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Don't throw away your old PC—it makes a better NAS than anything you can buy
(www.howtogeek.com)
this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2025
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Better to build it from scratch, your desktop PC does not have server-grade hardware. No ECC, no IPMI, not enough SATA ports, etc.
I think the self-hosting community needs to be more honest with itself about separating self hosting from building server hardware at home as separate hobbies.
You absolutely don't need sever-grade hardware for a home/family server, but I do see building a proper server as a separate activity, kinda like building a ship in a bottle.
That calculation changes a bit if you're trying to host some publicly available service at home, but even that is a bit of a separate thing unless you're running a hosting business, at which point it's not a really a home server anyways, even if it happens to sit inside your house.
I totally agree - and depending on your needs & budget, slightly older server-grade equipment idle power usage is much higher compared to consumer stuff (servers didn't really know how to idle until "recently"). And also if you don't host a tone of different things for different users (ie you don't need all the pcie lanes) you get so much faster CPUs for the same monies.
The only server-grade things you need are ofc disk drives that are gonna do server stuff.
And a good PSU (but a nice Seasonic is almost server-grade anyways). When ppl talk about power usage they tend to forget PSUs (they check their PC usage with a shitty PSU that itself can't idle low & maybe doesn't even get to 90% at peak loads).
Server-grade hardware makes a lot of sense even for home use. My NAS is tucked away in a closet, having IPMI is so much more convenient when you can’t easily hook it up to a keyboard and mouse.
I'm currently running some stuff out of an old laptop which I also have tucked away somewhere and just... remote desktop in for most of the same functionality. And even if you can't be bothered to flip it open in the rare occassion you can't get to the points where the OS will let you remote in, there are workarounds for that these days. And of course the solution to the "can't hook it up to a keyboard and mouse" in that case is the thing comes with both (and its own built-in UPS) out of the box.
Nobody is saying that server grade solutions aren't functional or convenient. They exist for a reason. The argument is that a home/family server you don't need to use at scale can run perfectly fine without them only losing minor quality of life features and is a perfectly valid solution to upcycle old or discarded consumer hardware.
None of that really matters for a home media server. Even the limited SATA ports, worst case you have to grab a cheap expansion card.
Power consumption is a much bigger concern, a purpose built NAS is much more efficient than a random old PC.
Even the most expensive Synology only has space for 8 drives with only one 10Gbit ethernet port.
You can build something yourself for less with much better performance.
And more freedom.
That's not true at all. Synology will sell you 24 bay rack mounted devices and 12 bay towers, as well as expansion modules for both with more bays you can daisy chain to them.
Granted, I believe those are technically marketed as enterprise solutions, but you can buy a 12 bay unit off of Amazon for like two grand diskless, so... I mean, it's a thing.
Not saying you should, and it's definitely less cost effective (and less powerful, depending on what you have laying around) than reusing old hardware, but it does exist.
HBAs are cheap, IPMI isn't at all needed under normal uses cases, and ECC is way overkill.
For most people a halfway decent PC that isn't failing is plenty.
Hardware is boring. Doing some research is boring. People don't care about boring stuff. Or their data.
"Let's put every single family photo taken between 1976 and today on this and only this one shitty drive. And let me spin up an Immich container on my trusty raspberry. I have watched a YouTube video or two in my days. I think I know what I'm doing."
Bonus points for "but ssh is all you need", "static electricity has never been a problem for me" and "what gpu do you recommend for jellyfin?".