How to Build a Home Server Part 1: Picking the right Components - YouTube

Hey guys what's up and welcome to this video where we are going to build my

first ever home backup and cloud server using some parts that I've had from

previous builds as well as some few new parts. Now there are a large number of

reasons why building your own home server might be interesting for you.

For example privacy and control over your data - obviously if you don't have a third

party involved then nobody can steal your data - you might be interested in

backing up your data for example I have a whole bunch of terabytes worth of data

that I basically don't have a backup from and I am in desperate need to

somehow backup that data, you might want to be able to access all of your data

across your network without having to set up the windows shared folders all

the time when you boot up your computer. Now obviously I could also just buy a

NAS and have that running. However first of all these NAS's that have for

example four bays are insanely expensive and second of all I don't have full

control over what I can actually do with the NAS and because I'd like to run

this also as a web server for some of my own web apps having a NAS just doesn't

cut it. More relevant for this case is probably that you want to build your own

cloud server so you want to kind of build your own Google Drive on your own

machine at home and then be able to access all of your data wherever you are.

Obviously building your own server then also comes with the advantage of being

able to upgrade it in terms of storage and that having a few terabytes of space

is much cheaper if you have it in your own machine and your own drive compared

to for example getting a very expensive Google Drive subscription. And last but

obviously not least building and maintaining your own home server comes

with a huge amount of things that you have to learn how to do for example

setting up your home server setting up Linux running the cloud server running a

web server getting it all accessed from the internet... It comes with a huge amount

of interesting things that he can learn a huge amount of probable errors that

you can do so I'm by no means an expert in the topic and if I mess up something

royally then definitely let me know in the comment section below. So if you're

interested in any of these topics then definitely stick around as I will be

dedicating an entire video series to first of all picking out

two parts for my own server, how I build it, then we're gonna look at

how to install Linux, how to set up a web server, how to set up a cloud server,

how to set up backups on my computer, and finally also how to set up a password

manager. But before all of that, this video is brought to you by no other than

you guys the viewers and obviously me! Now this channel is kind of my creative

outlet it's kind of my hobby so to speak I obviously have a full-time job next to

what I'm doing here on my YouTube channel and therefore all the videos

that you're seeing on my channel almost exclusively are pretty much paid and

sponsored by myself and because I'm interested in some sort of topic. So if

you do like this kind of content and if you like me not having these annoying

sponsored ads in the beginning of every video - you know them, it's kind of:

"This video is brought to you by insert random tech company" see them on pretty much any

channel these days and personally I don't really like them too much I just

skip over them usually... But if you want to support my channel then please hit

that like button and consider subscribing for more content like this!

But without any further ado let's finally hop into the components that

I've picked for my first ever home server. Disclaimer I am not associated

nor sponsored by any of the brands that I'm showing in this video. So the goal of

today's video and build is to show you guys how simple it is to recycle old

components from previous builds for a new home server. So we're gonna start off

with the CPU which in my case is going to be an i7-3770k. This is a four core

CPU with eight threads and I can run it at around 4 gigahertz no problem and this

is obviously a quite the overkill for a home server but this is what I've had lying

around from... not the previous build but they actually two builds ago I was using

this CPU, and if you want to build your own home server then of course just

using a dual core CPU or a quad core CPU without hyper threading is also more

than good enough. Now because the CPU is an LGA 1155 CPU we are restricted to

using DDR4 memory. But thankfully I still had some 32 GB of DDR3 memory

lying around by HyperX which is a kit that's only running at 1600 megahertz

but for the purpose of a home server having a high number of gigabytes is

definitely more welcome than having it run very fast. Now frankly only having 16

gigabytes would also be sufficient basically you want to have about one

gigabyte per terabyte of storage space. Now before you guys are gonna get your

pitchforks out. I am well aware that this specific RAM is not ECC registered RAM.

And I know that everybody in the world and on YouTube is probably gonna lose

their minds over the fact that I'm building my own home server without

using ECC memory. But hear me out: I've had a CPU and 32 GB of ram

lying around at home. I'm not going to go out and buy an expensive CPU

motherboard and RAM combination only to have ECC memory. Now for those of you who

don't know what ECC memory is. It basically prevents the memory from

corrupting your data. So what goes into the memory is also gonna come out of the

memory. And basically what can happen without ECC registered memory is that your

data might be corrupted so something you're saving on your hard drive is

getting corrupted and therefore the file is not accessible anymore.

Now while this might sound very scary in my opinion if you're running a backup server

where you have two data anyways on another computer, running ECC

memory is a bit of a waste of money and obviously if I would build another

server or if I would build a production server for a company for example then

yes definitely go for ECC memory but in the case of just building your own home

server or basically your first server having ECC memory is a bit of an

overkill in my opinion. Alright so with having said that let's go back to the parts.

Now I also already had two 4TB Seagate hard drives. And when it comes to

hard drives then the only thing you really should take into consideration is

that the hard drive is of the NAS standard. And that basically just means

that the hard drive is made such that they can withstand 24/7 operation,

which is obviously what you want to have it in a home server. And finally a still

also had a 500GB Samsung SSD laying around, which I'm gonna be using for the

operating system - so for Linux - as well as the web server.

Obviously you don't really need an SSD for a home server, but having one for the

web server is definitely a good idea. Next let's have a look at the parts that

I specifically bought for this home server. First in line is gonna be another

8TB Seagate hard drive which then totals our entire cloud space to 16TB

- try to get that with Google Drive - since in the beginning we are not

going to implement a RAID volume now I know I can hear you guys complaining why

are not implementing a RAID volume?! Basically same reasons as why I'm not

going for the ECC memory is that this is only gonna be a backup server where I

have all the data at least on one PC at all times. Now down the line I will

definitely implement a RAID volume on this server but to begin with we're just

gonna go with some normal drives. Now the amount of space that you need is

obviously very much depending on your use case scenario. You might not need to

be able to backup 16TB of data at all so you could just start with one

4TB hard drive and be perfectly fine. So this very much depends on your specific needs.

As motherboard I bought the ASRrock Z77 Pro 4-M micro ATX,

which is obviously an LGA 1155 motherboard. It has 4 RAM slots,

which is something that you should really consider when buying a motherboard

for a home server that you have at least 4 RAM slots to be able to upgrade to

well at least 32GB of RAM. This motherboard also comes with 8 SATA

connectors meaning that I can connect up to 8 hard drives off the get go without

having to buy an expensive SATA PCIe extension card. And finally this

motherboard also has DVI and HDMI outputs allowing me to use the

integrated GPU on the i7-3770k. Now when looking for a case you definitely want

something that you can fit into the space where you want your home server to stand.

It should be relatively silent so if the insides are padded that's

definitely a good thing and finally you want to have

as many harddrive base as possible. Now in my case I'm gonna be using the

Fractal Design Define Mini which is a micro ATX and mini ITX case. It has these

kind of padded panels on all of the sides so it's gonna be a super silent

case in production. It has six three and a half inch hard drive bays and to

external Bay's we can also put in some hard drives meaning there is a total of

eight spaces for hard drives in this case making this the perfect case for a

small form-factor and silent home server. For cooling I went with the Le GRAND MACHO RT

by Thermalright which is a very efficient cooler that I think you

could even run without a fan. But when run with a fan loudness is also kept

very low. And finally I bought a 400W Seasonic Fanless PSU which is well first

of all obviously completely silent, it has a Platinum rating so it's very

efficient, and it should definitely provide enough juice for our home server.

Now obviously because this is going to be a server primarily I'm not gonna be

needing a GPU this installation. Maybe you're gonna need a GPU to

first set up the motherboard, just keep that in mind! And to switch over to the

internal GPU on the CPU. But in general I'm not gonna be using a GPU in this case.

On the other hand I want to invest in a 10 gigabit ethernet adapter in the

future allowing me to connect my main computer to the server directly over 10

Gigabit LAN. So because I already have the CPU, RAM, SSD, as well as two hard drives

from previous builds the total cost for this build only amounts to about $500

which is obviously much less than if you were to go for an expensive Google Drive

subscription or if you went out of your way and rented a dedicated server by a

hosting company or a virtual private server. Now obviously your mileage may

vary and depending on the parts that you have your cost might be a little bit higher

or even a little bit lower. But that about sums up the basics of how to build

your own home server definitely tell me in the comment section below if you also

want to build your own home server if you already had build one and want your

experience has been. In the next part we're gonna go over how to actually put

everything together and then we're going to be looking at

installing Linux as well as a few applications. But until then thank you

very much for watching, have a wonderful day and I will see you guys in the next video!