Hello. I am new to unRaid and NAS builds but I have been reading a lot over the past few weeks. I am looking to build my first DIY NAS and welcoming comments on the hardware I am looking to purchase.
I do not have any existing hardware outside of an old external hard drive I store files on. My budget is $3000 USD or less (I am located in the US). This build will be primarily a Plex and file server (photos, docs, etc.). I will probably have some dockers for miscellaneous automation tasks and occasional VMs for gaming (not the main purpose, and not trying to run Crysis or anything).
Case: Fractal Design Define XL R2 - LINK
MB: AsRock Rack E3C246D4U Micro ATX - LINK
ASRock Z390 Taichi Ultimate LGA 1151 (300 Series) Intel Z390 SATA 6Gb/s ATX - LINK
CPU: Intel Xeon E-2278G - LINK
Intel Core i9-9900K - LINK
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-L9i - LINK
Noctua NH-U12A - LINK
Memory: NEMIX RAM 64GB 2x32GB DDR4-2666 ECC Unbuffered - LINK
G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 64GB (2 x 32GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 2666 (PC4 21300) - LINK
PSU: Corsair SF750 Platinum - LINK
CORSAIR RMx Series RM1000X 1000W 80 PLUS GOLD - LINK
unRaid OS: SanDisk 32GB USB 2.0 Low-Profile Flash Drive - LINK
unRaid Cache: 2x Samsung 1TB 860 EVO SSD - LINK
1 x SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2 2280 1TB PCIe Gen 3.0 x4, NVMe SSD - LINK
unRaid Parity: 2x WD Red Pro 10TB 7200 256MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s - LINK
1 x WD Red Pro 10TB 7200 256MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s - LINK
Data: 5x WD Red Pro 4TB 7200 256MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s - LINK
3 x WD Red Pro 10TB 7200 256MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s - LINK
Plex Metadata: Samsung 1TB 970 NVMe M.2 Evo - LINK
1 x SAMSUNG 860 EVO 500GB SATA III SSD - LINK
Additional: SUPERMICRO CSE-M35T-1B 3 x 5.25" to 5 x 3.5" Hot-swap SATA HDD Trays - LINK
The total is around $2800 with the above parts and random additionals (cables, fans, etc.).
The updated total is around $3200, so a little over budget but I am getting another 10TB (original 5x4TB, now 3x10TB) of data storage.
I realize the case is huge for a mATX board, but I wanted to have a larger enclosure in case I wanted to change boards or expand to more drives in the future. I would have preferred Samsung memory but I am not finding it in stock anywhere. I welcome thoughts and questions on the above layout.
One initial question I have is on the Plex cache and metadata on the NVMe. Should I run Plex transcoding from memory, then leave the NVMe drive just for metadata and possibly VMs? The motherboard only has 1 M.2 slot so I didn't want it for the unRaid cache as I wanted 2 drives for that function.
EDIT: Updated components based on discussions below.