I’ve been convinced to build my own NAS again instead of going with a Synology and I’m thinking there are probably parts that don’t matter if you buy used vs new but I’m curious what your thoughts are?
Aside from drives, the rest of the components are fine. But honestly, I use what I had for a computer before upgrading to my current one. Old components you have around can be a good idea.
I don’t really like buying drives second-hand, but I suppose it shouldn’t be an issue if the drive is relatively new and has had little use.
The only thing I buy new are the HDD’s for the bulk storage.
I’ll buy used enterprise SSD’s for flash storage.
Oh wow, that’s awesome. No concerns buying used CPU, RAM, or MOBO? I’m assuming you buy a new power supply though right?
Not OP but, CPU and RAM have incredible low failure rates. Mobos are pretty rare too. A PSU Id but new, and make sure it’s the highest efficiency.
No concerns here.
I buy used server chassis and power supplies for my NASes.
The only new items in my primary, backup, and offsite NASes are the 500TB of HDD’s and a couple of fan splitters.
The only new items in my 3 Proxmox nodes are…nothing actually. All SSD’s, HDD’s and everything else is used enterprise hardware.
Motherboard, CPU and RAM - no problem at all (more accurately, problems are easy to spot with diagnostics and they shouldn’t wear out).
Chassis - a bit of a wild card. The backplane in one of my systems is faulty.
PSUs - ideally new.
HDDs - almost all of mine are secondhand. Enterprise- or NAS-grade drives should have many years of life left. Ideally buy new to benefit from warranty but my experience has been great.
SSDs - nope. Buy new. I bought some secondhand Samsung SSDs and they developed problems, both threw IO errors after a few weeks. SSDs are cheap enough not to bother with secondhand.
Everything else I bought used, including the rack. In fact, the only things I bought new in my entire homelab are my router and WiFi AP.
Power supply and case I’ve always bought new. Everything else has been 100% used enterprise parts off eBay, or used hand-me-downs from my gaming rig. No issues in 15 years doing this.
Got any good key words to make sure I’m finding desirable used enterprise stuff?
I always shop with specific model numbers I’m looking for based on research.
My NAS is almost filled with used parts, mostly lightly used. Only the power supply is brand new as the form factor is hard to find.(flex ATX, I bought an FSP FlexGURU)
IMO excluding HDD, most hardwares can be used without much consequence: CPU, RAM(I only trust original/major grade sticks), case and perhaps power supply(from reputable brand and known good model)
My entire NAS is used parts, including used enterprise HDD’s. I put the gear through a thermal, memory, and IO stress tests and all checked out. I bought 10 drives when I only needed 8 with assumption that at least 2 would be bad (none of them were and they’ve been in use for > 2 years). Correction - the case was new, I uses a Rosswill rackmount.
So many of us use rosewill. Are you using the one that fits the 15 drives. I got that one years ago for about $130 off of Newegg but at one point there were as low as $80 right before the pandemic. Last I looked they were over 200.
Since I buy used enterprise drives, I suppose nothing is off the table.
Oh wait! No used thermal paste tubes.
I stole the thermal paste…
As long as it was new when you did.
Everything used from wall cord to drives. It either works or fails pretty fast so I can exchange or replace if it was cheap enough.
I’ve bought my entire setup used hahaha. Prob not the best but it’s been working since so fingers crossed but I found 2x16tb exos for $100/each and was lucky to snap up a QNAP TS451+ (4bay) used for under $50. Also grabbed 2x3.84TB SSD (Samsung enterprise grade with less than 100 hours each for $150/piece). I feel as long as you can find lightly used, you can’t go wrong!
The HBA, RAM, CPU, Case…
Just not the hard drives and the motherboard
I’d be willing to go used on everything except the drives
I have purchased entire used machines before.
Don’t buy too old a synology or you’ll be shopping on Uzbek electronics websites for caddies like I am.
I’d probably buy everything used other than the power supply and drives.
And CPU that is old and power consuming!
My current setup is all used, except the mobo cause mini ITX LGA 1200 is a pain, and the PSU cause I got a great deal on that passive one. But they could also have been used.