Thanks for putting this together, I really chuckled reading your commentary, plus of course, very informative! I've been running unraid for about a year on an old second hand Aldi desktop that I Frankensteined with some shucked drives (i5 gen 6). It hasn't given me any problems, but I've had my eye on the 304 case for a while, along with CPU upgrade, so I'm thinking of taking the plunge with a very similar set up to yours (I'll move my existing disks across, 3 x 4TB - will do for now).

One question: I'm thinking of saving a few bucks with a 450W PSU (plus cheaper running costs?) and wondered if there was any reason why you went quite large with a 550W?

Thanks for taking the time to put this together, it was both helpful and funny!

Hi John! Thanks for taking the time to read the post. It really means a lot.

The 304 has been great a few months in. Really discreet and out of the way once it's all set up.

Might wanna have some merger for the fan connectors so you can control it from the mobo if you're into that though I didn't bother.

I only went with 550W just for the peace of mind. I know it's quite large compared to the actual power draw of my specific system but I'm planning to add more drives/ssds and maybe a GPU when I decide to do a passthrough/vm. Having the extra wattage now is nice to have.

Also you know what they say: never skimp on the PSU.

Hope you read more of my posts!