Building a Better NAS for My Homelab

After setting up my first home server using an old gaming PC earlier this year, I eventually realized that this machine wasn’t ideal for my needs. Its mid-tower case occupied too much space and only had room for two 3.5-inch hard drives. I wanted a more compact setup that would allow me to add more storage in the future. In my last post, I identified the case I chose for my new NAS build. In this post, I’ll go over the other components I chose for it and the challenges I encountered while putting everything together. I’ll also share how I’m using this new NAS and its power efficiency compared to my old server. Contents# Parts Selection Building my NAS What I’m Running on My NAS Power Consumption Final Thoughts Parts Selection# Component Product Price RAM 2x Kingston KSM26ES8/8HD (8 GB each) $208.98 Motherboard ASRock B550M Pro4 $87.99 CPU Ryzen 5 PRO 5650GE $137.50 CPU Cooler Noctua NH-L9a-AM4 $49.95 Case Sagittarius 8 Bay NAS Case $210.37 Storage (HDD) 2x Western Digital Red Plus 8…