We love numbers, right? So here is a short write up about what I consider a decent NAS build, with pictures, centered around pricing, to give an appropriate perspective of what would it cost you to build your own NAS box in 2019.

It’s been a while since I purchased my good old Synology DS216J disk station. It was a lazy option, nothing to build, just add 2 drives and you are good to go. Since it’s a lazy option, specs were, obviously, abysmal: Dual Core 1.0 GHz, 512MB of RAM. Nonetheless it did it’s job and still does it well.

Synology DS216J: ~$290, 2x8TB WD RED PRO ~$700

This station only has 2 bays for 3.5" drives, so I had 2x8TB WD Red PRO drives with Synology Hybrid RAID, providing a total of ~7TB of usable space. Yes, 7TB Sounds like a lot but it’s really not, so after about ~1.5years I started running out of disk space and, largely influenced by https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/ , decided that it’s time to build my own NAS with decent specs, right $/spec ratio and extensibility.

Case: Fractal Design Node 804, $121.28

A proper case is very important for the home NAS build as it determines your extensibility and, mainly the number of drives you can use. I decided to go with Fractal Design Node 804:

Fractal Design Node 804 MicroATX Cube Case FD-CA-NODE-804-BL, $121.28

This case is a great option and offers a very compact design for what it can fits. What attracted me the most are 8 bays for 3.5" HDDs and 2 bays for 2.5" HDDs/SSDs. I managed to snatch it on Amazon for $121.28.

Storage

Storage is tricky and the most expensive part of any NAS/DAS. For the drive manufacturer, Western Digital is a clear winner for me. Unlike last time with Synology, I have decided to go with their regular Red label 10TB NAS drives instead of the PRO models:

WD Red 10TB NAS Hard Drive — 5400 RPM Class, SATA 6 Gb/s, 256 MB Cache, 3.5", $279.99

I ordered 3 of these babies on Amazon for $279.99 each.

Ideally I need to have 4x10TB drives for somewhat decent redundancy, and thankfully Best Buy was there to help me out with the 4th drive by having an awesome sale: