PC Build for Unraid Server

[Jimbeam3678]

After some advice on the below build. I'm after a long term solution for my Unraid Server. I am currently running a Beelink Nuc device which was fine when I was playing around with servers. Confident that it will now provide hosting my files and pictures longer term so want to build accordingly. I have the large capacity drives already and I have gone the DDR4 RAM path to make the RAM costs more palatable!

Open to suggestions, alternatives, config oversights or anything else for that matter. Will be buying over the next week or so.

CPU: Intel Core i5-12500 3 GHz 6-Core Processor £210.00
CPU Cooler: Thermalright AXP120-X67 59 CFM CPU Cooler £34.99
Motherboard: MSI PRO B760M-P DDR4 Micro ATX LGA1700 Motherboard £85.97
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory £199.99
Storage: Kingston NV3 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive £129.95
Case: Jonsbo N4 MicroATX Desktop Case £109.99
Power Supply: Corsair SF850 (2024) 850 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular SFX Power Supply £127.99
Total: £898.88

 

[DotA]

Any parts that you allready have or can reuse?

Just the one the drive?

 

[Tetras]

£210 seems like a lot for that CPU, given the performance it offers in 2026. This is likely overkill for the intended usage, but more like what I'd buy myself for £900. DDR5 does increase the cost by ~£100, but the CPU is enormously faster.

How many drives does the case need to support? Can you switch to regular MATX cases? If so, not being limited to SFX PSUs would save money there too.

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus (Arrow Lake) Socket LGA 1851 Processor - Retail (SKU: PRO-INT-07479) = £209.99
• 1 x Intel Spring Bundle - Lego Batman - Legend of the Dark Knight (SKU: DIG-INT-08034) = £0.00
• 1 x Gigabyte B860M EAGLE V2 (LGA 1851) DDR5 Micro-ATX Motherboard (SKU: MOT-GIG-06269) = £109.99
• 1 x ADATA XPG LANCER BLADE 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5 C46 5600MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (SKU: MEM-ADA-07185) = £299.99
• 1 x MSI SPATIUM M470 PRO 1TB SSD PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-MSI-06793) = £149.99
• 1 x Antec CX600M ARGB M-ATX Mini Tower - Black (SKU: CAS-ATC-04160) = £44.96
• 1 x Asus TUF Gaming EVO 650W ATX 3.1 PCIe 5.1 80 Plus Bronze Modular Power Supply (SKU: POW-ASU-07630) = £69.94
• 1 x Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 Black Dual Tower CPU Air Cooler (SKU: COO-TLR-03280) = £32.98

Total: £929.83 (includes delivery: £11.98)​

 

[jigger]

Is it mostly a storage server you’re looking for?

 

[Jimbeam3678]

Any parts that you allready have or can reuse?

Just the one the drive?

I have 4 mechanical drives and 2TB Nvme drive for Unraid cache and the 1TB drive in the build for the App Data stuff Unriad uses.

Is it mostly a storage server you’re looking for?

Yes it is with Plex,Rarrs, Home Assistant, photos hosting etc

£210 seems like a lot for that CPU, given the performance it offers in 2026. This is likely overkill for the intended usage, but more like what I'd buy myself for £900. DDR5 does increase the cost by ~£100, but the CPU is enormously faster.

How many drives does the case need to support? Can you switch to regular MATX cases? If so, not being limited to SFX PSUs would save money there too.

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus (Arrow Lake) Socket LGA 1851 Processor - Retail (SKU: PRO-INT-07479) = £209.99
• 1 x Intel Spring Bundle - Lego Batman - Legend of the Dark Knight (SKU: DIG-INT-08034) = £0.00
• 1 x Gigabyte B860M EAGLE V2 (LGA 1851) DDR5 Micro-ATX Motherboard (SKU: MOT-GIG-06269) = £109.99
• 1 x ADATA XPG LANCER BLADE 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5 C46 5600MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (SKU: MEM-ADA-07185) = £299.99
• 1 x MSI SPATIUM M470 PRO 1TB SSD PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-MSI-06793) = £149.99
• 1 x Antec CX600M ARGB M-ATX Mini Tower - Black (SKU: CAS-ATC-04160) = £44.96
• 1 x Asus TUF Gaming EVO 650W ATX 3.1 PCIe 5.1 80 Plus Bronze Modular Power Supply (SKU: POW-ASU-07630) = £69.94
• 1 x Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 Black Dual Tower CPU Air Cooler (SKU: COO-TLR-03280) = £32.98

Total: £929.83 (includes delivery: £11.98)​

I have changed the case to Fractal Design Node 804 - Black - Compact Computer Case - mATX now and with a Corsair RM750e (2025) 750 W Fully Modular ATX Power Supply. Could I go to a lower power rated ?

 

[jigger]

What sort of network speeds do you need and how many machines will it be serving?

 

[Jimbeam3678]

What sort of network speeds do you need and how many machines will it be serving?

Internal 2.5Gb and external I have 1Gb upload speeds. Server serving 4 or 5 different users rarely if ever concurrently.

 

[Tetras]

Could I go to a lower power rated ?

Yeah, but almost all ranges start at 650 or 750.

 

[Jimbeam3678]

So something like this would work and be good bang for buck? @Tetras is there anything about the Antec case thats special? I was going with Node 804 case as it had some great reviews for server builds or was it more about keeping the cost down?

CPU: Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus 4.2 GHz 18-Core Processor £199.00
CPU Cooler: Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE 66.17 CFM CPU Cooler £29.99
Motherboard: Gigabyte B860M EAGLE V2 Micro ATX LGA1851 Motherboard £109.99
Memory: ADATA XPG Lancer Blade 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-5600 CL46 Memory £299.99
Storage: Kingston NV3 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive £129.95
Case: Fractal Design Node 804 MicroATX Mid Tower Case £98.99
Power Supply: MSI MAG A750GL PCIE5 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply £74.98
Total: £942.89

 

[Tetras]

@Tetras is there anything about the Antec case thats special? I was going with Node 804 case as it had some great reviews for server builds or was it more about keeping the cost down?

The included fans make it good value, but it doesn't have the capacity that the Node or Jonsbo cases you have considered do, so may be unsuitable for NAS use.

Note the PSU in my spec is A-tier on SPL's tier list and has a 8 year warranty (I think the new GL is still 5 and there's been comments on here that their fan is loud).

 

[DotA]

Check the effecincy graphs for the PSUs, most lower watt PSU run some watts better compared to larger PSUs which adds up when its running 24/7

 

[jigger]

For case and power supply I probably go with these. There are some titanium+ rated 275-500 watt PSUs out there specifically for home lab builds. They are a little pricey for the wattage, but very good.

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Jonsbo N6 NAS mATX Case - Black (SKU: CAS-JON-07617) = £129.95
• 1 x be quiet! Power Zone 2 750W ATX 3.1 PCIe 5.1 80 Plus Platinum Modular Power Supply (SKU: POW-BEQ-04387) = £105.99

Total: £247.93 (includes delivery: £11.98)​

For the system hardware Id look at something Skylake quad core or better. Ideally Xeon E3 i7 and C236 based or Zen 4350GE as this allows you to run ECC DDR4 UDIMMs which is must for unraid 7+RIADZ. For memory 16gb of RAM should be plenty, but with a Z file system the memory capacity scales with the storage pool size or transfer speeds slow.

 

[Jimbeam3678]

For the system hardware Id look at something Skylake quad core or better. Ideally Xeon E3 i7 and C236 based or Zen 4350GE as this allows you to run ECC DDR4 UDIMMs which is must for unraid 7+RIADZ. For memory 16gb of RAM should be plenty, but with a Z file system the memory capacity scales with the storage pool size or transfer speeds slow.

Thanks can you expand on this? Does it add a huge amount of value? Seems a significant increase in cost for another layer data integrity? I have suitable backups in place.

Happy consider it, but I I'd like to understand the benefit first.

 

[jigger]

Thanks can you expand on this? Does it add a huge amount of value? Seems a significant increase in cost for another layer data integrity? I have suitable backups in place.

Happy consider it, but I I'd like to understand the benefit first.

At the moment ECC UDIMMs are cheap. So are Skylake/coffeelake Xeons and 4000/5000 GE Zen chips. For your use case these chips are more than fast enough. Where I’d spend my money would be the case, power supply, networking and possibly motherboard. Super fast SSDs and CPUs just aren’t required until you have massive data pools and very fast networks. A 5350GE could saturate a bunch of 10 gigabit connections simultaneously from pretty large data pools and so could a Skylake Xeon.

The ECC argument has been raging for decades and people argue both ways. At the end of day, ECC is critical and anyone saying otherwise should be fired into space. But seriously, I think ZFS is a really nice technology and well worth the effort.

 

[niggyg]

I've been looking for a similar setup. The CPU you've gone for is the same as I'd arrived at. I'd read it consumes less at idle than the newer Core Ultra CPUs.

There is also the 13500 and 14500 to look at which bumps the core count.

UserBenchmark: Intel Core i5-12500 vs i5-13500

 

[Jimbeam3678]

Hmm thanks for this. Could you suggest a few mobo, cpu and ram combinations as I’m struggling a bit and Gemini isn’t being very useful.

Ultimately I want something I can set and trust to not go wrong or fail. While not being tied into ugreen or similar.

Edit and thank you for taking the time as I know very little to nothing about this area.

 

[jigger]

So for the motherboards you have MSI Pro B550M-CV ASrock C236/C246 WS both support 8-10 SATA. You also have the ASrock range and Supermicro X11 boards.

For CPUs anything AM4 pro or GE supports ECC. If you go over 4 cores then 5000 chips perform a little better. The only the Zen APUs have graphics. On Intel I’d go for a E3-1265L v5 or E-2244G. The E3 1265l v5 is a little more power efficient at 45 watts~ and more inline with with the 35 watts of the 4350GE. The E2200 parts are about double at around 75 watts.

https://www.asrockrack.com/general/products.asp#Server

https://www.gigabyte.com/uk/Enterprise/Workstation-Motherboard?fid=2294,2760&page=1

 

[Jimbeam3678]

I've been looking for a similar setup. The CPU you've gone for is the same as I'd arrived at. I'd read it consumes less at idle than the newer Core Ultra CPUs.

There is also the 13500 and 14500 to look at which bumps the core count.

UserBenchmark: Intel Core i5-12500 vs i5-13500

DO you mind sharing what build you have gone for?

 

[niggyg]

DO you mind sharing what build you have gone for?

I'm no further along than you.

Looking at second hand 13500 i5's and a Jonsbo case.

You could also save some and go with a lesser CPU that would still be good enough for Unraid. The 12/13/14100 or 12/13/14400.

 

[DotA]

You can pick the T series up for slightly lower costs, 12500t can be had for £95 2nd hand easly.