I aquired some cheap used SAS drives and am trying to setup a NAS with them. Other than getting a small case, normal motherboard and a SAS controller, are there cheaper options? A low end 3-4 bay NAS that can do SAS? Preferably room for some nvme drives for a cache
A used SAS card can be found on ebay for $20-$30. You just need a PC with an open 8 lane PCIe slot and a few drive bays. An older 6gbps card is fine for a few mechanical hard drives.