What do you think about the Lenovo Thinkstation P500? https://www.ebay.com/itm/236911625389?var=537344005937
Do you really need a 14 core server as your NAS? That thing is going to use a ton of power at idle.
You can find any pre built PC that’s m/ATX, chuck it in any random ass case you’ve got with HDD bays, then pick up an HBA (or even better raid card and flash it yourself into HBA mode) and that’ll give you 8 sata connectors + whatever is on the board.
There’s usually plenty of people selling old PCs on classified sites. Grab one of those, and as long as the board isn’t super low end it should have at least 4 sata ports. And as long as the case is old it should also have at least 3 or 4 3.5” bays and maybe some 5.25” bays that you can adapt.
Thanks. Yeah i don't want something crazy power hungry.
I'll see what other pcs i can find. I heard that dell especially is to be avoided because their cases, etc, are highly unstandard. Anything else to look for on the used market for the case with HDD bays?
I've never heard of HBA so I'll try to research that.
Dell use to love BTX which while it's a standard, aint nobody cares about it. So generally avoid them. But I think they use ATX again, but they build weirdly shaped boards that integrate the front io into the main pcb. So yeah.. I guess just generally ignore them. If you can just find a DIY built pc. Honestly a 10 year old machine without a video card is ideal. If you can get one with 4 ddr4 ram slots, and when ram prices calm down you can upgrade up to 128 gigs of ram, with a ddr3 based system you'd be stuck with 32.
For used cases it's just kinda whatever the market has honestly. I have a Fractal Define R4 for my NAS. It has 7 3.5" bays, and 2 5.25" bays which is perfect for me. Since I have two of them I have a second 4 bay HDD rack, so I can get up to 11 drives in there. Something like this.
LSI raid cards are what you'll want to look for. Older ones need to be flashed into "IT mode" to make them act as an HBA, or more modern ones just do that by default. Absolutely do not buy an el cheapo HBA. They're garbage and unreliable. An old retired raid card is very cheap, and very reliable.
