Corsair
Corsair RM1000x
Higher-headroom PSU for HBA plus GPU builds
1000WATX
1000W, ATX, useful if the build grows heavy on PCIe cards
$199
Power
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Samsung
Samsung 500GB NVMe Boot Drive
Simple dedicated OS drive
0.5 TBM.2
M.2 boot drive for Proxmox, TrueNAS, or Ubuntu
Western Digital
Western Digital 1TB NVMe Boot Drive
Larger boot drive for containers and VM templates
1 TBM.2
M.2 drive with enough room for more than just the OS
Crucial
Crucial 960GB SATA SSD
Boot drive that uses a 2.5-inch bay instead of M.2
0.96 TB2.5-inch
2.5-inch SSD for platforms short on M.2 slots
Seagate
Seagate 12TB NAS HDD
Bulk storage drive for arrays and backup pools
12 TB3.5-inch
3.5-inch HDD for capacity-oriented storage
$199
Seagate
Seagate 8TB NAS HDD
Cheaper capacity point for smaller arrays
8 TB3.5-inch
3.5-inch HDD for modest storage pools
$149
Samsung
Samsung 4TB SATA SSD
Quiet 2.5-inch flash storage for active datasets
4 TB2.5-inch
2.5-inch SSD for warm data and lighter pools
$229
Seagate
Seagate 16TB SAS HDD
Large-capacity enterprise drive for dense arrays
16 TB3.5-inch
3.5-inch SAS HDD for the most capacity-heavy presets
$289
Solidigm
Solidigm 2TB NVMe Storage Drive
M.2 flash for fast VM or app storage
2 TBM.2
M.2 SSD for active workloads and cache-heavy setups
$159
Western Digital
WD Red Plus 8TB
CMR NAS drive optimized for RAID environments
8 TB3.5-inch
3.5-inch CMR NAS HDD with RV sensors for multi-bay NAS systems up to 8 bays
$169
Western Digital
WD Red Plus 12TB
High-capacity CMR NAS drive for larger arrays
12 TB3.5-inch
3.5-inch CMR NAS HDD with 256MB cache and RV sensors for up to 8-bay NAS
$249
Western Digital
WD Gold 16TB
Enterprise-class drive for heavy application workloads
16 TB3.5-inch
3.5-inch enterprise HDD with HelioSeal technology and 550 TB/year workload rating
$329
Seagate
Seagate Exos X18 16TB
Hyperscale enterprise drive with maximum capacity efficiency
16 TB3.5-inch
3.5-inch helium enterprise HDD with 550 TB/year workload and 2.5M hour MTBF
$299
Seagate
Seagate Exos X18 18TB
Maximum-capacity enterprise drive for dense storage servers
18 TB3.5-inch
3.5-inch helium enterprise HDD with improved Watts/TB efficiency
$349
Samsung
Samsung 870 EVO 4TB
Reliable 2.5-inch SATA SSD for active data and caching
4 TB2.5-inch
2.5-inch SATA SSD with V-NAND technology for consistent performance
$349
Crucial
Crucial T500 4TB
High-performance PCIe Gen4 NVMe M.2 SSD
4 TBM.2
PCIe Gen4 NVMe M.2 SSD with 7GB/s reads, Micron 232-layer TLC NAND, and DRAM cache
$329
LSI
LSI 9207-8i HBA
Straightforward HBA for raw-drive storage stacks
1 slot
One PCIe slot, direct-drive connectivity, common TrueNAS choice
Adaptec
Adaptec RAID Controller
Hardware RAID option for platforms that need it
1 slot
One PCIe slot, more power draw, RAID-focused workflow
$249
No Add-in Controller
Use onboard SATA and M.2 only
Skip a storage controller if onboard connectivity is enough
$0
Intel
Dual-Port 10GbE NIC
Common upgrade for storage and virtualization hosts
10GbE1 PCIe slot8W
One PCIe slot, dual SFP+ ports
$129
Intel
Quad-Port 2.5GbE NIC
More copper ports for routing and segmentation
2.5GbE1 PCIe slot7W
One PCIe slot, 4x 2.5GbE RJ45 ports
$119
Use Onboard NIC
No add-in network card
onboard
Skip a NIC if the motherboard networking is enough
$0
Mellanox
Dual-Port 25GbE NIC
Higher-bandwidth network card for storage and virtualization
25GbE1 PCIe slot10W
One PCIe slot, dual SFP28 ports, stronger networking preset
$229
NVIDIA
NVIDIA RTX A2000
Low-power GPU for transcode and light compute
169mm1 slot70W
Shorter workstation GPU with moderate power draw
$449