No budget for now, and I own the SSDs already I just want to know what’s out there and what other people like.
My current setup is cobbled together from random parts and the HDDs are loud in my bedroom. I want all SSD storage (at least 4x) but with enough CPU/Ram to handle a lot of apps/VMs and some above-average demanding tasks (jellyfin, syncthing) than just being a NAS.
The only other criteria is that I would prefer it to be as small as possible (not rack mount).
The last board suggested with 5 ports would handle 4 drives in raidz2.
This is smaller even. https://pcpartpicker.com/product/hRBrxr/asrock-motherboard-970mpro3
I would prefer having the smaller board with the hba and putting 8-10 smaller drives in raidz3. That would give you 6 TB with three drives for failure to prevent loss.
Outside the drives, the cost would be under $200 for the board and the hba.
If you have an old system with two PCI-e 16 ports, then your cost is about $90 before you start buying drives.
I’m doing similar with a DDR3 system and spinning 1 TB disks. It’s fast enough to serve video streams.