My budget is ~500 Euro.

I haven’t built a PC in 10 years, I gave no idea where to start.

It will mostly be used to run Nextcloud, Minecraft Server and some future homelab projects.

I’m thinking of using this for the case https://www.the-diy-life.com/introducing-lab-rax-a-3d-printable-modular-10-rack-system

Where do I start? What CPU or motherboard would you recommend? I want it to be somewhat future proof and also act as a NAS

  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    2·
    24 days ago

    Main issue is drives. If your data is modest, multiple NVMe drives could be affordable, but if you have lots of data, you’ll want HDDs, and those won’t fit. Make sure you actually want a miniPC down the line before buying, because expansion is limited.

      • cmeu@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        24 days ago

        This all day. USB3 has plenty of bandwidth to keep those spinners busy, and a cheap pc can be bought for under $200 that would handle all the services op described, plus more.

        I bought an n150 with 12gb RAM, dual 2.5gb nic, built in nvme and USB 3.2. it uses like 15w of power, is basically silent, and with a 5 bay HDD attached I’ve got enough storage for whatever.

        Building a home lab server from components is only a good idea if you have some really specific use case not covered by cheap imports…

          • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            5·
            24 days ago

            Surely it has a USB controller that translates SATA to USB, no? I’ve heard many of these JBOB enclosures have problems with drives falling off the bus or something in 24/7 operation.

            Here’s a video from Level1Techs about USB enclosures, and at the 12 min mark or so, he talks about the USB controllers on these enclosures typically being trash. The one he recommends was $130 ($150 currently) and still has that issue with getting locked up if the connection is bad (e.g. cable gets bumped).

            He does mention the USB-C controllers are getting better, so maybe those cheap emclosures are fine.