m.2 to pcie adapter, cheap nvme for cache, and 2.5 gbe down the road.

great vid, only other thing i would have said is 3tb drives also have the highest failure rate of all hdds so 2x2 plus the ability to get a small ssd and a nice nic is where i would have differed

I picked up an Elitedesk 800 G3 SFF with an i5-6600, 16GB DDR4 and no HDD for $58 shipped. Definitely a nice chassis for a SSF build and has surprisingly good upgradeability as long as you're ok with just two 3.5" and one 2.5" drive to go with your sick CD drive.

00:56 I know that music. it definitely caught my attention. 😃😄

Yahooo! New useful video!

i laughed hard enough in the first opening statements you got a like and follow regardless of the content lol

I have the older variant of this machine. My job was upgrading hardware and my manager let me have the i5 4570 model with 16GB of RAM. Well, I got a taste for self-hosting and now it's been upgraded to an i7 4790, 32GB of RAM, Intel ARC A380, 2.5Gb NIC, PCIe 4-Port SATA Controller, and 2 16TB WD RED Pro drives for my TrueNAS vm and a 500GB SSD for boot and other vm's. It's been amazing and has really opened my eyes to how Windows can bog down this hardware that is otherwise fantastic! The funniest part of it all is that the wife's biggest enjoyment comes from not having ads on her mobile games since I'm running AdGuard Home.

Okay, I guess the 'no local deals' disqualifies me, but last month I won an auction for a computer from our local university with a $15.50 bid, which came out to 19 bucks after buyer's fees and tax. What I came home with was an HP Elitedesk 800 G1 SFF with no storage and a single stick of 4 GB DDR3 RAM. However, it had an i7-4770, a Blu-ray slimline drive, and a 23" flat-panel monitor, along with keyboard, mouse, and all necessary cables. I spent $47 for a Crucial 1 TB SSD and around $20 for two 8 GB sticks of DDR3. I'm still less than a hundred bucks into this machine and so far it's been running Proxmox without issue.

I have a similar setup at home. I got a free hp sff with i3 4310. Added 16gb ram for 50 eur and 2x10tb hdd for total of around 350 eur. I run the hdds without parity but I have replaceable data on there only. Two plex streams locally work just fine.

Gotta love budget servers

I was not prepared for the "bald" note on his head. HAHAHA

I love the idea of using old hardware in non-critical roles to help keep them out of the landfill. e-waste is terrible.

I'd like to see another take on this with say a $300 budget? I know this definitely doesn't satisfy the power budget, but I bought 2 cheap E5 v4 Xeons on Aliexpress and one of those cheap dual X99 boards (less than $100 total), tons of CPU horsepower. Personally I bought a cheap case locally and used an old PSU (1 EPS connector worked fine), cheap DDR4 ECC RAM and chucked my old GPU in, but you could do the same for $300 easily, at least in the UK. Planning on messing around with proxmox on it, but I'd love to see your take on a slightly higher budget home server, I think it will allow for a much more powerful, more DIY approach.

I appreciate the no local deal thing. I live in a small town where i can search for months and never find any electronics.

Were you not leverage the Intel GPU for transcoding? Anything H.264 and below should have transcoded with that gpu, so no processor wrecking.

For nas software have you had a look at Rockstor , Easynas or Amahi?

You can mix and match drives both in age and size with freeNAS as well you will just be limited to the slowest drives speed and the smallest drives capacity I have some 320gb 3200RPM HDDs in my NAS with some 500gb WD green drives.

Subscribed…I was under the belief…that there would be pickle tickling.

Doesn't the parity drive need to be equal to or larger than your cumulative storage drives?

This is the exact computer I used to make my VR gaming rig, and then my unpaid server after I upgraded my gaming rig

nice fun project! Not going to local options was brave; but would've been severely limiting here as it's ez to find cheaper options locally I would suggest people going for this to atleast find a 7th or 8th gen i5 as it can handle transcoding (built in support for hevc too) I actually run a Lenovo P330 with i5 8500T and a Quadro p620 it's a tiny PC but the only one that has a PCIE riser slot for a GPU You should try building in one of those! ik u don't like the Tiny Mini Micro form factor but do check it out once Maybe a review or a scrapyard build like this 1 plz

i have one of these dell SFF pc's im using as a server. id like to get a external sas card and find/make some kind of external drive bay for like 4 more drives.

I've watched this video a couple of times and I think you should make a follow up video with it. If you came into another $100, what would you add to this server?

You look like Nicholas Cage. Great video btw. Really helpful

Cool vid can you make video where you making cluster proxmox server using 3 optiplex pc's?

Thats all great - I have a fairly up to date system running 70+TB.... what I'm struggling with is how you broadcast the files over local Wifi, and lock it down? I used to use old systems like this as local "access points", but.... that was a wired network, which I am much more comfortable with! Going wifi and making the signal strong enough (my ISP locks the router, I cant change anything inside - I think - THINK - I can add an external router and boost from there?!?!?) ANyway - advice on that is welcome.

I got the same computer, but it had 16GB of ram and an SSD. I added a 2TB HDD from an Apple Airport and turned it into a proxmox server. It was in the trash pile, and the guy was going to take it to computer recycling, so he gave it to me.

😂 4:28 ---> bald , that’s hilarious

So was the choice of unraid over a linux-docker/portainer combo better because of how convenient it was to setup the drives and that it can be ran off USB? Still a great video with lots of info.

I turned my 15 years old core 2 quad cpu into a home server with nas os and 4 tb nas drive. Works pretty well.

I attached m.2 no problem. Two 7200 hard drives is a problem. Two sata connectors ,one for dvd. No other connector for second drive. Lose the dvd connection?

i think its a pretty good system!!! Cheers

Would that be able to be a game server and would it be able to run different servers at the same time instead of being a storage server

How u do software for a home server do u need window operation system or not ? As no one say how it work in simple

Are your using zfs for your proxmox and truenas drives?

what a funny coincidence you got such setup, I actually got HP 800 G1 SFF, it has i7-4770 (8 threads and igpu), 32GB ram and 500GB ssd, it's rock-solid, I'm running Proxmox with VMs there and thinking about upgrades, so I'd like to know your throughts on this: cheap 4-lane PCIe-NVME adapter costs like 9 bucks, and 2TB NVME SSD on budget like KC3000 around 120 bucks, - with old PC like that, boot from NVME isn't supported I guess, and I'd have to use primary x16 slot and speeds capped to 3.0, but still that would give significant boost over SATA SSD as VM storage location? or would you rather suggest throwing few SATA SSDs there for faster RAID, and upgrade to 10Gbe PCIe NIC instead? cheers

I run a dell optiplex with an Intel i7 3770s, 16GB of ram and a quadro p620. And for the price, the system is unbeatable, I've run minecraft servers with 200+ mods and multiple players and I run a vm (proxmox) with GPU passthrough for gaming which runs really well. The i7 3770 still holds up really well and can run multiple vms which is mind-blowing.

I have a question - I am using an old (core 2 duo) laptop as a home nas. and i put ubuntu server as its OS. I put a cheap 2 tb ssd as the drive (yes, do not have redundency, i indent to make it happen in the future). Anyway, my question was, is there any issues with going the 'Ubuntu server' route? or should I go for any other nas specific OSs? what are the pros or cons with my approach? - I am just using it as a media server for at most 2 people at a time, that too only locally

Lubuntu is light enough. essentially ubuntu but for lower end pcs. it has all the features of ubuntu if wanted. so you can modify what you need in the os.

Yoooo this is actually my setup. I have the same pc with 2 3tb hard drives running jellyfin. I want to upgrade tho

My "100$" server is an upcycled HP prodesk from work that came with an i7 4770, 8tb of ram, and 1tb hdd. A 15$ 120gb prime day SSD, a dual NIC for 15$,upgraded to 32gb fan for 40$ and 2x 2tb drives left over from the hardware raid taken from my old gaming PC (prices CAD)

You need to passthrough the iGPU to Plex - you can then transcode several streams with barely any impact on CPU usage....I have a 35watt i5 4590 in my Unraid box and even that feels overkill at times.

If this guy had a podcast, I'd listen to it all day...just sayin 👂

Nice presentation. I recognize this HP box. It was nothing special, just an office desktop workhorse. So expect to see a lot of hardware of this caliber hitting the market as corporate layoffs go brrrrrrrr. . . .

I'm totally uneducated on this but the video popped up on my feed. What does one use a home server for?

Any hardware + Alpine Linux + NFSutils Or Any hardware + Ubuntu + Samba Those setups run on 2G of RAM flawlessly! 👌🏿

I guess if I want to be fair, I won't take one of those few 128G ram, dual CPU 36 core per cpu servers that we're going to send to the recycle pile from work. After all, those poorly configured machines only have 40 TB of disk space. But those do draw a bit more than 50 watts. ( In 6 months, I should have the ability to grab a few machines that have 512g of ram in each. )

this is good content overall and great value esp when compared to sbc/soc mkt - you can do a lot with these old boxes and they get overlooked - they use a minor bit more power but so what - that is really splitting hairs - the old hp kit is recommended - better than dell which uses so many proprietary parts - you can still optimize these bargain basement refurbs with ps adapter and bigger cases - those are top modes and could make good content reprise on this topic #bullethead #don rickles roast #frank name this box McLovin' and do some upgrades - add nvme and a real case and a pc adapter plus 2.5, add a sata card and a more ssd in raid10 and then stop - it will do the job admirably and you probably have many of the parts just laying around - do an update on McLovin' when it is ready for prime time and then consider a clone cause at 20-30 watts that is pretty damn good - with a bigger case it would be much easier to work on - lastly you need to max out the ram on this old box - old ram is cheap - try it and install something like debian which is uber stable - you can run 2-3 vms on this thing easily - with enough ram....

Hello. Isn't the fan too noisy ?

Sounds like ultra budget NAS, 1G network is up to spec with HDDs, even Ironwolfs that brag 180MBs seem to top out at 130-140MB in my synology, the SSD goes 220MBs on dual 1G with smb Multichannel. You can try that as 2.5G switches arent budget yet they go out of budget spec.

got a i5 4690 gtx 1060 3gb 500watt psu hp micro atx motherboard 16gb ddr3 1600 4tb hdd 2tb hdd 256gb sata ssd 4 port sata card, wifi card, no ethernet jacks near location of server what os should I use for best performance in minecraft server and plex/ or jellyfin? and what other apps/ features would you recommend and would it be possible to run a ad blocker/ vpn on it too?

"Your wife's boyfriend wears" love the humor.

Wait a minute, was that usb drive you have unraid on not included in the price?

hi in terms of power consumption, CPU doesnt really matter much. You can stick a 20 core CPU and it wont use much either as that depends on your workload. The highest power consumer are fans and HDDs. just 6 HDDs can make the system use more than 100W idle. i run a proxmox cluster but keep power consumption by having other options on network storage and not running my file servers always. Also minimal linux runs fast on HDDs, but if you have to use the HDD for your large AI models since ram is an issue it can be very slow. many used 10Gb/s NICs also use a lot of power too so i run everything without extra NICS except the file servers i dont turn on till needed. Did you enable all the virtualisation features in bios? i've used far slower CPUs for VMs and runs fast. Mini PCs can expand PCIe via thunderbolt.

I'm a little off topic. I have many SBC. Forgive me its ben a moment. I have not played with them in a few years. Can I run pi-hole and have a media player playback with vpn for torrenting on same Operating system SBC ?

Bret, I love these videos and your other budget builds. How can I search on ebay for say cheapest server or Workstation with at least 6 cores, nvme and 4 drive bays? Too many random results. Please help.