DIY NAS: 2026 Edition

Fourteen years ago, my storage needs outpaced my capacity and I began to look into building a network attached storage server. I had a few criteria in mind and was curious to see if anyone had _ recently_ shared something similar, but I couldn’t find anything that was relevant.

In fact, I found that the communities I was looking for answers in were actively hostile towards what I wanted to do. This resulted in my decision to build my own DIY NAS and share that as one of my very first blogs.

Much to my surprise, people were very interested in that blog! Ever since, I’ve been building a similar DIY NAS machine almost every year trying to satisfy the curiosity of other prospective DIY NAS builders.

Here are those criteria:

1. Small form factor: It’s not the case for me any more, but at the time the space was limited in my office. I always assume that space in everybody’s office is limited. As a result, I want my DIY NAS builds to occupy as little of that office space as I can.
2. At least six drive bays: Back when I built my NAS, it took about four drives’ worth of storage to meet my storage needs. Plus I desired two empty drive bays for future use. However, in the years since hard drive capacities have increased dramatically. At some point in the future, I may reduce this to four drive bays.
3. An integrated, low power CPU: I intend my DIY NAS to run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 52 weeks a year. When it comes to power consumption, that can do some damage on your electric bill! Thankfully our electricity here isn’t as expensive as others’ in the United States, or even further outside its borders, but I try and keep power consumption in mind when picking components for a DIY NAS build.
4. Homelab potential: It does not take up a lot of CPU horsepower for a NAS to serve up files, which means that on modern hardware there’s a lot of untapped potential in a DIY NAS for virtual machines or containers to self-host services.

It’s important to remember that these are my criteria, and not necessarily yours. Every DIY NAS builder should be making their own list of criteria and reconcile all of their component purchases against the criteria that’s important to them.

Is it even a good time to build a NAS?

As I prepared to build this NAS, component prices disappointed me. Hard drives, SSDs, and RAM prices were all rising. Based on what I’ve been told, I expect Intel CPU prices to increase as well. My contact at Topton has been encouraging me to stock up on motherboards while they still have some in inventory. Based on what’s been explained to me, I expect the motherboard’s prices to rise and for their availability to potentially dwindle.

In short, the economy sucks and the price of DIY NAS components is a pretty good reflection of just how sucky things are becoming. I briefly considered not publishing a DIY NAS build this year hoping that things would improve a few months down the road. But then I asked myself, “What if it’s even worse in a few months?”

I sure hope things get better, but I fear and expect that they’ll get worse.

Motherboard and CPU

I built my first DIY NAS with a Topton motherboard in 2023. Each DIY NAS since then has also featured a Topton motherboard. My only complaint about the motherboards has been that buying them from one of the Chinese e-tail sites like AliExpress is considered problematic by some. With every DIY NAS build, I try and go through all the motherboards that I can find while searching for something with a better value proposition, but for each of the past three years I’ve landed on the latest offering from Topton.

For the DIY NAS: 2026 Edition, I chose the Topton N22 motherboard with the Intel Core 3 N355 CPU. The motherboard is similar to last year’s Topton N18 but has incrementally more compelling features, particularly the extra 2 SATA ports, the PCI-e x1 slot, and the N355 CPU!

• Mini-ITX Form Factor
• Intel® Processor Core 3 N355
  • 8 cores / 8 threads / Max Turbo 3.9GHz
  • 15 W TDP
  • Integrated GPU with Intel Quick Sync Video
• 1 x DDR5 SO-DIMM
• 8 x SATA 3.0 Ports (Asmedia ASM1164)
• 2 x M.2 NVMe Slots (PCIe 3.0 x1)
• 1 x 10Gbps NIC (Marvell AQC113C)
• 2 x 2.5Gbps NICs (Intel i226-V)
• 1 x PCI-e x1 or M.2 E-Key slot

I opted for the motherboard with the Intel Core 3 N355 CPU. This makes the server a more capable homelab machine than prior years’ DIY NAS builds. The extra cores and threads come in handy for streaming media, replacing your cloud storage, facilitating home automation, hosting game servers, etc.

Case

Just like Topton has been making great motherboards for DIY NAS machines, JONSBO has been steadily releasing great cases for DIY NAS machines. This year SilverStone Technology released a new case, the CS383 (specs) which I was very interested in buying one for the DIY NAS: 2026 Edition. Unfortunately it carries a pretty hefty price tag to go along with all of its incredible features!

The JONSBO N4 (specs) is a third the price, adheres to my “smaller footprint” criteria, and it is rather impressive on its own. It’s a tiny bit larger case than last year’s DIY NAS, but I really like that it has drive bays for six 3.5” drives and two 2.5” drives.

Although, it’s peculiar in that two of the 3.5” drive bays (and the two 2.5” drive bays) aren’t attached to a SATA backplane and can’t be swapped anywhere as easily as the other four 3.5” bays. However, this peculiar decision seems to have caused the JONSBO N4 to sell for a bit less ($20-$40) than similar offerings from JONSBO. At its price, it’s a compelling value proposition!

Case Fan

In the past, I’ve found that the fans which come with JONSBO cases are too noisy. They’ve been noisy for two reasons; the design quality of the fans make them loud. And the fans are constantly running at their top speed because of the fan header they’re plugged into on the cases’ SATA backplanes.

I anticipated that fan efficiency and noise would be a problem, so I picked out the Noctua NF-A12x25 PWM to solve it. Firstly, swapping in a high-quality fan that pushes more air and generates less noise–especially at its top speed–is a good first step. Secondly, I’d address the problem by plugging the fan into the motherboard’s SYS_FAN header instead of on the SATA backplane. This provides the opportunity to tune the fan’s RPMs directly in the BIOS and generate far less noise.

RAM

The first time I first asked myself, “Should I even build the DIY NAS: 2026 Edition?” came as I was checking prices on DDR5 memory. Thankfully for me I had leftover RAM after purchasing DDR5 4800MHz SODIMMs for the DIY NAS: 2025 Edition, the Pocket Mini NAS, and then again for the DIY NAS that I built and gave away at 2025’s Texas Linux Fest. I was personally thankful that I had one brand new 32GB DDR5 4800MHz SODIMM laying around, but I was wildly disappointed for everybody who will try and follow this build when I saw the price of those same SODIMMs.

Regardless, I felt a Crucial 32GB DDR5 4800MHz SODIMM (specs) was the right amount of RAM to get started with for a DIY NAS build in 2025. Whether you just need storage or you wish to also host virtual machines, you will benefit from having more than the bare minimum recommendation of RAM. I really wanted to buy a 48GB DDR5 4800MHZ SODIMM for this DIY NAS build, but I couldn’t talk myself into spending the $250-$300 that it would’ve wound up costing.

Storage

A quick disclaimer about all the drives that I purchased for the DIY NAS: 2026 Edition, I already had all of them! I tend to buy things when I see them on sale and as a result, I have a collection of brand new parts for machines in my homelab or for upcoming projects. I raided that collection of spare parts for the DIY NAS: 2026 Edition.

Boot Drive

If you ranked the drives in your DIY NAS in order of importance, the boot drive should be the least-important drive. That is not saying that boot drive isn’t performing an important function, but I am suggesting that you shouldn’t invest a bunch of energy and money into picking the optimal boot drive.

Because the JONSBO N4 has a pair of 2.5” drive bays, I decided that a 2.5” SATA SSD would be ideal for the boot drives. As a rule of thumb, I try and spend less than $30 per boot drive in my DIY NAS builds.

Ultimately I selected a pair of 128GB Silicon Power A55 SSDs (specs). I’ve used these before, I’d use them again in the future, and I even have four of their higher capacity (1TB) SSDs in a pool in my own NAS.

App and Virtual Machine NVMe SSDs

Self-hosting apps and virtual machines on your DIY NAS has really exploded in the past few years. The developers of NAS appliance packages have made it much easier and the self-hosted products themselves have become as good–or often better–than things you’re probably subscribing to today. Because of that, I saved the highest-performing storage options on the Topton N22 motherboard for apps and VMs.

However, it’s important to point out that these M.2 slots are PCI-e version 3 and capped at a single PCI-e lane. This is a consequence of the limited number of PCI-e lanes available for each of the CPU options available for the Topton N22 motherboard (N100, N150, N305, and N355).

I opted for a NVMe drive that was a good value rather than a high performer and chose two of the Silicon Power 1TB M.2 NVMe SSDs (SP001TBP34A60M28) (specs).

Bulk Storage Hard Disk Drives

Thanks to rising prices, I opted to do like I’ve done with past DIY NAS builds and skip buying hard drives for the DIY NAS: 2026 Edition.

When planning your DIY NAS, it is good to always remember that storage will ultimately be your costliest and most important expense.

Here’s a few things to consider when buying hard drives:

1. Determine your hardware redundancy preferences. I recommend having two hard disk drives’ worth of redundancy (RAIDZ2, RAID6, etc.)
2. Focus on price-per-terabyte when comparing prices of drives.
3. Do some burn in testing of your hard drives before putting them to use.
4. When buying new drives of the same model, try and buy them from multiple vendors to increase the chances of buying drives manufactured in separate batches.
5. Plan Ahead! Understand the rate that your storage grows so that you can craft a strategy to grow your storage down the road.
6. Being cheap today can and will paint you into a corner that’s quite expensive to get out of.
7. Understand that RAID is not a backup!

Thankfully, I’ve collected a bunch of my own decomissioned hard drives which I used to thoroughly test this DIY NAS build.

SATA Cables

One of the under-the-radar features of the Topton N22 motherboard might be one of my favorite features! The motherboard’s Asmedia ASM1164 SATA controllers sit behind two SFF-8643 connectors. These connectors provide two advantages for these motherboards:

1. Saves room on the motherboard’s PCB.
2. SFF-8643 to 4x SATA breakout cables reduces the amount of cable management hassle.

Power Supply

The one thing that I have routinely disliked about building small form factor DIY NAS machines is the price tag that accompanies a small form factor power supply (SFX) like is required with the JONSBO N4.

I wound up choosing the SilversStone Technology SX500-G (specs) which I had used earlier in the year for the DIY NAS I gave away at Texas Linux Fest. Its 500W rating exceeds the needs of all the components that I’d picked out for the DIY NAS: 2026 Edition. Plus the power supply’s 80 Plus Gold rating aligns well with my criteria for power efficiency.

Regardless of whether it was called FreeNAS, TrueNAS, TrueNAS CORE, TrueNAS SCALE, or now TrueNAS Community Edition, the storage appliance product(s) from iXSystems have always been my go-to choice. For each yearly DIY NAS build, I wander over to the TrueNAS Software Status page and look at the state of the current builds.

I’m conservative with my personal NAS setup. However, for these blog builds, I typically choose Early Adopter releases. This year that’s TrueNAS 25.10.0.1 (aka Goldeye). I enjoy being able to use these DIY NAS builds as a preview to the latest and greatest that TrueNAS has to offer.

I repeatedly choose TrueNAS because it’s what I’ve become accustomed to; it’s legitimately an enterprise-grade storage product, which is exactly the quality of solution that I want my data to depend on. At the same time it does not feel like you need a specialized certification and a truckload of enterprise storage experience to meet set up a NAS that exceeds your needs at home.

Many times I have been asked, “Why not <insert NAS appliance or OS here>?” My answer to that question is, TrueNAS has always done everything that I need it to and they haven’t given me any reason to consider anything else. As a result, there’s never been a need for me to evaluate something else.

Final Parts List

Hardware Assembly, BIOS Configuration, and Burn-In

Hardware Assembly

I wanted the smallest possible DIY NAS. The JONSBO N4 case initially felt too large since it accommodates Micro ATX motherboards. However, I grew to accept its slightly larger footprint. However, putting the Topton N22 motherboard into the case felt roomy and luxurious. Building the DIY NAS: 2026 Edition compared to prior years’ felt a lot like coming home to put on sweatpants and a t-shirt after wearing a suit and tie all day long.

I wasn’t too fond of the cable-management of the power supply’s cables. The layout of the case pretty much makes the front of the power supply inaccessible once it is installed. One consequence of this is that the power cable which powered the SATA backplane initially prevented the 120mm case fan from spinning up. That issue was relatively minor and was resolved with zip ties.

Overall, I felt pretty good about the assembly of the DIY NAS: 2026 Edition, but things would take a turn for the worse when I decided to fill all the 3.5-inch drive bays up with some of my decommissioned 8TB HDDs. Now this is probably my fault, I wouldn’t be surprised at all that the manual of the JONSBO N4 warned me against this, but putting the drives in last turned out to be a major pain in the neck for each of the four drive bays without a SATA backplane.

I had wrongly guessed that you accessed those drives’ power and data ports from the front of the case. I worked really hard to route the cables and even managed to install all of the drives before realizing my error and learning my lesson. I’m understanding now why the JONSBO N4 is cheaper than all of its siblings. Partly because there’s a missing SATA backplane, but also because those other 4 drive bays’ layout is frustrating.

Don’t let my last couple paragraphs sour you on the JONSBO N4, though. I still really like its size, it feels big when you’re working in it with a Mini ITX motherboard. If you wind up deciding to use the JONSBO N4, then I suggest that you put those four drives and their cables in first before you do anything else. That would’ve made a world of difference for me. Actually looking at the documentation before getting started might have saved me quite a bit of aggravation, too!

If I have ruined the JONSBO N4 for you, then check out the JONSBO N3. It’s eight 3.5-inch drive bays pair up really nicely with the Topton N22 motherboard. You can see what I thought of the JONSBO N3 by reading the DIY NAS: 2024 Edition blog.

BIOS Configuration

Generally speaking, I do as little as I possibly can in the BIOS. Normally I strive to only set the time and change the boot order. However, I did a bit more for the DIY NAS: 2026 Edition since I’m using the SYS_FAN header for the fan which is responsible for cooling the hard drives. Here are the changes that I made in the BIOS:

1. Set the System Date and System Time to Greenwich Mean Time
   1. Advanced
      1. Hardware Monitor ( Advanced)
         1. Set SYS SmartFan Mode to Disabled.
         2. Set the Manual PWM Setting (for SYS_FAN) to 180.
   2. Set PWRON After Power Loss to Always On
   3. Boot
      1. Set Boot Option #1 to the TrueNAS boot device.

I’m not at all interested in venturing into the rabbit’s hole of trying to completely minimize how much power the NAS uses. However, I imagine there’s some opportunities for power savings lurking in the BIOS. I didn’t go looking for them myself, but if you’re intrepid enough to do so here’s a few suggestions that I have to save some additional power:

• Disable the onboard audio.
• Disable any network interfaces that you don’t wind up using.
• Tinker with the CPU settings.
• Got other suggestions? Share them in the comments!

Burn-In

Because all of the hardware is brand-new to me brand-new components are not guaranteed to be free of defects, I always do a little bit of burn-in testing to establish some trust in the hardware that I’ve picked out for each DIY NAS build. While I think doing some burn-in testing critically important, I also think the value of subsequent burn-in testing drops the more that you do. Don’t get too carried away and do your own burn-in testing in moderation!

Memtest86+

I always use Memtest86+ to burn-in the RAM. I always run at least 3+ passes of Memtest86+. Typically, I run many more passes because I tend to let the system keep running additional passes overnight. Secondarily, running these many passes give the CPU a little bit of work to do and there’s enough information displayed by Memtest86+ to give me confidence in the CPU and its settings.

Hard Drives

The failure rate of hard drives is highest when the drives are new and then again when they’re old. Regardless of type of hard drives that I buy or when I buy them, I always do some disk burn in. I tend to run Spearfoot’s Disk Burn-in and Testing script on all of my new drives. However executing this script against all of the drives can take quite a long time, even if you use something like tmux to run the tests in parallel.

Initial TrueNAS CE Setup

There’s always a little bit of setup that I do for a new TrueNAS machine. This isn’t intended to be an all inclusive step-by-step guide for all the things you should do with your DIY NAS. Instead, it’s more of a list of things I kept track of while I made sure that the DIY NAS: 2026 Edition was functional enough for me to finish writing this blog. That being said, I do think your NAS would be rather functional if you decided to do the same configuration.

1. Updated the hostname to diynas2026
   1. Note: This is only to avoid issues with another NAS on my network.
2. Updated the timezone.
3. Enabled the following services and set them to start automatically.
   1. SMB
   2. SSH
   3. NFS
4. Enabled password login for the truenas_admin user.
   • Note: If I were planning to use this DIY NAS long-term, I wouldn’t have done this. Using SSH keys for authentication is a better idea.
5. Edited the TrueNAS Dashboard widgets to reflect the 10Gb interface (enp1s0).
6. Created a pool named flash which consisted of mirrored vdev using the Teamgroup MP44 1TB NVMe SSDs.
7. Created a pool named rust which consisted of a single RAID-Z2 vdev using eight hard drives that I had sitting on my shelf after they were decomissioned.
8. Configured the Apps to use the flash pool for the apps’ dataset.
9. Made sure that the System Dataset Pool was set to flash.
10. Confirmed that there were Scrub Tasks set up for the flash and rust pools.
11. Created a dataset on each pool for testing; flash-test and rust-test
12. Installed the Scrutiny app found in the App Catalog.

If I were planning to keep this NAS and use it for my own purposes, I would also:

1. Set up a Let’s Encrypt certificate.
2. Hook up the NAS to a compatible UPS, enable the UPS service, and configure the UPS service to shut down the NAS before the battery runs out of juice.
3. Set up system email alert service.
4. Create replication tasks to back up critical data to my off-site NAS.
5. Add the new NAS to my Tailscale tailnet using the Tailscale app from the official catalog.
6. As the NAS is seeded with data, create and maintain a suite of snapshot tasks tailored to the importance of the different data being stored on the NAS.
7. Set up S.M.A.R.T. tests for all of the drives:
   1. Weekly Short Test
   2. Monthly Long Test

Benchmarks

Just about every year, I benchmark each DIY NAS build and almost always come to the same conclusion; the NAS will outperform your network at home. Your first bottleneck is almost always going to be the network and the overlwhelming majority of us have gigabit networks at home–but that’s slowly changing since 2.5Gbps and 10Gbps network hardware has started to get reasonable lately.

Even though I always come to the same conclusion, I still like to do the benchmarks for two reasons:

1. It helps me build confidence that the DIY NAS: 2026 Edition works well.
2. People tend to enjoy consuming benchmarks and it’s fun for me to see the DIY NAS’ network card get saturated during the testing.

Throughput

I like to do three categories of tests to measure the throughput of the NAS:

1. Use iperf3 to benchmark throughput between my NAS and another machine on my network.
2. Benchmark the throughput of the pool(s) locally on the NAS using fio.
3. Set up SMB shares on each of the pools and then benchmark the throughput when using those shares.

Every year I try and mention that Tom Lawrence from Lawrence Systems published a great video about benchmarking storage with FIO and shared the FIO commands from his video in their forums. I use these FIO commands constantly as a reference point for testing ZFS pools’ throughput. Importantly I’d like to point out that, in that same video, Tom says something very wise:

There are lies, damn lies, and then there are benchmarks!

What do I think these benchmarks and my use of the DIY NAS: 2026 Edition tell me? In the grand scheme of things, not a whole lot.

However, these benchmarks do back up what I expected, the DIY NAS: 2026 Edition is quite capable and more than ready to meet my storage needs. I especially like that the CrystalDiskMark benchmark of the SMB shares were both faster than a SATA SSD, and the throughput to the share on the flash pool practically saturated the NAS’ 10GbE network connection.

FIO Tests

Every time I benchmark a NAS, I seem to either be refining what I tried in prior years or completely reinventing the wheel. As a result, I wouldn’t recommend comparing these results with results that I shared in prior years’ DIY NAS build blogs. I haven’t really put a ton of effort into developing a standard suite of benchmarks. Things in my homelab change enough between DIY NAS blogs that trying to create and maintain an environment for a standard suite of benchmarks is beyond what my budget, spare time, and attention span will allow.

I’m going to paste these fio commands here in the blog for my own use in future DIY NAS build blogs. If you wind up building something similar, these might be helpful to measure your new NAS’ filesystem’s performance and compare it to mine!

## Random Write IOPS
fio --randrepeat=1 --ioengine=libaio --direct=1 --name=test --filename=test --bs=128k --size=4G --readwrite=randwrite --ramp_time=10
fio --randrepeat=1 --ioengine=libaio --direct=1 --name=test --filename=test --bs=128k --size=32G --readwrite=randwrite --ramp_time=10

## Random Read IOPS
fio --randrepeat=1 --ioengine=libaio --direct=1 --name=test --filename=test --bs=128k --size=4G --readwrite=randread --ramp_time=10
fio --randrepeat=1 --ioengine=libaio --direct=1 --name=test --filename=test --bs=128k --size=32G --readwrite=randread --ramp_time=10

## Sequential Write (MB/s)
fio --randrepeat=1 --ioengine=libaio --direct=1 --name=test --filename=test --bs=4M --size=4G --readwrite=write --ramp_time=10
fio --randrepeat=1 --ioengine=libaio --direct=1 --name=test --filename=test --bs=4M --size=32G --readwrite=write --ramp_time=10

## Sequential Read (MB/s)
fio --randrepeat=1 --ioengine=libaio --direct=1  --name=test --filename=test --bs=4M --size=4G --readwrite=read --ramp_time=10
fio --randrepeat=1 --ioengine=libaio --direct=1  --name=test --filename=test --bs=4M --size=32G --readwrite=read --ramp_time=10

Power Consumption

One not-so-obvious cost of running a DIY NAS is how much power it consumes. While I specifically tried to pick items that were efficient in terms of power consumption, it’s also important to realize that all the other bells and whistles on the awesome Topton N18 NAS motherboard consume power, too. And that the biggest consumer of power in a NAS is almost always the hard disk drives.

Thanks to my tinkering with home automation, I have a plethora of smart outlets which are capable of power monitoring. I used those smart outlets for most of my power monitoring. But I also have a Kill a Watt P400 that I also use for some of the shorter tests:

• Power consumed during a handful of specific tasks:
  • Idle while running TrueNAS
  • RAM Burn-in (~14 passes of Memtest86+)
  • An 8-hour throughput benchmark copying randomly-sized files to the NAS using SMB.
• Total consumed during the build, burn-in, and use of the DIY NAS: 2026 Edition.

What about an EconoNAS?

Shortly before prices skyrocketed, I decided I wasn’t very interested in doing a separate EconoNAS builds. Several months ago, I realized that there were several off-the-shelf NAS machines that were more-than-capable of running TrueNAS and they were selling at economical prices that couldn’t be topped by a DIY approach. I will dive deeper into this in a future blog, eventually … maybe?

All that being said–it’d be incredibly easy to make some compromises which result in the DIY NAS: 2026 Edition becoming quite a bit more economical. Here’s a list of changes that I would consider to be more budget-friendly:

• Different motherboard/CPU combo: N18 w/ N100 CPU (-$224), N18 w/ N150 CPU (-$214), or N22 w/ N150 CPU (-$180)
• 16GB of DDR5 RAM (-$39) instead of 32GB.
• Thermal Right TL-C12015 Slim Fan instead of the Noctua NF-A12x25 (-$26)
• Apevia SFX-AP500W Power Supply (-$104)
• Skip the redundancy for the boot pool (-$22)

Altogether, these savings could add up to more than $400, which is pretty considerable! If you made all of these changes, you’d have something that’s going to be nearly equivalent to the DIY NAS: 2026 Edition but at a fraction of the price.

What am I going to do with the DIY NAS: 2026 Edition?!

My DIY NAS is aging quite gracefully, but I’ve recently been wondering about replacing it. Shortly before ordering all the parts for the DIY NAS: 2026 Edition, I briefly considered using this year’s DIY NAS build to replace my personal NAS. However, I decided not to do that. Then prices skyrocketed and I shelved the idea of building a replacement for my own NAS and I nearly shelved the idea of a DIY NAS in 2026!

So that begs the question, “What is Brian going to do with the DIY NAS: 2026 Edition?”

I’m going to auction it off on the briancmosesdotcom store on eBay! Shortly after publishing this blog, I’ll list it on eBay. In response to skyrocketing prices for PC components, I’m going to do a no-reserve auction. At the end of the auction, the highest bidder wins and hopefully they’ll get a pretty good deal!

Final Thoughts

Overall, I’m pleased with the DIY NAS: 2026 Edition. The Topton N22 motherboard is a significant improvement over last year’s Topton N18 motherboard, primarily due to its extra two SATA ports. This provides 33.3% more gross storage capacity.

While testing, I found the Intel Core 3 N355 CPU somewhat excessive for basic NAS functions. However, the substantial untapped CPU horsepower offers luxurious performance potential. This makes the build compelling for anyone planning extensive self-hosting projects.

I have mixed feelings about the JONSBO N4 case. The four right-side drive bays lack SATA backplane connectivity. Without creative cabling solutions, individual drive replacement becomes challenging. However, the case’s ~$125 price point compensates for this inconvenience. I anticipate that those the cost savings will justify the compromise for most builders. If I were to build the DIY NAS: 2026 Edition all over again, I’d be tempted to use the JONSBO N3 case or even the JONSBO N6 which isn’t quite obtainable, yet.

The DIY NAS: 2026 Edition delivers excellent performance and superior specifications. In my opinion, it represents better value than off-the-shelf alternatives:

• QNAP TS-832PX-4G ($880)
• Asustor Lockerstor 8 AS6508T ($960)
• UGREEN NASync DXP8800 ($1200)

Building your own NAS provides significant advantages. Years later, you can upgrade RAM, motherboard, case, or add PCI-e (x1) expansion cards. These off-the-shelf alternatives offer severely limited upgrade paths.

Is 2026 finally the year that you decide to build your DIY NAS? I hope that it is! Share your experience building your NAS in the comments below or come tell us about it in the #diynas-and-homelab channel on the Butter, What?! Discord server!