I don‘t know if this is the right place to ask, but is this an OK build for a first start in selfhosting? Is there anything obvious I could improve? I‘d mainly run Nextcloud, Immich, some Docker containers and smaller web applications and cronjobs.
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I have that same case in black, overall very similar setup. I like how it looks, but if I would change one thing in my server it would be the case. It’s quite a hassle to work inside of, and for its size, only being able to hotswap 4 HDDs is very little compared to other cases you can find.
It’s not bad by any means, but you can get better
Might be abit much but double your ram if you intend on using a lot of apps
I agree. The most limiting factor is still memory for me. And I’m max out currently of my motherboard (128gb).
Recently thessecond limiting factor is actually cpu. But that is due to my gitlab runners.
I have used a laptop without a screen as a server, raspberry pis, 10 year old laptop, proliant server, something with a via itx motherboard and a cheap cpu, like literal trash.
So yeah your build is more than fine. Don’t stress your budget too much, but if you can afford this you will have better than my first “server”. Remember to have fun with it!Ran a server off a fantastic workstation laptop that a user dropped off their bed, driving a USB stick through the power button and breaking the screen. Had to power it on with a stick directly poking the motherboard but it worked flawlessly for many years
Depends on the docker containers but it’s way overkill than you might think.
Since you’re starting it may be worth looking into used office PCs like the thinkcentre from Lenovo or other brands(no tiny or ssf since they don’t have to room for drives). They often offer good perfomance for the price and the power consumption is not too high.
I run a lot of containers in my homelab, which consists of an OrangePi (similar to an RaspberryPi 5). It works surprisingly well, and was only (at the time) $250 for the board, case, and emmc drive.
Not for me. I have a very quick ryzen setup with tons of ram and nvme etc. I never want back to a orange pi. But sure. I don’t like waiting, as a developer myself I just want to have quick loading pages and services.
Most of these devices have very limited IO disks speeds as well as slow processors. And also limited ram.
You can get Ryzen 5650G Pro from ebay that will support ECC. Just make sure it’s not vendor locked.
Obviously you’d need to adjust mobo, not sure if Gigabyte supports ecc. Asrock was pretty cool with ECC.
Your server looks fabulous, and I’m not discouraging you from pursuing it in the least. However, if I may draw from my own personal experience and what I am currently running, it may give you some ideas. Currently, I am running 53 containers on a Optiplex 7020 SFF with the i7-4790 and 32 GB RAM. Just checked and it’s load average at this moment is: 0.47, 0.60, 0.73. Meaning it’s pretty much in an idle state except for logging in just now. Grand total cost was less than $200. It consumes about $8 USD/month.
Unless you’re going to get into selfhosting heavy AI models, most stock PC, office discards, etc built in the last 10 years will do just fine for a homelab, with a little love like some additional RAM or a dual nic card. Immich and Nextcloud will probably require a bit more than 16 GB RAM running together. I don’t run Immich, but I do run Nextcloud and it does just fine with the above set up. No lags, stutters, etc.
How much do to pay for electricity? I’m running an I5-3470 and it costs about $17.50 USD/month, at $0.23 per kwh, the stack of 3.5" HDD’s pushes up the power consumption a fair bit though
I pay around $8/month USD. Now, there are factors involved. One, electricity in my locale is relatively cheap. In addition, I have solar. To contrast the Optiplex 7020 SFF, I used run the same containers/content on a Dell T320. It cost $40/month USD. which still isn’t an outrageous expenditure for someone with another type of hobby. Some of my other hobbies, like creating music, those prices climb steeply, rapidly. Last count I have 48 guitars, several banjos, 8 bass, an oud, mandolin, 4 full size Korg synth keyboards. three violins, and amps out the yang. So $40/month was peanuts, but I wanted something that wasn’t such a hog. Plus the heat dissipated by the T320 was significant, and that is passed on to your AC bill as well. The 7020 is much quieter, energy efficient, and produces very little heat. Win, win.
2 of my 4x 4TB spinning drives are portable. 2 in mirrored raid, and on-site backup, and an off-site backup. If you don’t have it on 3 drives across two sites, you don’t have it. 5400RPM is fine as long as you allocate some of that NVMe as a cache for it. Keep all high-transaction stuff like databases, thumbnail caches and indexes on the NVMe drive. Going to 7200RPM just increases power consumption and noise, and reduces reliability.
The other specs seems fine, but I personally upgrade my desktop then take the old CPU, RAM and motherboard to use for my server.
Immich and Nextcloud run fine on my 2015 Core i5 with 16GB RAM.
How do I do that with the SSD cache? Everyone just talks about it, but I can’t find any documentation…
I’m using bcache, and I’m using btrfs as the filesystem on top of it. I’m not sure that the way I’ve done it is considered best practice anymore. The discourse online is a mess because the landscape keeps evolving.
https://evilpiepirate.org/git/linux-bcache.git/tree/Documentation/bcache.txt
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters DNS Domain Name Service/System Git Popular version control system, primarily for code LVM (Linux) Logical Volume Manager for filesystem mapping NAS Network-Attached Storage NVMe Non-Volatile Memory Express interface for mass storage SSD Solid State Drive mass storage SSH Secure Shell for remote terminal access VPN Virtual Private Network ZFS Solaris/Linux filesystem focusing on data integrity nginx Popular HTTP server
12 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 12 acronyms.
[Thread #71 for this comm, first seen 2nd Aug 2026, 22:20] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Just about anything is OK for a server, I use whatever hardware I get from work thats being decommissioned.
The biggest limit I see is the ram. Depending on what you spin up and how, it’ll be the tightest budget per service.
16GB RAM may be a bit low for the setup, as others have suggested, but I’m currently running Immich and Nextcloud and a handful of other small services (like FMD) dockerized in an 8GB Raspberry Pi 5. I’ve experienced very few issues. In my opinion, you could find a used Ryzen 3600 or even older, and 16GB will probably serve you just fine. You could save yourself a hundred bucks or more.
That said, what you’ve got here is nice and future-proof for quite a while, even if you end up going down the rabbit hole. You might eventually need another 16GB of RAM, but maybe not until after the AI bubble pops 🙂
Yes definitely get more ram you will regret it later.
If you’re already going for spinning rust hard disks, why limit yourself to the 3 TB ones? IMHO, these days, spinning rust only makes sense at 8 TB+ per disk.
I have them at home and as such don‘t need to spend money on them.
Story of my life
Your part list is extremely similar to my main home server. You’ll do just fine with the hardware you’ve selected. It is a GREAT starting point.
For context I have been running an AMD 5600g alongside 32gb gskill ddr4 RAM since covid, tho back then it was a 2600x paired with an ancient FirePro for graphics. Boot drive is m.2 ssd and I have 4 hand-me-down enterprise HDDs for storage. (I originally was using whatever spinning rust I already had on-hand at that time, but I have replaced them since)
Massive overkill!
That’s a great Home Theater PC. Hook it up to your TV and install KDE Plasma (distro of your choice 👍) then just crank up the global desktop zoom to like 225% and get:
- A real wireless mouse that has a long range (e.g. $10 TEKNET cheapo deal with 10% off coupon today, LOL! https://a.co/d/02qG1oHO )
- A wireless keyboard/trackpad combo that’s made for that kind of thing (they’re all terrible keyboards—it’s only purpose is to get you through the boot menu/rescue process if something horrible goes wrong). Use SSH for doing any real work on the thing.
Now install Docker and all the containers/servers you want!
I have a ~14yo HTPC with a mostly modern GPU (8GB) that only has 8GB of RAM and four cores on some old AMD CPU. It’s running four separate servers for my self-host purposes and it doesn’t break a sweat.
I don’t think it’s a massive overkill. He most likely will try to host even some more services besides nextcloud etc.
I recommend actually to get more ram. Despite the stupid high prices I know.
FYI: I’m a noob myself.
Looks fine, but if you’re looking to mess around with a first build then you could go cheaper. Secondhand hardware would save you money, especially since older hardware is great for server use. At least you’re saving money with AM4 and DDR4.
Some thoughts:
- I went with an Intel CPU for Jellyfin transcoding.
- 16gb ram is enough to start and I host tons of stuff with that much, but the more ram the better. Having 2 more ram slots for future expansion would serve you well (but not essential).
- Faster networking would be better. Your mobo has 1 gigabit LAN. Again not a deal breaker. You can add faster networking yourself later.
This guy makes great videos, but you have to be careful to not overcomplicate things or chase specs that pro home server guys want that make no difference to noobs.
I recently picked up a used i3 14th gen to add to my server rack. Its great except ddr5 💸
Note about the network: it really doesn’t matter how fast your server can go if the rest of the stuff connected to it can’t also handle it.
You have a server with a 10 gigabit network port, you also need the cabling, router, switches, and other hardware that can handle 10 gigabit.
One thing you may want to explore is your OS. If you want to do what you suggested with a NAS OS like TrueNAS or Unraid. They can take advantage of a ssd cache. One small regular ssd for your OS, storage on your hdd array, and a NAS quality ssd that essentially runs your docker containers that gets backed up to your array.
It’s not nessesary. But if it’s something you think you might want to do in the future, you’ll want a plan for it now. Make sure you have enough mobo connections, and space in your case or an idea on how you would want to expand.
