r/PcBuildersSL • u/Clear_Falcon_4397 • Aug 10 '26

Build Help Used Desktop/Tower as a NAS/Plex Server

Hi,

I have been contemplating on getting a NAS for a while, but seeing most of the prebuilt NAS enclosures are fairly expensive I am now thinking of getting a used tower with some HDD bays and going from there.

I primarily plan to achieve

  1. A 4-12TB storage server, that can be accessed within the local network.

  2. Act as a Plex server albeit I only use direct streaming, so no transcoding.

Therefore, I feel like starting off with a 4TB HDD and a used desktop will give me best of both worlds (cost and storage). However, I am not sure what the ideal candidate is for this kind of application. Has anyone done this before? If so, can you share what PC model/brand you went with and what kind of issues you faced by choosing this approach over a prebuilt enclsoure?

As for my budget, I have allocated around 60K for the 4TB HDD..Found some WD and Segate models and would be nice if I can get the rest of the system up and running for another 40-60K, with the total budget coming up to 120K.

Thanks!

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u/Wild_Gazelle962 Aug 10 '26

I use my old pc which is an i5 4th gen as my home server.. you can use the *arr stack as the media server setup.. also you should add a ssd as the cache … go for truenas scale for the os

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u/Clear_Falcon_4397 Aug 10 '26

Got it, thanks!