Tutorial by Random Steve Guy
Biome: Forest

Many think that a starter base needs to be a house, however, you can just as easily create a tent! Much sturdier than tents in real life, this starter build is perfect for the early game. It’s quick to make, looks nice and cozy, and requires blocks that are easy to gather! It can even be created with different blocks (as shown later in this list).

Featured Blocks

Tutorial by PixelBot
Biome: Desert

While quartz isn’t an early game block, it can easily be replaced with sandstone or concrete. This was a wonderful tutorial and super easy house to build. It’s great for those looking to build in a different shape, but still have something easy to create. It’s also good practice for building circles!

Featured Blocks

Tutorial by KoalaBuilds
Biome: Taiga or Forest

Most starter houses are made of spruce and stone bricks. However, this tutorial shows how to build with those blocks, but make it look more interesting. The design is easy to replicate, and it’s a great build to try if you’re looking to upgrade your standard starter house skills.

Featured Blocks

Tutorial by BlueNerd Minecraft
Biome: Any

Immediately, this starter house catches your eye because of the warped plank’s color! This is a fun build that’s architecturally intriguing to look at. The block palette is perfect for any biome you could want to settle in, with room to grow.

Featured Blocks

Tutorial by Mr Mirror
Biome: Badlands or Desert

One of the best strategies to survival in Minecraft? Use the surrounding blocks. This mesa/badlands build uses blocks found in the area to not only match the landscape, but also as to function as an easy starter build. The tutorial made it hard to tell which color terracotta blocks to use, so we’ll tell you now it was light gray and standard terracotta.

Featured Blocks

Tutorial by Random Steve Guy
Biome: Any Ocean

Who doesn’t love a good underwater base? It’s both secretive and incredibly cool! While sponge can be tricky to acquire in early game, there are other ways to get rid of water. This starter house is definitely more for the intermediate builders, but it can’t hurt to practice building in a creative world.

Featured Blocks

Tutorial by Ayvocado
Biome: Jungle, Forest

Treehouses in Minecraft are a great way to survive and avoid hostile mobs. This tutorial shows how to not only build a base for a tree, but how to make the tree itself! It’s a fantastic way to begin learning how to build custom trees. While the base is small, it can always be expanded as your riches grow.

Featured Blocks

Tutorial by Mr Mirror
Biome: Savanna, Badlands, Plains

A circular house is such a unique design that it needed to be included on this list. Not only is it raised up, but it comes with a farm to guarantee you’ll always have food. The tutorial video is very easy to follow, and it doesn’t require blocks that are hard to acquire. We’d love to see this build with a different biome or block palette!

Featured Blocks

Tutorial by SheepGG
Biome: Any Mountains

Live like a dwarf in Minecraft with this starter house built into a mountain! Because of the shape and simple design, it’s a modular build. Try adding in more rooms at different levels! It’s perfect to try in 1.18, Caves and Cliffs Part 2!

Featured Blocks

Tutorial by ImRandom
Biome: Any

Another great design is an underground starter base. With everything you need in view, this build is simple and safe (you don’t have to worry about fall damage while building a roof). You can even turn this base into a system of underground tunnels! This tutorial is easy to follow, with all the information you’ll need!

Featured Blocks

Tutorial by A1MOSTADDICTED MINECRAFT
Biome: Forest, Mountain

When you hear the words “starter house”, the blocks that come to mind are wood. This build is made to be the perfect example of a rustic house. While the tutorial was a little hare to follow at times, it’s an easy build that doesn’t require too many blocks.

Featured Blocks

Tutorial by TSMC
Biome: Any

Another simple house that has depth and is visually appealing. The tutorial is easy to follow, though it doesn’t show how to do the interior, leaving that decision up to the player. This is a starter house that is great for beginner builders to help learn detailing!

Featured Blocks

Tutorial By Dio Rods
Biome: Any Taiga or Spruce

Of course, we needed to include a taiga starter house! This build showcases how well stone and spruce go together, and why everyone uses them. Warning: The tutorial is a hard to follow because of poor camera angles, but once you get the foundation and walls up, the details can be completely up to you!

Featured Blocks

Tutorial by KoalaBuilds
Biome: Any Forest, especially Birch

Similar to the first tent-like house in this list, this starter is a great alternative to a typical house-structure. Not only is it quick and easy to build, but it uses blocks that normally wouldn’t be considered for building (like hay bales). You can switch out the block palette easily to fit the biome or style you prefer!

Featured Blocks

Tutorial by Dio Rods
Biome: Badlands, Savanna

Consider this terracotta house to be a starter base+. It has a convenient and safe roof on the top, a stable, and plenty of room for expanding upon. The tutorial is not only well-done, but enjoyable to watch!

Featured Blocks

Tutorial by BigTonyMC
Biome: Swamp or anywhere with a beach

This is a great starter house for builds in shallow water. Whether you want to deter hostile mobs, want an ocean view, or just like the added height, this tutorial will guide you through easily. There’s even a small dock for boats!

Featured Blocks

Tutorial by ItsMarloe
Biome: Any water biome

For those sea lovers out there, here’s a starter build just for you! Regardless of what body of water you want to live on, this raft is incredibly quick to build. So quick that you can use it as a temporary home or decoration through the world.

Featured Blocks

Tutorial by TheMythicalSausage
Biome: Mountains or Snowy

Why not build a better igloo than the Minecraft developers? TheMythicalSausage is known for his detailed builds, but he makes a great tutorial that’s easy to follow along with. This design is so unique (even including wildlife as decoration)!

Featured Blocks

Tutorial by Nuec
Biome: Taiga or Forest

This is a perfect starter house for any beginning builder or Minecraft player. With a traditional house style and a block palette that’s easy to acquire in survival, this is a great starter base for any forest or taiga biome.

Featured Blocks

Tutorial by Folli
Biome: Any

Again, wood and stone are featured in this easy to follow (and gather) tutorial. The style is simple to copy, but with an added layer of nice detailing than other traditional builds. The tutorial video doesn’t cover the interior of the base, so keep that in mind when starting.

Featured Blocks

Tutorial by Experimental Dude
Biome: Any

Not enough popular starter houses are made of birch, so here’s a tutorial for birch lovers! It’s a very basic build for new players or builders, that even includes a basement. The architecture is borderline modern, though it has certain aspects to it that has it fitting the traditional theme. The pacing of the tutorial video makes it incredibly easy to follow!

Featured Blocks

Tutorial by csx42
Biome: Any

What’s great about this tutorial is how the creator emphasizes the versatility of the build. Not only can you use any blocks you want, but you can build upon the house as you need to. This starter house is perfect for those wanting a small starter space to keep safe until they expand their riches and inventory.

Featured Blocks

Tutorial by KyloMC Builds
Biome: Any

For those looking for something a little more than a one level build, this brick starter house is perfect. Not many would think to combine birch wood with bricks, but it works really well here. It also provides a great view with large windows in both the front and back, as well as a nice blend of nature.

Featured Blocks

Tutorial by Ayvocado
Biome: Any

That’s right, it’s a starter house made of dirt. It may be a meme to have a dirt house, however, this is an upgrade to the typical square dirt design. It’s a perfect first day shelter tutorial that shows in survival the process of gathering resources and turning the typical box of dirt into a beautiful home (made of dirt).

Featured Blocks

Tutorial by SwiftFoxy
Biome: Any

For those wanting a more traditional brick house, this small brick house is for you. The tutorial is harder to follow than most, so be prepared to pause and rewind a few times. However, once it’s complete, you’ll have a cozy little home to begin your Minecraft adventures.

Featured Blocks

Tutorial by FPgaming
Biome: Beach or Desert

Take advantage of the ocean view with this beautiful beach house design! This build works with the terrain, and features multiple levels with room to expand. The roof is especially unique with rounded sides! The tutorial doesn’t show height information, but it’s simple enough that you can still follow along with the video.

Featured Blocks

Tutorial by KyleKraft
Biome: Any

Early warning: The tutorial doesn’t actually start until five minutes into the video. However, it’s an incredible tutorial that goes over everything you could need to know about this build, including design choices and options. Since it’s built withing one chunk, this starter base has everything you need for early and mid-game. There’s even an infinite water source and mine!

Featured Blocks

Design by Mojang Studios
Biome: Any

Villagers are so nice, they won’t even mind if you move into one of their houses! Whether you just want to explore, or you’re trying to speed run, use a generated village house as your base! It comes with everything you require in the beginning: a bed, farm, and an iron golem guard!

Tutorial by Sv Gravity Biome: Any

This is a perfect small and cute build that’s great for those who want a raised home along with the essential farming and storage space. Resources are easy to find, and the tutorial is fantastic to follow along with.

Featured Blocks

Tutorial by Nesco Biome: Forest

For those dark oak lovers, here’s a great dark oak starter house to build. Whether you want to tuck away into a dark forest or simple have a cozy home to return to, this tutorial will show you the way. The interior is on the smaller side, which makes it good for early game, and comes with a small attic space for extra storage!

Featured Blocks

All houses were built in a 1.17 world using BSL Shaders and Jerm’s Better Leaves Add-on.

Half-Life life quickly became one of the best-known games of all time, and its publishing sparked the rise of Valve, the company that created and runs the Steam game distribution service. Half-Life was a unique blend of shooting game and intricate story, developed at a time when the FPS industry still larger catered to the pure camp, or horror-themes, of earlier titles. Gordon Freeman, the scientist-action-hero, must escape the Black Mesa Research Facility after it is invaded by aliens, and the (at the time unique) storytelling experience allowed players to watch the story itself unfold through Gordon’s eyes.

Black Mesa

Black Mesa emerged in 2005 as a free-to-play mod, built by fans as a way to show their love and appreciation for the game, and in order to bring it up to the so-called “next-gen” standards. But Valve supported a full version of the game, and over the nxt fifteen years development slowly ached on until, in 2020, the erstwhile mod finally got its full release as a tried and true remake of the classic title.

Few games in modern history have been as popular as Skyrim, the fifth title in the sprawling and epic Elder Scrolls universe. When Skyrim released, it offered a sprawling open world in which to wander, dragons to fight, deep caverns to explore, and an epic, seemingly dynamic plot that unfolded in different directions depending on how the player handled their interactions. Plus, who can forget the hilarious “Arrow to the knee” line? Skyrim is also one of the most-modded video games in existence, thanks to the relative ease of modding it vs. other titles.

Skywind

Skywind is an incredible remake of an earlier title in the Elder Scrolls franchise, completely fan-made and utilizing assets from Skyrim. This makes sense because, while Skyrim became a major hit, fans of the series know that there was never a better title than the 2003 game Morrowind. Skywind takes Morrowind and updates it with the Skyrim engine, featuring the hard work and talent of over seventy volunteers!

The mod is not yet available for release, but, according to information from the team, and their early-2021 update trailer, the game is nearing completion.

I know of few fan communities as passionate about a video game as those who love “KotOR”. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and its sequel game, were some of the most innovative RPGs of their, or any other, time. With deep and intricate storylines, incredible expansive worlds to explore, and unforgettable characters, the games were both superb. When the second game, The Sith Lords was rushed to release over the objections of the team working on it (this is why marketing should stay the heck out of game development decisions), fans were notably disappointed, however. There were many things to love about the game, but there were also many things broken, and the ultimate storyline failed to live up to its promise… because the most crucial elements had been cut to satisfy the corporate moneygrubbers!

And don’t even talk to me about the terrible MMO. I don’t like MMOs much at the best of times, but The Old Republic MMO left much to be desired.

The Sith Lords Restored

Enter, The Sith Lords Restored. I was part of this modding community myself back in the day, making simple mods that added satisfying extras to previously well-traveled areas of the game. A merchant that sold foodstuffs that offered buffs, some hidden items that could be found via a mini quest. The whole modding community was vibrant in those days, despite no support at all from the game company. But the team behind The Sith Lords Restored wanted to do something special: they wanted to bring TSL back to life, as it had originally been intended. They pioneered the modding slogan “It’ll be done when it’s done,” for theirs was not an easy task, but they eventually succeeded in bringing all that lost content back into the game. Now, one could hardly think about playing TSL without it.

The only thing I wish is that the KotOR modding community had been more open and willing to share with one another. Modders in that community tended to hoard their mods, fiercely attacking attempts to re-upload their content or use their content in larger, easier-to-install mod packs. On one hand, they wanted to make sure their work was respected. On another, a huge amount of great content was lost when various modding sites went down.

One hopes that, with the new remake of The Knights of the Old Republic now officially on the way, the developers open it to more official modding support, so the community can more easily engage and remain vibrant for years to come.

There is no doubt that Steam-owner Valve is one of the biggest names in the history of game development, with titles like Half-Life becoming ensconced in the video game hall of fame. But what makes a game so vital is its interactivity, and that is accomplished through the game’s “engine,” the fundamental code on which everything in the game is based. Major companies like Valve often have their own special game engine, while others use engines that have been developed by 3rd parties specifically as blank slates for different types of games.

Valve’s Source engine

Garry’s Mod came into being when Garry Newman, a modder and coder, took Valve’s Source engine and modded it, creating a sandbox game space that could be interacted with in various ways and used as a template of sorts for development by others. It became so incredibly popular that Valve eventually signed a deal with Gary to turn the mod into an official paid release.

We know that Half-Life changed FPS games forever, but it also changed the world of modding forever, presenting modders with a powerful sandbox they could manipulate and expand upon. Some mods aimed to remaster or restore the game, like Black Mesa, but others simply aimed to add new content. Valve, the company that created Half-Life looked to these early mods as more than fan content, however.

Counter-Strike

Counter-Strike began as just another modification to Half-Life, but it became something so much more. Valve acquired the rights to the mod and went on to spawn a massive franchise of Counter-Strike games that continue to rake in the dough to this very day. The simple design, a multiplayer game with two opposing sides—the Terrorists and the Counterterrorists—sees players fighting one another to complete various objectives, a staple of the multiplayer FPS genre ever since.

Fallout 4 is the third game to be released by Bethesda Game Studios after they acquired the rights to the original IP. The Fallout universe is a sprawling post-apocalyptic setting in an alternate future constructed as if the 1950s American vision of an atomic future had been realized. Fallout 3 had been a massive hit upon release, and I remember how incredible that game felt to play—the storyline, for one thing, really worked. But Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas were both based on an older and more limited game engine. Fallout 4 used the same engine as Skyrim, and the possibilities that this opened were enormous.

Fallout: London

Fallout: London takes the Fallout story to a totally new place: London. After Fallout 3 was released, very little happened by way of evolving the content of the series. Bethesda basically rehashed the same material for Fallout: NV and Fallout 4, turning out games with some good points but also nothing especially groundbreaking. This is a darn shame, considering how fundamentally brilliant the satirical and harsh landscapes of the original two games were.

But that’s where modders come in! Fallout: London looks like exactly the sort of thing that the series needs to revitalize itself, taking the game into a different landscape, a different culture, than what has previously been explored. Of course, there is no release date on this, since it’s a fan-made project created for free. It’s safe to assume that the minimum full release is at least two-five years out, just looking at other large expansions released in the past.

Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos was a major hit at the time of its release, brining the fantastic Warcraft setting to three virtual dimensions for the first time. The game followed the Real-Time Strategy theme of earlier Blizzard-developed games, but with special additions like hero-characters that could level up and an advanced map-level editor that helped players create their own content.

DotA – Defense of the Ancients

DotA started out as an idea based in the earlier Blizzard game, Starcraft, and expanding with the advanced editing features offered in Warcraft III. Originally a simple concept based around hero characters, the game mod advanced over the years and under the curation of a number of different mod authors. So popular did the mod become that the somewhat-infamous Valve corporation acquired the rights to it in order to capitalize on the mod’s success.

Sins Of A Solar Empire was something magic back in 2008 — a game that combined unique aspects of a Real-Time Strategy game with the fun of “4X” games (the four “x’s” stand for Explore, Exploit, Exterminate, Expand). It offered some jaw-dropping graphics for the time, and tactical gameplay that upped the ante of expectations for the genre. It also happened to be highly moddable, allowing players to customize their experience to their liking.

Star Trek: Armada III

Star Trek: Armada III grew out of a passionate adoration of the original Star Trek: Armada games, widely considered some of the best Star Trek video games around. While the games concentrated solely on the space warfare side of the franchise, it captured this aspect of the show extremely well, and allowed players to feel immersed in the Star Trek universe. But the hoped-for third game never materialized, leaving players in the lurch.

Then came the moddable Sins, and the opportunity of brining Armada III to life became possible. Designed to be the “spiritual successor to the popular Star Trek: Armada video game series,” the mod starts players during the first stirrings of the Dominion War and allows them to take command of six unique factions, all vying for control of the known Galaxy.

Grand Theft Auto is probably one of the most popular games of all time; a sprawling, essentially sandbox city, where violence reigns supreme. Take control of the criminal underworld, kill, maim, and visit as many prostitutes as possible—it’s all part of the digital joyride. But what happens when you’ve shot up your umpteenth storefront, or run over your 500th pedestrian? Sure, the cops come and chase you down… but what would happen if you were the one doing the chasing?

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LSPD First Response takes everything you know about GTA and turns it on its head by making you a representative of the city’s, err, finest. With this mod, instead of wreaking havoc and destruction, you embody the principles of law and order (or the principles of corruption and police brutality — the mod is still set within GTA, after all, and your new police powers allow you to get away with some pretty messed up things). The idea of trying to turn GTA on its head isn’t a new one, but finding a way to do that in a game designed to be a sandbox is hard. LSPD First Response gets darn close.

Neverwinter Nights blew me away when I first played it; playing this game felt like being immersed in an actual Dunegons&Dragons adventure, and it sucked me in for hours. Based on 3rd edition D&D rules, the game featured powerful multiplayer connectivity, allowing potentially vast numbers of players to interact in the game environment.

Darkness over Daggerford

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Darkness over Daggerford focused on the single player aspect of Neverwinter, offering players a whole new town to explore, with a dedicated single player mission involving the mystery behind the death of the town’s leader. Originally, this was intended to be a paid release through a program offered by the distributing company. But, when that model folded, the designer decided to release it for free anyway, and it quickly became a fan-favorite expansion.

The Civilization games are some of the best-known video games in history, providing players with the chance to forge their unique destiny upon the pages of history in classic turn-based strategy format. The games in the series typically goes through massive internal revision and updating over the course of many years, with new features added through expansions — and these acting as tests for core features in the next iteration. In this way, each new title feels at once deeply connected to its roots and yet new, with fresh content bolstering its lifespan.

Rhye’s And Fall

Another way that the Civilizaton game offer players massive replay value is through the incredible modding community. Civilization 4 was much loved by the gaming community, and a number of great mods were spawned for it, with one of the best being Rhye’s And Fall. In this mod, the rough outlines of history were simulated by advanced scripting. Instead of all the empires spawning at once during the beginning of the game, new empires now spawn at different moments in history, taking over nearby cities, and simulating things like the breakup of the Roman Empire or the birth of the United States.

One of the neatest things about Fallout 4 is how versatile it is compared to previous games in the series. In fact, the modding community for the prior two titles ended up creating so much amazing content that Bethesda basically built Fallout 4 around the idea that it could and should be modded (sometimes to the game’s detriment, as if the designers assume the modders would take care of anything wrong with the game). But recently Bethesda has begun hiring modders to do the hard work that they’ve already been doing purely for passion, and this means that a revitalized era of content might just be on the way.

Sim Settlements 2

This incredible expansion builds upon its prior release and opens up the Commonwealth in a whole new way. Building settlements is now viable and fun, there are huge branching quest lines to explore, top-notch voice acting, and deep storylines to get immersed in. Honestly, Sim Settlements 2 is more like a massive DLC than a mod, and it’s even going to feature new content released in episodic installments to keep the fun, and the new storyline, going.

Basically, this is Fallout 4 the way it was meant to be played.

Bonus

COVID-19 Coronavirus Outbreak did something pretty neat. Its overall point took it beyond the world of modding and into the world of real-world impact (if a small one). This mod added COVID-19 to the Fallout world, making it a transmittable disease in the game. There were other changes as well, most capitalizing on a morbid dark humor, such as antibiotics becoming “toilet paper.”

But the point of this mod wasn’t just to add the sad reality of our pandemic to the game. Designer Radbeetle used the mod as a method to help raise awareness about the realities of COVID-19 and leveraged the Nexus Mods’ donation system to take donations from players which were then transferred to charity. It was a token amount, but the cause was good, and it’s neat seeing a video game mod employed in such a way.

Say what you want about Valve’s crummy treatment of indie game designers on its Steam platform, the company certainly needs to be credited with its own fair share of incredible design content in the past. Not the least of these games is Portal, a satirical sci-fi puzzle game that became so popular it quickly reached the level of early pop-culture meme.

Portal Prelude

Portal Prelude takes players into the world of Portal before the events of the main two games, in a pre-GLaDOS era of Aperture Science, where the test subjects are monitored by employee researchers.

Stellaris is easily the best modern space strategy and empire-building game around at the moment, despite various flawed design choices and limitations of the clunky engine. The premise is the same as it always is with these games: players take control of a species and build a space empire, following the classic 4X (Expand, Explore, Exploit, and Exterminate) model, but all in real time (though still pausable when necessary). What makes the game great is the massive amount of potential, the huge range of possibilities, and the simple fact that the complex functionality of the game works: including traditionally difficult-to-implement things like AI diplomacy. Now, if only they’d bring in a dynasty system for some added roleplaying….

ST New Horizons

ST New Horizons actually does bring in a certain level of roleplay to the game, by bringing a massive amount of Star Trek lore to Stellaris, including advanced functional mission arcs for a number of the classic Star Trek empires that makes it feel like you’re progressing through time. This is, honestly, the best Star Trek game around — which makes sense! Fans will always create the best content.

There are, as I’ve said before, few games that are as moddable as The Elder Scrolls games, which is one of the series enduring strengths. The modding community has, over the years, done more work on the games than the original developers ever did, turning out incredible expansions and complete overhauls. But there are also smaller gems, finely-crafted works of art made by modders who simply love the series and want to experience its native form in the deepest possible way. These don’t always get the recognition that they should.

This sort of game appeals, I think, to artistic types who love the experience of simply being part of a massive open fantasy world, a blank space from which to explore and experience the fantastic and the profound. After all, as Sir Terry Pratchett, the late and great incomparable genius of fantasy literature, write in his introduction to The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Fantasy, “Imagination, not intelligence, made us human.”

I don’t mention Sir Terry arbitrarily, here. The famed author and knight was an avowed fan of video games, and of Oblivion in particular, and the mod in question today is one that he ended up having a massive impact on in the most delightful and unexpected of ways.

Vilja

Vilja is a mod created by a modder named “Emma” who set out to create a different type of companion for the expansive open-world roleplaying game. While Oblivion and Skyrim are great games, they often feel annoyingly player-centric, with the rest of the world appearing quite static unless acted upon. This was always particularly noticable with companion characters, who, after slim dialogue options, would end up just begin digital pack-mules for the player’s stuff, running five paces behind while the player did whatever they wanted to do. Emma thought that a companion should be something more, and this Vilja was born. With another modder named Charles “CD” Cooley, she launched one of the best mods Oblivion had ever seen.

Vilja could make her own choices—she would sometimes take charge of things for the player, would have conversations with them, and generally felt more like a living and breathing character than any other part of the game. For one player, in particular, she was an especially loved creation. Terry Pratchett loved the idea of a character that could be this deeply interactive, and he ended up contacting Emma to let her know he appreciated the mod. Eventually, his friendship with Emma and Charles grew, and he even started writing elements of the quests for Vilja; the three of them even collaborated on a different mod that brought carrot-stealing donkeys into the game. But, eventually, Vilja became important in a different way.

Sir Terry Pratchett suffered from Alzheimer’s, which made it increasingly difficult for him to play the games he loved, since the short-term memory functioning required was leaving him. That made Vilja all the more important, because she started to take on the role of a real companion for the author. Emma and Charles expanded Vilja’s abilities in the game, giving her the ability to lead the player character out of underground mazes and help keep them on the path to quests—exactly the sort of help that Terry needed.

It’s honestly so amazing to think of how this friendship formed. The impact that this mod had on Terry’s life was profound, and, in turn, his later work (which drew strength and inspiration from this mod) continued to inspire millions of people around the world. This is a prime example of the best that modding can be: a collaborative, fun, community exercise in bringing new dynamics to light within video games. Not just adding new quests or locations, but adding fundamentally different and more vital ways to think about playing the games themselves. Vilja offers players a unique, dynamic companion, and helps deepen the sense of imaginitive immersion that makes Oblviion so wonderful.

The best part? Vilja is available in Skyrim as well!

The NAS has a total of 48TB of storage space—a bold and expensive endeavor that works but there are a few drawbacks that make this configuration far from ideal. The system is built around an NAS board known as the Radxa Taco. It bridges the CM4 module to five individual SSDs. In this case, Jeff is using five 8TB Samsung 870 QVO SSDs. Because it uses a Raspberry Pi CM4 module which caps out at 400 MB/s, the read/write potential of the SSDs is bottlenecked.

Check out the video shared by Jeff on his YouTube channel to get a detailed look at the setup process and performance results. While it might not be the most practical project, we really appreciate the idea and can’t help but appreciate the ambitious parameters around its creation.

This isn’t the first Pi-based NAS Jeff has dabbled with. You can follow his official website for more projects and cool creations with the Raspberry Pi.

The new Raspberry Pi OS (Legacy) is available for manual download on the official Raspberry Pi website. Visit the Operating Systems download page and save the legacy edition to your computer. Take note of where the file is saved to and what the name is.

The operating system image will need to be manually flashed to a microSD card. This can be done using a third party application like Etcher or using the official Raspberry Pi Imager.

Open the imaging application and point the software to the microSD card you want to flash and where the downloaded OS file is located from the previous step.

The latest edition of Raspberry Pi Imager (as of writing, we’re at 1.6.2) has an option to install Raspberry Pi OS (Legacy). You can download the latest Raspberry Pi Imager software from the Raspberry Pi website.

Connect your microSD card, launch the Raspberry Pi imager, and set the storage device to your micro SD card. The new legacy OS can be found under Raspberry Pi OS (other) > Raspberry Pi OS (Legacy). Select write and wait for the operating system to install.

When the SD card is ready, pop it into your Pi and boot up the legacy OS. Follow the first-time setup instructions to get everything up and running as needed for your project.