Building A $200 Home Server! (2025)

Made me mc server maybe might look into this, how does it work is it like Netflix with a subscription or like one time lifetime license

watching from my quest 2 cool vid!

"Would've went for .." 😢

I dunno why i used to run MineOS on FreeNAS but true NAS is a lot more complicated since MineOS no longer works and you have to run the jails yourself.

Thanks for the informative video.

W I always love your vide

in my experience it's safer to store the config and cache storage files files in a separate directory of your choosing on your application pool. - this will make it more easily transferable and easier to back up to other computers and volumes so it's less likely you'll lose your configuration info if something goes wrong with your local docker configuration.

I could be wrong (I haven't tested this personally), but your instructions for creating the replication task to back up the application pool to a dataset on your storage pool I believe are incorrect in that you forgot to check the "recursive" box. I think by default, it only backs up the root dataset (which shouldn't actually contain any data in this configuration) instead of the hierarchy of datasets created by application installation (your ix volumes are datasets created by the app installers). pretty sure you need that recursive checkbox to do the backup you're after.

I really liked this video despite some minor technical gotchas that I pointed out in other comments. - I have a pretty similar (but way more beefy in terms of compute, storage, and memory as I've got a TON of media and services that I have truenas scale run for me). I think that way more people would be best served by having a nas to back up important files, store their media including ripped music, dvd's, blu-rays, and downloaded files either as an alternative to or in addition to streaming media services. - further, this setup could also be opened up to friends and family should you wish to do that, but even if you don't, it's great for families as this is an easy way to get your media onto all of your devices in your home from smart tv's to video game consoles to phones to tablets, really anything with a web browser (or preferably a jellyfin app). - i'll also note that jellyfin isn't the only media application out there either, some people like emby, some people like plex (although plex is more proprietary and some features are paywalled making it maybe not such a great choice). I personally have a plex lifetime subscription, but I've been thinking about moving to jellyfin a lot recenty given how they're restructuring over at plex. Thanks for an awesome video, this is great!

Awesome video! I'm still running my media server through Windows but definitely something I'm considering down the road

I have been a PLEX user ssince it's conception. If I decide to switch to Jellyfin can all my years of media be transfered?

Why give it an ip out of range ??

Great video Matt 💪🥰✊! I’ve been looking into creating a small home media server setup like this and this video for me is a great all in one guide which is easy to follow 👍. Keep up the great work ✊😇.

Shall we do the same with Unraid ? I love the simple yet detailed video..!!

Go 8th gen or newer. Lower idles.

In my expertise is better to have a big SSD for the os (proxmox running all, like truenas), so I can have a few vms or xlc an run all in one energy efficient system, then add another pair of big ssd to sorage, only minor since is less overhead and if one dies, I can put the other anywhere and run no problems, also no resilver risk and since is intended to be a small ee 24/7 system it's amazing.
The Optane is nice to expan the RAM a little if I reached the limit, it's a nice swap trick worarraund
Also if I have dual LAN u can do pfsense witch gives u some netboot options and adblock for the hole network

i been happy with jellyfin for years curently running it on Proxmox as a LXC connected to my NAS.

Very nice guide...thx

It's much better practice to use DHCP Reservation for setting up your server.

unraid is better....but costs money

Thanks sir

how do you access that from a smart TV

I have a Jellyfin server setup and it is working fine to an extent. I noticed the 4K movies are impossible to stream, they freeze every 2-3 seconds for 10-20 seconds (can't really call that an enjoyable experience). The weird thing is, said 4K movies are working perfectly fine on the Windows app, but if i try to play it on ANY other device , wired or wireless(Xbox One series X, Tizen TV app, Android, IOS, Chrome/Firefox/Opera), the movie will freeze. Other than that, jellyfin is relatively straightforward to use.

I'm all about this kinda stuff & do it frequently. Keep on keeping this up. ... I really like upgrading PCs that are 12 - 14 y/o and then installing 11 IoT and they can be supported well into the future. Quite old i7's still have a lot of life left and there will 10's of thousands available this fall.

I got an old 3050 optiplex ^^ added GPU, changed the ram, ssd and put 2 hard drives. I run ubuntu server and with a few different docker container it runs pretty smoothly

Hey did you check out HexOS based on Truenas? What are your tought about hex?

you mention easier/automatic downloads for shows/movies, how do you do that?

Id love to have a media server. But issue is I don't reallly have thte time to watch so much content. At best it'd be storing everytthing I might watch when I might have time at some point.

I wonder if he used password for password 😂

the problem is that i dont have anything to put in there

great video

I've got a lot to learn to properly get up to speed with this, but I've got such a massive physical media collection that's a pain to sort when I want to watch something and at this point I think setting up something like this is going to be a necessity. Thanks for this great tutorial to help get me started!

Does anyone have any ideas for a smaller build? I still have a Ryzen APU with which a DIY build would work, alternatively an 8th Gen Intel as a MiniPC? The main thing is quiet

keep it in the Range !
just give it a static Ip that is not in use
aggg.....

Another video, another cool project I'll get to... eventually!

Setting a static IP in a device is just a bad idea, just in case the router ever does try to assign that IP on another device. If you are going into your router anyway you should just set the ip by mac address in the router. Did this for 7 years working for different Microsoft support teams (xbox live and surface). Would often get callbacks from customers trying to figure out why they couldn't get online the next day because a previous agent had them set a static ip on their device.

Is there a way to set a fan curve for the CPU fan ?

I coud not find a Bios setting for that...
Can you do it within proxmox (shell) ?

I'm glad you included the instructions on backing up the config file. Everyone should be aware that when you back up the TrueNAS config file, and if you are using Chrome, beware that Google changed Chrome's security behavior with downloaded files. TrueNAS downloads it as a .tar file, which Chrome will by default refuse to keep unless you click "save" or "keep" a second time. Believe me, I found out the hard way when I went to upload the "saved' config file after a hardware fault caused a crash, and it wasn't there! Bad Google! Apparently Chrome is OK downloading an .exe file, but .tar is a security risk--go figure!🤨

Mea gustado mucho. Un saludo

I think you should make a server hosting for games like minecraft!

I've been messing around with Fangtooth and Jellyfin trying to get GPU transcoding to work for awhile. I've found that the best way to get it running (in my case) is to make the datasets (app) for the Jellyfin PRIOR to the installation. Just start the install process and look to see what datasets are required, note them, and close it out before finishing. As well as installing the NVIDIA gpu drivers (I'm using a P1000) PRIOR to the installation as well.

The NVIDIA driver installation is as simple as navigating to Apps>Configuration>Settings>Install NVIDIA drivers (checkbox). Check that box, and save it. When it's done you can verify the driver installation in the shell (nvidia -smi -L). You should see the card show up. My P1000 was recognized. If you aren't familiar with the shell, don't sweat it. If it finished without error, it should be there. I THEN went an installed the Jellyfin app. I've seen a lot of people online stating that you SHOULD NOT use the iX default paths, but instead always use Host Paths for everything. Making sure that the correct permissions are applied. It worked for me. In any case, at the end of the Jellyfin app install page, you should now see your GPU. You can select it, and the Jellyfin installation will complete. You now only need to go into Jellyfin to turn on the NVIDIA transcoding.

Please look up the transcoding limitations of your GPU. The P1000 doesn't support every transcoding option (like AV1). And, I don't know if this will work for every NVIDIA card, but it definitely DOES work for the P1000 (I'm assuming the P2000 as well). Oh, and my host is a Dell T7810. If you have a Xeon CPU you NEED to have two video cards installed. One for Truenas, and one you want to use for transcoding. It's a pain, but if you can pick up a cheap\free video card and slap it into an PCIE x2 slot. It will work.

It should have nice features since it's vPro like remote management through mesh commander

6th and 7th gen intel will be e-waste and prices will drop in October. Perfect for this project! A cheap Intel/Nvidia GPU will solve the 6th gen encoding issue for Jellyfin leaving the built in intel graphics for Immich or any other apps.

as a future upgrade, what gpu what you look to add, if any?

can you turn mobile in to PC🤩 but use only winlator or pc emulator or pc softwere thats the chalange😅

Where would I put the applications if I only have 2 HDD and one m.2 slot? I wanted to replicate this so I bought the Dell Precision 3620 that you had in the video