I started out planning on just building a NAS to run Jellyfin or Plex but as I kept looking into things and remembering some things I realized what I wanted was more akin to a homelab setup. I figured this would be the best place to come for help.

Things I want to accomplish (eventually) with my homelab/network setup:

• Media Storage/Streaming server (Jellyfin or Plex)
• Network Level Ad Blocking (Pi-hole or AdGuard)
• Network Level Firewall (pfSense or OPNsense)
• Local "Cloud" backup (Nextcloud or similar)
• Remote "Workstation" (offload some workloads from my laptop)
• Other common things I'm forgetting to mention or will learn about (DHCP, DNS, VPN, downloads, etc)

Will be located in an armoire (no rack mounting) in my bedroom so noise and heat are major considerations. The armoire's doors will be left cracked open to allow for airflow while keeping pets out (might cut holes in back and/or attach case fans if it gets too hot. I generally run hot so I have fan running almost year round to give example of acceptable noise threshold.

Another note, there would only be a max number 3 /- 1 users at a time and plan on storing media at high quality (4K, high bit rate, etc) with lossless compression, preferring FOSS codecs like FLAC and AV1.

While my ISP sucks and has a local monopoly and provides sub gig speeds over copper coax, the network gear I already have and will include already has 2.5 Gb RJ45 ports so that's the minnimum connection speed I want to maintain.

• Modem: 1*coax in | 1*2.5 Gbps RJ45 out
• erro Pro 6E Router/Access Point: 1*2.5 Gbps RJ45 | 1*1 Gbps RJ45
• Brother Wi-fi Printer: Wifi and USB connectivity only (want to figure out how to network it via the USB if possible and turn off the wi-fi connection)

Things I need to get:

• UPS
  • Looking at CyberPower Mini Tower UPS systems but I don't know how to size it and what features I require. Live in Minnesota, USA with Xcel Energy so power is generaly pretty stable with the ocassional black/brown out that lasts no more than a minute or two to just annoy the microwave/oven clocks and my PS5. A storm will occasionally knock out power for a longer period of time in which case I'd like the homelab to power down before the UPS runs out of power. Just need the homelab, switch, modem, and router/access point to run on battery for those occasional short power outages. Would also like to have the coax surge protection also.
• Switch | Netgate 4200?2
  • Birds, 1 Stone? This is essentially a 2.5 gig (managed?) switch that is also a hardware firewall, right?
  • I read that its better to run the firewall on dedicated hardware instead of in a VM (not clear on why) and since if I'm correct that this is essentially a managed switch it's more or less in line price wise with 2.5 gig managed switches and if I'm wrong unmanaged 2.5 gig switches are $100 and building a dedicated pc for the firewall would cost about as much.
• OS | Unraid Lifetime License
  • Started out planning on using Fedora Server because I run Fedora on my Framework 16 and have become quite comfortable with it and Fedora is officially supported by Pi-hole. Also considered TrueNAS because I'm a fan of the FOSS philosophy but Unraid looks very polished and can implement what I want to do fairly easily.
  • How well has Unraid been at honoring the perpetual licenses? Any drawbacks with deciding on going with Unraid?
• Case | Silverstone CS382
  • Like that it has plenty of room for expansion with robust I/O offerings including a slim ODD slot and a 5.25" bay allowing for easy media ingest and creation.
  • An all metal case shouldn't be signifintly louder than any other case (save for something like a be quiet! case), correct?
• CPU | AMD Ryzen 7 8700G
  • Going to wait until after any Computex announcements before settling on a CPU
  • Is 8 cores, 16 threads adequate for my use case
  • iGPU is capable of AV1 encoding and decoding
  • AMD has significantly lower TDPs than Intel
  • This only supports PCIE 4.0 while others support 5.0. I read that correctly, right?
• Motherboard | Gigabyte B650M Aorus Elite AX
  • Going to wait until after any Computex announcements before settling on a motherboard
• Cooling
  • CPU Cooler | be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 5
    • Vastly overkill means easier and quieter cooling while ensuring greater build compatibility in the future
  • Case Fans
    • Add and/or upgrade to be quiet! and/or Noctua case fans
• Memory | DDR5
  • Should I look for DDR5 ECC memory?
  • How much should I get?
• Storage
  • USB Boot Drive
    • Since Unraid runs entirely in RAM, does the USB speed have a major effect on performance? If not I'll probably get an adapter to run it off an internal USB 2.0 header to avoid an accidental removal.
  • NVMe Cache
    • How much should I get?
    • Should the cache be mirrored, stripped, or pooled?
    • The motherboard I'm looking at has 2 M.2 slots; one is PCIe 5.0 x4/2 and the other is PCIe 4.0 x4/2. How does mixing and matching PCIe speeds and number of lanes effect caching?
  • HDDs | Seagate IronWolf Pro
    • Drives will be 12 TB or larger for helium drive design
    • Starting with a 3 drive array with 1 drive as parity. How easy/safe/fast is Unraid when it comes to adding drives to an existing array or increasing parity?
    • After how many drives should I add a 2nd parity drive?
    • HDDs will be primarily reserved for read only data (i.e. media library)
  • SATA SSD | Team Group Vulcan Z SATA SSD 2 TB
    • 2 drives, will be primarily used for frequently updated data (i.e "cloud" services and data back-ups)
    • Would these be included in the HDDs' parity array?
• Add-in Cards
  • GPU | Gigabyte Radeon RX 7600 XT Gaming OC 16G
    • Going to wait until after any Computex announcements before settling on a GPU and/or future upgrade if I go with a CPU with integrated graphics
    • 2x the VRAM of my laptop's GPU
    • AV1 and will be able to utilize AMD's Smart Technologies like SmartAccess Video with an AMD iGPU
    • Would performance take a major hit since it would only be running on a PCIe 4.0 x8 connection?
  • SATA add-in card
• PSU | be quiet! Dark Power 13 850W
  • Should be large enough
  • 80 Titanium rated and Cybernetics Titanium and A efficiency and sound ratings so it will run cool and quiet
• Accessories and Miscellaneous

Answers and feed back are very much appreciated.

I know this build will end up being expensive so I plan on buying the components piecemeal over time with the core components (CPU, motherboard, GPU) being the last components to acquire since they are the parts that see the most frequent generational improvements.

Thanks again for looking through my massive post and taking the time to respond.