SirReal63

Finding a case is always the hard part, at least for me. There is little size difference in a mATX and a short ATX. The benefits to the ATX are numerous but the challenge is finding one with good flow, enough drive capacity and reasonable size without the need to sell a kidney. Silverstone has good options, but they are not inexpensive, however you also have the Dell option for cases as well, you may find a decent one if you ask and tell the rep your needs. Yes and no on the power supply, there is no way I can answer that definitively, but a 600 watt will be good for a lot, depending on hardware. I pull less than 300 watts with my setup, but adding power consuming devices like a fast GPU can change that. I got my R5 1600 AF from Amazon, surprisingly, and it was $105. There is a difference in the AF and the AE, the AE being an older version that isn't as powerful and is based on the first gen Ryzen where the AE is second gen, or Zen+ as they decided to call it. You want the AF and not the AE though it will be a while before the 3300X runs out of steam if you go that route. I wouldn't worry too much about drive speed, it used to matter but not so much any longer, the gains may not be worth the expense for a NAS. I already had old 7200 rpm drives so I used them. When I upgrade my current Unraid box, it will be ATX instead of the mATX I currently have. I hope to add a Quadro GPU and I am already maxed out on slots. It can happen quick. I am not the person to ask on Intel, the last Intel CPU I used for myself was a 286/12 around 30 years ago. I have avoided them since then. I have built many systems with them for my staff, but don't use them for myself.

My take on your plan is it will work. I would reconsider a few things if the goal is long term upgrade potential. This is only what I would or have done. There are many paths to success. 1. Stay with the B550 because as of right now it will support the next gen Ryzen. The Gen 4 PCIE support isn't a concern today but in 2 years it may make a real difference as will the ability to plug in the next gen CPU. 2. Move up to an ATX or mATX. ITX boards are typically short on slots, both PCIE and Ram. If this server grows you will want to be able to grow it instead of having to swap board and case because of a lack of high speed slots or having to replace all of your memory because you don't have physical room to add. 3. Don't worry about matching PSU to current needs, the PSU will only provide as much power as needed. If the system pulls 420 watts max then a 1000 watt PSU will give it 420 watts, not 1000. Starting with a more powerful PSU will add flexibility for future needs. I am currently running a 650 watt but I only have 5 spinning drives and low power consumption. 4. The 3300X is a good CPU and reportedly fast, but it is 4 cores and 8 threads which may not be enough down the road. You can currently buy a 6 core, 12 thread CPU for $105. The R5 1600AF is structurally a R5 2600 with the same performance. I went this route and have zero complaints. I was considering the 3300X but skipped it. This becomes tricky because a higher clock speed will help with games but a higher core/thread count will help with multiple tasks. 5. Case cooling is important. Whatever form factor you go with, it needs good cooling. This becomes important for the drives. All of my spinning drives are 7200 rpm and I had to change things from my original setup because all of drives were idling in the mid 40's C and cooking when in heavy use. I added a drive cage, 2-5-1/4 x 3-3-1/2 Icy Dock which allowed the hottest drives to be in their own fan cooled cage and allowed me to keep a space between the others for cooling. A fan across tightly packed drives limits cooling. My drives are all in the low to mid 30's now. Having those 5-1/4 bays saved me. 6. You will need a video card to build and setup the system bios, after that you will not have to have one to run and administer the server if you have another computer, notebook, phone, iPad etc. I used a cheap PCIEx1 card that was cheap to get the bios setup. You will only need the keyboard/mouse to setup the system. Your motherboard may require a keyboard to boot, but that is unusual. 7. CPU cooling can be done with the stock cooler. It will work better if the case has excellent cooling. I used a Hyper T4 after switching to the 1600 AF because I had it. If the rest of the system stays cool, it is easier to cool the CPU. If the rest of the system runs hot then the stock cooler may not be enough. I built mine with extra junk from old upgrades, then I upgraded what I needed to. Unraid is very forgiving when it comes to hardware.

I understand the fear...but if the issue repeats you have identified the problem.

I have no idea how it did that, I am a hardware person and am just now diving into the intricacies of Unraid. Can you input the correct I.P. into the config file? Hopefully @itimpi will see this and teach us both.

It won't be fast but for simple storage it will work. My only caution would be the power supply, 300 watts doesn't leave much room for expansion. I bought a 650 watt Corsair last week for $70 from Amazon and it didn't shipping from the UK. Room for expansion may be important later on once you discover everything you can do with the NAS. That processor is bare minimum IMO, a Ryzen 5 1600AF 6-Core, 12-Thread is $105 and will get you by quite a while. 8 gigs of ram will work but that is pretty slow memory. Otherwise it will all work together and would be the bare minimum that works IMO, but it is pushing it on power supply. My advice, if you don't need 12TB of storage, drop a drive and put that money towards a little bit better components, it pays in the long run or upgrade your main computer now and use the R5 2600 in the NAS.

This what I use, it is cheap, simple and doesn't take up a valuable slot. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01E9Z2D60/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Hopefully it is something simple, like the video card not being seated well enough.

That was a good processor and still very usable for Unraid, B450 boards are starting to get back in stock or you can splurge and go X570 and a new processor or wait for what will be an overpriced B550 when it hits the street. Have you ruled out the video card?

What processor are you using, and do you have a different one that will fit the AM4 socket? A processor swap will also force a bios error.

The board may be toast, but it is confusing. The LSI board should boot prior to POST, and I can see if the LSI board had an issue it could prevent the PC Bios from posting, but with it removed and a forced bios error you should get something. That was a pretty good board when it was new but it looks a good time for an upgrade. Which processor are you using?

It is really unusual to not be able to see the boot screen and enter the bios, really unusual.

If it were me, I would disconnect all drives and pull the USB flash drive and all peripheral cards except the display. You may need to force a bios error to be able to get into it. Other ways are pulling the memory, the battery or the keyboard or resetting the CMOS with the correct jumper found in motherboard manual.

I bought a new SAS 9207-8i card from ebay with the appropriate cables. It is more expensive but it simply works. I would post the link but I am not sure if that is allowed. It is easy to search that item in ebay though. I paid $62 for it and another $14 for Amphenol MiniSAS SFF-8087 to 4xSATA cables. No drivers to load, no parameters to change, plug and play if you have an available 8x or larger slot available. I was initially going to go with the items you listed but read enough to understand it wasn't the best solution.

It should not change anything other than you will have more cores and speed to work with. I changed both motherboard and cpu and had zero issues. I have gone from 2 cores to 4 cores and am about to go to 6 cores. I cannot imagine it being different with your setup.

Your hardware list looks fine and not much different than mine. I would not go with a slower CPU, the 3200G isn't very powerful with 4 cores and threads. I am about to swap my 2200G our for a Ryzen 5 1600AF. I would double the ram when you can, it makes a difference IMO.

I built mine with stuff from previous pc builds that got upgraded. I was originally going to use an old A10 processor but remembered the 2200G. The only thing I bought new at the start was the SAS and supporting cables and I just added an icydock for keeping the drives cooler. One of the draws to unraid for me was the ability to use less than stellar parts and still perform the function as intended. By using the AM4 socket I will be able to upgrade the unraid processor when I upgrade my daily driver R5-2600.

It should work fine. I am using a R3 2200G with 16gigs and a B450 for my media server and it has been fine. One thing to note is the number of sata ports, 4 isn't very many. I added a SAS 9207-8i to add more drives. My processor is slower than yours and I have had zero issues with Plex or music.

I assume there is a reason you are wanting a X570 board? I do not see any of the hardware you have listed requiring a X570. The WD M.2 appear to be PCIe Gen 3. While I think it is a smoking board, I also believe you could use a X470 or a B450 with good power management and not suffer at all. My concern with the X570 is the fan required for the chipset and heat management in an already hot environment. With that one question, the rest of the hardware is great.

Thanks for that Meep. Though I know I am far away from making those decisions, your point of view and experience is very welcomed as I have zero experience with it. I briefly looked at JellyFin and it looked like a good option. My wife and I have discussed opening up our media library for our adult children to enjoy in their own homes and that was the initial desire for Plex. We are security minded so that is off the table for now. As I learn more I will revisit letting our family share. My personal view of Plex is it appears bloated and overgrown but that is from someone who hasn't used it yet just watched some video's on it's use. I am glad there are other options. I have converted tons of CD to .wav (almost 5,000 songs) and use Foobar 2000 to enjoy them. I had all of them on my music PC and thought I would enable a share and have a backup copy on my main PC. This of course led me the idea of creating a NAS because of all of the other benefits.

I am new to Unraid and have not even managed an array since the late 90's. The purpose of this server will be for music storage/access and eventually a Plex server for just the network, no outside use. We have an extensive DVD collection and it is unorganized and the physical disks are in multiple locations, the Plex server seems to make sense. The hardware is stuff I have left over from years of upgrades. I believe all of this will work, with some caveats like the MX500 drives and their known issue. If someone sees something I have missed, please speak up, I can take criticism and abuse, one of the benefits of being retired. Thermaltake Core X2 Micro ATX Case Ryzen 3-2200G W/Radeon Vega 8 Graphics MSI B450 Pro-VDH mATX (only 4 SATA Ports) Patriot Viper Steel DDR4 16GB (2x8GB) 3200MHz Rosewill ARC 450 80+ Bronze 2-Crucial MX500 500GB 3D NAND (cache) 2-Hitachi Ultrastar 7K3000 3TB 7200 RPM 64MB (parity) 3-WD Blue 1TB PC Hard Drive - 7200 RPM-WD10EZEX (storage) New stuff waiting on delivery... SAS 9207-8i PCI-E LSI00301 IT Mode Amphenol MiniSAS SFF-8087 to 4xSATA Cables Molex 07-00021-01 MiniSAS SFF8087 4SFF8482 SAS Cables I plan on getting higher capacity drives in the future, but this is what I have for now. I was sad to see that WD has acquired HGST. Those Ultrastar drives were IMO some of the best drives ever made. For grins, I have a Deskstar 500gb that is ancient and still in daily use and reports as in perfect condition. I may pick up more of the 3TB Ultrastars to replace the WD Blue's but who knows. This should all be a good start to learn, and I have a lot of learning to do.