This is definitely good advice. I tend to run my laptops into the ground before I replace them, but a lot of the feedback here has made me think experimenting with something much less expensive first is probably the right move instead of trying to do everything all at once (so that when I inevitably screw up, it at least won’t be a $4k screw up.) But thanks for the sanity check!

Thank you so much for all of this! I think you’re definitely right that probably starting smaller and trying a few things out is more sensible. At least for now I think I am going to focus on putting something together for the lower-hanging fruit by focusing on the NAS build first and then build up to local AI once I have something stable (but I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for GPU deals in the meantime, so thanks for mentioning the B580 variant, it wasn’t on my radar at all as an option). But I think the thread has definitely given me confidence that splitting things out that way makes sense as a strategy (I had been concerned when I first wrote it out that not planning out everything all at once was going to cause me to miss some major efficiency, but I feel like it turns out that self-hosting is more like gardening than I thought in that it sort of seems to grow organically with one’s interest and resources over time; sort of sounds obvious in retrospect, but I was definitely approaching this more rigidly initially). And thank you for the HDD rec! I think the Exos are the level above the Ironwolf Pro I mentioned, so will definitely consider them (especially if they come back online for a reasonable price at serverpartdeals or elsewhere). Just out of curiosity, what are you using for admin on your MC server? I had heard of Pterodactyl previously, but another commenter mentioned CraftyController as a bit easier to work with. Thank you again for writing all of this up, it’s super helpful!

You are both totally right. I think I anchored high here just because of the LLM stuff I am trying to get running at around a GPT4 level (which is what I think it will take for folks in my family to actually use it vs. continuing to pass all their data to OpenAI) and it felt like it was tough to get there without spending an arm and a leg on GPUs alone. But I think my plan is now to start with the NAS build, which I should be able to accomplish without spending a crazy amount and then building out iteratively from there. As you say, I’d prefer to screw up and make a $500 mistake vs. a multiple thousand dollar one. Thanks for the sanity check!

Woah, this is big news!! I’d been following some of the older articles talking about this being pending, but had no idea it just released, thanks for sharing! Will just need to figure out how much of a datahoarder I’m likely to become, but it might be nice to start with fewer than 6 of the 8TB drives and expand up (though I think 4 drives is the minimum that makes sense; my understanding is also that energy consumption is roughly linear with number of drives, though that could be very wrong, so maybe I’ve even start with 4x a 10-12TB drive if I can find them for a reasonable price). But thanks for flagging this!

Thanks so much for sharing! I just poked around for the Ironwolf 8TB drives I was thinking of an it unfortunately looks like they’re sold out for now (as are the 8TB WD Reds it looks like), but I’ll definitely keep an eye out for them here (and honestly maybe explore some different size options honestly; the drive costs I was seeing on other sites was more than I expected, but wasn’t sure if that was just the new normal; glad to have another option!) And thanks so much for the awesomeselfhosted list!! I don’t think I’d seen everything collected in one place like that before, that will be super helpful!

Thanks so much for all of this info! You’re almost certainly correct that I’m overthinking this (it’s definitely a talent of mine). I had been leaning z2 on the NAS only because I’d heard that the resilvering process can be somewhat intensive on the drives, especially when they’re larger, but I had also seen folks say that this was probably overkill for most home settings and so I’m glad someone with experience on it could chime in. I think my biggest takeaway from what you shared is that it sounds like keeping the file system baremetal and fiddling with it as little as possible is the strategy (vs. virtualizing it and running it out of one large Proxmox machine, for instance). And I think you’re totally right on the LLMs being the real sticking point; I’d had no idea just how resource intensive they were not just to train but even to operate until I started looking into running one locally. It’s honestly making me think that maybe trying to roll this out in phases starting with the NAS (while also doing some other infrastructure upgrades like looking at running cat 6a and swapping out my router from the ISP all-in-one to something that can run OPNSense paired with some WAPs), might be a better place to start. Then, if I can get some early successes under my belt, I can move onto the LLM arena and see how much time, money, and tears I want to spend getting that up and running. Oh, and thanks also for mentioning TiB; it sent me down a very interesting rabbit hole on the base 10 vs. base 2 byte measurement and how drive companies use the difference to pump up the number they get to advertise; I had no idea that accounting for the discrepancy in drive size, but is definitely not surprising.

Thank you! I think I am just at the “Valley of Despair” portion of the Dunning-Kruger effect lol, but the good news is that it’s hopefully mostly up from here (and as you say, a good finished product is infinitely better than a perfect idea).

Thanks, will do!

Thanks for this! The jet engine sound level and higher power draw were both what made me a little wary of used enterprise stuff (plus jumping from never having a home server straight to rack mounted felt like flying a little too close to the sun). And thanks also for the epyc rec; based on other comments it sounds like maybe pairing that with dual 3090s is the most cost effective option (especially because I fear you’re right on prices not being adjusted downward; not sure if the big hit Nvidia took this morning because of DeepSeek might change things but I suppose that ultimately unless underlying demand drops, why would they drop their prices?) Thanks again for taking the time to respond!

Thank you! Honestly I am probably going way overboard myself (I think I’ve tried to convince myself that it might make sense given the likelihood of tariffs around the corner, but honestly might still end up downscaling to more like 10-20TB of storage and radically reduce my LLM expectations). And thanks also for the Crafty Controller rec, I hadn’t heard of them and will definitely check them out!

Thank you for this! Honestly maybe it’s just been all of the Youtubers I watch but I constantly feel like I have no idea about how to make things work (and also, to be fair, basically everything I wrote is just me reading what other people who seem to know what they’re talking about think and then trying to fit all the pieces together. I sort of feel like a money at a typewriter in that way.) Really appreciate you commenting though! It’s given me a little more confidence :)