(Contains affiliate links)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I’ve wanted a home-lab\/media server setup for quite a while and I finally decided to start setting one up, inspired by my co-workers and YouTube channels like Hardware Haven<\/a> and Network Chuck<\/a>. So I figured I would share this process with anyone that cares, starting with the hardware.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I first bought a Beelink Mini PC<\/a> with 16 GB RAM and a 1TB NVMe drive and a Silicon Power 4TB external SSD<\/a> with USB 3.2. This setup was decent, but for that price, I knew I could get better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I then found an old HP Elitedesk 800 G3 SFF with a 7th generation Intel Core i5 processor<\/a>, 16 GB DDR4 RAM, and a 256 GB NVMe drive for around $100<\/strong>. Which is small enough to fit on the end table my router sits on, but also big enough to hold additional drives. Also, If you’re looking to run a home media server like Plex<\/a> or Jellyfin<\/a>, you’ll want to make sure you get at least a 7th Generation (KabyLake) Intel CPU. It’s needed to perform H.264 10-bit transcoding, which is necessary for 4K streaming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I also purchased a cheap Orange Pi Zero 3<\/a> ($30<\/strong>) to run Pi-Hole<\/a> (for now), which is basically a very small DNS server that acts as a DNS black-hole for ad blocking, malicious site blocking, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So that’s about $150. Then I bought two HGST 8TB 3.5-inch HDDs<\/a> ($130<\/strong>), for storage. There is a spot inside the Elitedesk 800 G3 SFF that fits these perfectly. However, I did also have to order some HP-style hard drive mount screws<\/a> to mount them correctly ($6<\/strong>) and some 90-degree SATA cables<\/a> ($5<\/strong>) due to the way the drives sit in the frame. I also replaced the 256 GB SSD with a Patriot P300 M2 PCIe Gen 3 2TB SSD<\/a> ($80)<\/strong> and an additional 16 GB of DDR4 RAM<\/a> ($25<\/strong>), bringing the total RAM to a respectable 32GB.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So the total spend so far on this project is right around $380. Not ideal, but not terrible. Luckily, I have an Amazon Store Card and got six-months to pay for it with no interest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (Contains affiliate links) So I’ve wanted a home-lab\/media server setup for quite a while and I finally decided to start<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joshuasaunders.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joshuasaunders.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joshuasaunders.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joshuasaunders.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joshuasaunders.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/joshuasaunders.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":123,"href":"https:\/\/joshuasaunders.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions\/123"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joshuasaunders.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joshuasaunders.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joshuasaunders.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joshuasaunders.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}