[execution]

I'd recommended building a custom one, if you're technically inclined. But off the shelf ones are fine, just not as cost-effective, but they are smaller though!

I previously had a HP N54L with FreeNAS, modded with extra two extra drives to get 6x4TB and that setup was very simple to do.

Now I moved over to a custom one which is a Fractal Node 804 case, i3 8100T, C246M-WU4 mobo and 32GB ECC DDR4 RAM. It has a SF450W Platinum PSU, and it pulls less than 40W in use - could get it lower with some underclocking. This runs Debian Buster with ZFS on Linux, and it's been rock stable for over half a year now - moving the drives over from my N54L was surprisingly simple. Plex transcoding works fine as well. Definitely recommend it.

[yumraj]

Could you share roughly how much did it cost to put together that custom box?

[execution]

Here's the part list: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/fcxgk6

I shopped around and waited for sales/price drops and got it all for under £500 (not including drives). I don't the pricing if your're not in the UK, so it may be cheaper elsewhere to do another combination.

As for drives wait for good deals on WD Elements/My Book Desktop External Hard Drive and shuck them. Note, only do this for +8TB drives (these are CMR drives atm) as under that size the drives are SMR which you should avoid like the plague for RAID/ZFS as they have been reported to fail if you ever need to rebuild. So then you're looking at 4x£120 which is another ~£500ish investment.

If you want to save money get a preowned box like the N54L off eBay at ~£100, and spend the money on drives, then stick FreeNas on it and if you're only file-serving the box is good enough.

I think the custom box is a bit overkill but it's got so much room for upgrades, I plan on getting 8x10TB drives in there one day, plus you can run VMs on it as the i3 processor isn't too bad.

[Rebelgecko]

FWIW I out together a ragtag NAS (recycling CPU and PSU from elsewhere) for around $400. Even if you start from scratch, the main cost is storage. If you're not afraid to void some warranties, you can get 8TB drives for around 30% less by shuccing WD external drives