Leaderboard

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/BrkRyW this is my alternative sub $1000 build for you 11600 is a stronger cpu and gpu motherboard only has 1 gb ethernet but its good enough for a hdd build mobo also has 6 sata ports so you won't really need an hba until you go above that cheaper boot ssd bc you really don't need to spend much on it switched to less expensive exos drives. i don't know what they cost so little but in general they are better than ironwolf drives. added more ram since hexos likes ram switched to a dedicated nas case with a power supply that fits. we can do a lot better if you are okay with some used parts too

Yes now you have a CPU with a GPU In general if there is a "f" prefix on a CPU it doesn't have a gpu.

Hey, A couple of remarks: The selected GPU is very week and cannot handle 4k transcoding. If you are going for Media Center you need a lot more storage (you can get significant more storage with HDDs compared to SSDs for the same price). You should probably look at an Intel CPU (their CPUs are shit for gaming but man, Intel QuickSync on the on-board GPU is one heck of a power house for transcoding). This way you don't need a dedicated GPU and can still transcode. Your currently selected Motherboard has a Realtek NIC, Realtek NICs are mostly not supported and/or are not working correctly with Hexos/Truenas so if you choose a MoBo with a Realtek NIC you also need another (preferably Intel NIC) to get any network connections. In combination with the HBA card and a dedicated GPU (if you are going that path) you need to make sure to have enough PCIe slots and PCIe Lanes for those 3 extansion cards to work properly.

Glad i could help You can find new 6tb exos drives on ebay for under $100 from sellers with lots of reviews (i would still check farm data to make sure it is actually new) Cpu and ram are where i would not hesitate to buy used. If you search for ram on ebay just make sure you don't purchase ecc or server ram for this build as it is not compatible. Craigslist and facebook marketplace are also decent places to look for deals on used gear

I don’t think this will work. I don’t say it’s impossible, but I see a lot of challenges. To much if you ask me. A 15 year Old Macbook with not enough RAM and you need external HDDs which is not recommended. Leave them in the drawer or bring them to the museum.

Nice - thanks for the clarification. The HBA wasn't strictly needed - it was a nice to have and I can use it on another system I have. Thanks for the handy reference for this board!

It has a realtek nic on the motherboard which are problematic and might not work i would highly recommend picking a motherboard without a realtek nic if you don't plan on adding say a 10gig pcie nic.

the build in this link doesn't have a gpu in it.

Thanks @PsychoWards, from what I'm reading I'd have to setup Vaultwarden & proxy manager on the TrueNAS side of HexOS? Would those installs be done directly into TrueNAS, on a VM set up first, or in Docker?

The big thing is that once HexOS is ready it will just simplify the use of the underlying Truenas. The goal is that one won't have to understand how to setup permissions and what not. I purposely haven't bothered to learn how to use Truenas so maybe someone with more experience with truenas can better fill you in.

not all external drive enclosures are compatible with hexos either. Hexos requires the drives to have their serial numbers reported but many enclosures cheap out on that and just report a generic serial number that is the same for all drives which will cause problems detecting all drives. I'm not aware of which enclosures report all the proper data.

The other day I securely erased my Synology NAS. Marking the start of my future with HexOS and TrueNAS after a few months of testing. I went from three mini PC:s and one synology NAS to this: The pic includes my main gaming rig - the NAS is the black box. The box that now runs all my services including a VM with Windows for certain windows specific tasks. The NAS specs: Fractal Node 304 case Gigabyte A520I AC ITX motherboard Ryzen 5700G (8C/16 threads) 32GB 3200mhz (memtested 24h) 3x 4TB HDDs (can expand to 6 drives as needed) GTX 1060 for steam streaming - isolated for the windows VM PSU 350w (The NAS draws 60w idle) APC UPS What’s running: Transmission Immich VPN Minecraft server Windows VM (“Steamcache”, streaming and more) NUT-server (as the UPS is shared with the gaming rig) Cloud backups Samba of course More to come (the hardware is barely working) Problems setting it up: There were some but so few that I can't even remember them. Mostly with HexOS on testing-hardware not the final parts. Looking forward to everything coming in the future. But honestly… I’m fine 😎