u/Rough-Leg-2211

For once I got lucky, the 13" M4 24GB 512GB for €999, two days before the price increase...

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to share my budget-focused setup and get some feedback on my current hardware choices!

First off, I got an HP ProLiant ML350p Gen8 for just €50. It came with 2x Xeon E5-2690 v2, 70GB of DDR3 RAM, and 3TB of SAS HDDs. The server is currently running ESXi with a Pro license.
This is my main homelab machine. It runs a Jellyfin VM alongside a full *Arr stack. I also added an NVIDIA Quadro P2000 (70€) in PCIe passthrough to handle video transcoding.

Up until recently, all my media content was stored in the cloud on Uloz, costing me €15/month for 25TB. (Honestly, never had a single issue in 2 years—speeds were great even with multiple simultaneous streams, and uptime was solid). On top of that, I run a few VMs for testing, dev work, etc.

I eventually decided to build my own NAS to stop depending on a third-party cloud service based in a sketchy jurisdiction that could shut down overnight. To get the best deals, I bought everything second-hand on Leboncoin (French site) over a period of several weeks/months.
Here is the budget breakdown for the NAS build:

Case + 500W PSU + LGA 1151 CPU cooler: €20 (pre-built MSI gaming PC case).
CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 for €15.
Motherboard: A bundle of 2x Gigabyte GA-H110-D3A, brand new in box, for €20. I flipped the second one for €25, so I actually made a €5 profit on the motherboard!
Storage: A 120GB Kingston SATA SSD for €25.
Cooling: A lot of 6 unbranded 120mm fans for €10.
RAM: I took one 16GB DDR4 3600MHz stick out of my main gaming PC (originally cost me €40 a while back).
HBA Card: An LSI 8-port SAS HBA with an active cooling fan from AliExpress for €55.
The Drives: Luckily, I live near a guy who decommissions enterprise servers and resells SAS HDDs locally (€45 for 8TB, €55 for 10TB). I picked up 2x 10TB and 3x 8TB.

I installed OpenMediaVault. I used MergerFS to create an NFS share combining the 3x 8TB + 1x 10TB drives, and used the second 10TB drive as a SnapRAID parity drive. This NFS share is mounted directly into the Jellyfin VM on my main HP server.

The NAS hardware alone: Around €115
The NAS including the 44TB of SAS storage: €375
The entire setup: A grand total of €500 once you add the HP server.

The immediate next step is swapping out the case. The current gaming case is absolutely not meant for this kind of setup; the drive mounting is terrible, and I can't even close the side panel because of the SATA/SAS power cables.
Airflow is decent thanks to the 6 extra fans. Outside of summer heatwaves, the SAS drives hover around 39°C. I’m currently looking at Fractal Design cases, as they seem highly recommended for storage builds and are reasonably priced. Any specific model recommendations?

What do you guys think? What could be improved, and what looks like a terrible idea?

Thanks!