I’ve gone with Unraid and consumer level hardware (intel i3 12100 and 16gb of standard ddr4 ram) the only “server hardware” I have, is an LSI HBA card that’s in IT mode so I can connect more HDDs.

I’m even used SMR drives in my array, just use a good CMR drive for parity and the biggest SSD you can get for your cache drive and you will be good to go.

Yes.