Overview#
When choosing the hardware for my home media server, I decided to use consumer hardware compared going with older data center servers. My first attempt was a dual E5-2620 v2 system (which is now a designated Proxmox home lab environment). The idea was to build a small footprint system that could live in a living room without being noticed. The choice came down to either an mATX or ITX-sized motherboard. I ended up going with ITX because my only need for connecting devices to the server would be hard drives. These would be connected via an HBA card due to the limited number of native SATA connectors on an ITX motherboard, as well as the mix of SAS and SATA drives I had.
CPU & Memory Choice#
When it came to picking the right CPU for the media server, I faced a dilemma: I had to choose between utilizing a fully fledged graphics card for transcoding media or going with an iGPU solution. After researching Intel Quick Sync and AMD options, I settled on a relatively modern Intel CPU capable of handling all the tasks, including transcoding multiple 4K streams if need be.
I wanted to keep the system as small as possible and saw no real benefit to using a dedicated graphics card (even before the world went insane with GPU prices). With the CPU chosen, I decided on 32GB of RAM to ensure I would be set for the near future regardless of the workload I threw at the system. (Ah, the good ol’ days, when RAM prices were sane.) Since this particular server wouldn’t have any critical workloads, I decided to skip ECC and go with a regular consumer DDR4 2x16GB kit.
Storage & Case#
For storage, I had a mix of new and used SAS and SATA drives that I had gathered over time. The current setup features drives ranging from 8TB to the unusual 14TB size. The drives are all connected to an IT-flashed HBA card via mini-SAS to SATA breakout cables.
The HBA card was not designed to be used in a normal PC case where static air pressure is relatively low. Thankfully, there are many 3D-printable files available that allow you to mount a small fan to the card to keep its temperatures in check.
At the time, there weren’t a lot of options for NAS cases that were small and could hold up to 6 drives. The case that met all my size and drive-count requirements was the Fractal Design Node 804. For the main operating system, the choice was obvious: a decently sized (1TB) NVMe drive. Luckily, the motherboard supported two NVMe drives (since I wasn’t using the onboard SATA ports), which will allow me to add another drive down the line to mirror them.
The Result#
The result is a very dense, capable, and relatively quiet system (though the SAS drives are loud at times). It can be placed anywhere in the living room without being an eyesore, all while holding tens of terabytes of media files and transcoding them smoothly without completely breaking the bank.