I have around 30TB of data scattared around between cloud services, external hard drives, a small plex server, etc.

I would like start a storage server to store everything, with a bit of computing power for other task (plex as mentioned).

I’m looking on ebay at the Dell Edgeserver t330 or similar, starting with 3x 18TB drives, and since it has 8 bay, I’ll have plenty of space for future upgrades. It seems have also a decent cpu, so it should handle plex and some other tasks without issues.

My concerns is about noise; it is going to be put under a desk in my lab and not inside a rack, I saw some videos on youtube and it doesnt seem too noisy, but hard to tell from a video. And for power usage, it will run mostly at idle I think, so I dont think it will drink too much.

Do you think it make sense? Any suggestion?

As said, the only hard requirements are quite a bit disk spaces for future expansion (6x-8x 3.5 drive support) a decent cpu, and doesnt have to be too noisy.

I’ve also evaluated buying a parts a built it from scratch, using like the new intel n100 with is very powerful with low power usage, a big case and so on for a similar price.