I recently moved places and had to setup my homelab again. I thought I’d start documenting it to see how it evolves over time. This post will focus mostly on the hardware side of things while touching on the software at a surface level.

Note that this isn’t my first homelab, its technically the second iteration of it. But unfortunately I didn’t document the first iteration. I’ll try to point out larger changes I’ve made between them throughout the build.

NAS #

NAS Front	NAS Back

The complete parts list:

Motherboard #

I found the Supermicro X11SCA-F from a post on the Truenas forums. I unfortunately can’t find the original post but I was able to get it from ebay to pair with the i5-9500T.

The motherboard’s 8 built in SATA ports were one of the main draws for me. It allows me to build a NAS without a separate LSI HBA pcie card until I have > 8 drives.

Other than that, the multiple PCI-E slots for future NIC upgrades and it’s 128GB memory support sold me on the board.

CPU #

I run this machine as a NAS and NAS only. It runs Truenas Scale without any containers at the same time. I intended to separate compute and storage so the i5-9500T was more than adequate for my needs.

Case #

The case did change from my first homelab iteration. I had a Fractal Define R5 which I had no qualms with except that I already had 6 HDD’s so I could see myself outgrowing it in the future. So for this second iteration, I wanted a case that could hold more than 12 3.5" HDD’s.

I still didn’t have a rack so a tower case was going to be more convenient for me and in the desktop case world there aren’t many options for cases that can hold 12+ 3.5" HDD’s in 2026. Forunately, space and noise aren’t concerns for me at my current place.

My choices were:

• Fractal Define 7 XL
• Fractal Meshify 2 XL
• Jonsbo N5

The Fractal cases are community favourites in the homelab community whole Jonsbo is a newcomer that is coming out with great cases recently.

All these cases were good enough for me so I ended up choosing the one that was the cheapest at the time which happened ot be the Meshify 2 XL.

SATA HDD #

I collected these HDD’s over a period of 2 years.

• 2x14TB’s were brand new shucked drives
• 4x18TB’s were refurbished certified drives from serverpartdeals and goharddrive.

They are organized in a single RAIDZ2 VDEV with 56TB of usable space.

Computer hardware prices have increased exponentially in the last 6 months thanks to AI and hard drives were not exempt. If and when the prices return to 2024 levels, I’d love to make a second vdev with 6 more drives.

OS #

I chose Truenas Scale since the potential performance it offers was much greater than the alternative Unraid. While my network is currently only gigabit, the RAM caching Truenas offers seemed like an easy win to reduce latency for commonly accessed files.

Server #

Software #

To understand the hardware I picked up for this server, the software I was aiming to run becomes important. This server was meant to be docker host running services including but not limited to:

• Adguard Home DNS
• Jellyfin
• Tailscale
• thelounge (IRC)
• Jotty

All the services I was aiming to running are light on CPU usage so an 8th Gen 6 core CPU was more than enough. RAM was more important so I prioritized that when choosing the hardware.

PC #

A used mini pc was my choice here due to it fulfilling my hardware requirements while also being widely available on Ebay. Moreover, the low power draw and quiet operation were ideal for a server that would be on 24/7.

Future #

Both my NAS and Server are adequate for my current needs but shiny new hardware calls to me like the song of a siren. I have to constantly remind myself that most hardware upgrades won’t serve any purpose other than feeding my consumerist appetite.

I am, however, in need of new hardware for my home network. I’m not satisfied with my ISPs locked down router/gateway combo. Hopefully I can tackle that next.