hansolo77

I haven't updated the BIOS yet. In my experience, there's really no need to update unless something isn't working right (like you have a new processor that should be supported but isn't in your BIOS version). So far, everything worked just like it should have. As for tweaks, I did change a few things. First, I enabled the XMP for the RAM so I could get the 3600mhz the RAM is set to. I then made sure the correct CPU settings were set for Unraid VM's (there was one setting I had to enable, but I don't remember what it was. Also, I haven't installed any VM's yet, so that's still to come). Another setting I changed was to disable things I don't plan on using, like the onboard wifi and parallel/serial connections, etc. I remember checking for S3 standby but seem to recall there not being a setting for it. The only thing I needed to do on that part was make sure the correct wake settings were made. I tested it, and I can wake the server on WOL now. The only other tweak I did was to lower the temperature settings to use higher fan speeds. Since I'm using Noctua fans, I didn't want things to run hot due to their lower noise. So I set things up like 50% fan when the CPU is at 40c then 65% when I'm at 55c, etc. Its lower than the default. I think it's like 100% everything by the time the CPU is 70c, but I never run that hot anyway, at least not yet. I also set the rear exhaust fans to be on full 100%, rather than control them PWM. Something else I've done is order a pair of 10G NICs and a couple of SFP+ cables. I'll use them to transfer things much faster from the old server to the new. I'm excited about that, I've never had speeds that fast for, can't wait. As a bonus, I'll get a lot more HEAT, so I also ordered another Noctua fan with the soul purpose being to blow directly across the expansion cards. My current server has a 120mm fan blowing down over the cards, but I think it'll be better to blow this new own towards the back vents. So this is a Noctua NF-A14 iPPC-2000. It's 140mm, which should fit perfectly inside the case, and is industrial, 2000 rpm for really high air flow. Depending on how loud this is once I get it installed, I might just go and order 3 more industrial 120's and replace the fanwall if the 3 120's I just got leave the drives running too hot. I just got this guy in the mail so I'm going to install it. There is a PUMP PWM header left on the motherboard I'm going to try first, and if the PCI slots are still too hot, I'll either kick it up to 100% all the time like the exhaust fans, or if that doesn't work I'll just direct attach it to a 4-Pin molex fan breakout I have. Thanks for your feedback and thoughts. I think I'm starting to understand it more. Level 1 splitlevel is the root path you create, and if you set that, then everything in the folder will be on all drives. I did this for things like my "Saved Install Files" and my "Documents" folders. Split Level 2 would be any subfolders under that (like movies/4k and movies/hd), so "movies" and each subfolder can go on any drive, but then any movie in each of those folders get saved on one drive (like movies/4k/star wars/files will all be on one drive, and /movies/4k/empire strikes back/files can be on another drive, while /movies/hd/return of the jedi/files can go on another drive too, but the files will all remain with their parent movie folder). Split Level 3 would be for any subfolders under the 2nd subfolder (like Tvshows/Cartoons/FamilyGuy/Seasons/Episodes). In that example, "TVShows", "Cartoons", and "Family Guy" should be all split to different drives, but "seasons" and their "episodes" should be kept together on a given drive. Then I get "/tvshows/regular/x-files/seasons/episodes" where the set would go "tvshows", "regular", "X-files" all go to whatever drive they need, then "seasons" and "episodes" would stay together on one drive. Does this sound right? 1 - I don't plan on transcoding 4k either. I've yet to transcode and actually have it look right anyway. Not only does the HDR->SDR conversion screw up the colors, but direct streaming that to my TV causes some weird pixelation artifacts. When I do it with my Raspberry Pi 4, the colors are just washed. But using a Firestick 4k and my Xbox One X works great, so I can still stream locally 4k. I just separated out the 4k stuff so when I'm browsing my PLEX library I can know it's 4k vs HD (because it's a separate library). I offer it as a shared library to my brother though in case he wants to watch it, but my bandwith causes him to transcode down anyway. He can still watch it in 4k but at the 10mbps it transcodes to for the lower bitrate. He says he doesn't notice the SDR color washout though. He's just not as techy as my I guess lol. Unless he's got some superior TV that color corrects or something. 2 - Yup sounds like my setup. I have additional folders based on type, but I don't need to. PLEX doesn't care. But I like to have the organization. I originally went with "music/artist/studio" and "music/artist/live" and "music/artist/compilation", etc but that got too messy. Instead, my current setup is "music/type/artist/album/files" where "type" is anything like "studio album", "live", etc. I think this would require a split level of 3, so that up to "artist" can be split to other drives, but then each "album" and it's "files" can be together on one drive. PLEASE CORRECT ME IF I'M WRONG!! 3 - Yeah I never really cared about my photo organization until I got a decent camera. We had a flatbed scanner back in the 90's and I had scanned in all my photos I had with a typical film camera. I had Polaroids and 110 film. Then I got an Advantix film camera around 1999 (I remember because that was our address of a new house we were getting built that same year). I took pictures of that whole building process and that's when I started to better organize my photos so we could have a record of the days we visited the location. Years went by and I got my first true digital camera, then I got a much better digital camera but not an SLR. Now I have an SLR. So my own personal photo collection I've got sorted currently like this: "/photos/name/type/date/pictures". "Name" is either me, my dad, my brother, my stepmom, etc. where we separate who took the pictures. "Type" is for me personally, where I've separated out the format from scanned and what camera took the photo. Then my "date" folder format is "YYYY-MM-DD - Description" so like "2010-12-25 - Christmas at Grandma's". I started using the year/month/day format YEARS ago, and I find it's a much better way to organize than alphabetical first. But it's harder to find that one specific photo from "Grandma's house that one Christmas where Uncle Mike was still alive" because you don't know what year that was, etc. But you can be more descriptive in the title if it helps. I only wish PLEX (or other 10' services for that matter) offered something better for zooming. I think Windows Media Center offered that with the OK remote key, but everything else either rotates the image or starts a slide show. Anyway, my planned split level for this is going to be 3 I think. So that "photos/name/type/" can go on any drive, but then any "date" and "pictures" will stay together on one drive (meaning the folder "2010-12-25 - Christmas at Grandma's" and it's photos will stay together one one drive, while "1999-03-24 - First Drywall Up" and it's photos can be on another drive if need be. Again, PLEASE CORRECT ME IF I'M WRONG!! Lastly, I don't really have any need for a "private" folder as you suggest. The only people I share my PLEX library with are my Dad (who I currently still live with), my Mom (who re-married and lives elsewhere) and my Brother (who moved out, has a wife and kids). Now, if I go and start sharing my PLEX library with say a co-worker, yeah I'll not give them visible access to things like Photos. But PLEX can control all that. As for personal storage though, I do plan on creating a true "USERS" share where I can store personal documents, and my Dad can store his stuff, and my stepmom can store hers, etc. That will be private with a single user access of only them. I have that already setup on my current server so I'll just have to figure out how to do that with Unraid. And yeah, the tip about moving files around. This is a no brainer for people who have been doing this kind of thing for awhile. I've been using Windows Home Server and Windows Server 2012 for about 15 years or so, so I'm familiar with that whole thing. But if I was setting this up for my mom for instance, she'd definitely need to be show that you move files around "on the network" and not "locally" because things like permissions and redundancy get screwed up. But still, thanks for the tip. I'm sure there might be somebody in the future who comes across this thread and needs to see it. Well, thanks a lot everybody for dealing with me and this super long post. I tend to ramble when I'm tired (in case you couldn't tell lol). But yeah, before I get those 10G NIC's in and really start moving data around, I'd really like to know that my grasp of the split leveling is correct. I just really don't want to have to sit and wait for a drive to spin up if I'm binge watching Star Trek because episode 6 is on the first drive and episode 7 is on another.

Wooooo!!! New backplane came in today. They overnighted it to me! All my drives are precleared and ready to go. So I've assigned them to where they need to go and started the array for the first time! It's building it's parity check right now, so I'm just getting ready before I start bringing files over from my old server. That said, I know I'm going to be using PLEX. This server is going to be predominately used for that, with the exception of a VM for Windows Server so I can continue to have backups of my computer. I'm trying to create my file structure to use, and I'm so totally lost with the whole split-level thing. I found the "unofficial manual" and have been trying to wrap my head around it, but I just can't figure it out. I need some help! So here's what I've got: Do I create a root "media" share then put everything into that, or do I create a share for each type of media, like "movies", "tv shows", "music?". I want to have all the files associated with a movie folder to be all on the same drive, but movies themselves can be split among all the drives. I want to have all the epsidoes of a tv show's given season to be on the same drive, but each season can be split among all the drives. /media Movies 4k movie 1 movie 2 Regular movie 3 movie 4 TV Shows Anime & Cartoons Show 1 Season 1 episode 1 episode 2 Season 2 episode 1 episode 2 Show 2 (etc) Live Action Show 1 Season 1 episode 1 episode 2 Season 2 episode 1 episode 2 Show 2 (etc) Music Artist Albums Artist 1 Album 1 Album 2 Artist 2 (etc) Artist Singles Artist 1 Album 1 Album 2 Artist 2 (etc) Compilations Artist 1 Album 1 Album 2 Artist 2 (etc) Photos My Photos Camera 1 Folder Of Date Shot photo 1 photo 2 Camera 2 (etc) Dad's Photos Random Folders/Dates (not very organized) photo 1 photo 2 Mom's Photos Random Folders/Dates (not very organized) photo 1 photo 2 Looking at my current server structure, it's very similar. But rather than have a "media" root folder, I have a series, like "Videos", "Music", "Photos". Maybe that should be how I should do it? I want to make it as simple as possible, yet still have proper split-leveling so I'm not watching episodes of a tv show spread over multiple drives, or listening to music and have to wait for a drive to spin back up to load the next song, etc. Am I just over-complicating this? I have been upgrading to larger capacity drives, so it may not even be an issue. Right now I have the 1x12tb data drive, but will be moving over lots of other drives in varying sizes, 8tb, lots of 4tb, and a few 1.5-2tb. Maybe it's not even an issue.

I've got a response from Nate (TheServerStore). Still gotta give props to them. He said they had over a thousand of these cases come in and go right back out. The demand was so high that they weren't able to thoroughly test them like they usually do. He said it was bound to happen to some of them, I just got a bad draw. But he said he'd get a replacement sent out to me Monday and would use Expedited Shipping. Turn around time for me from them has been about 4 business days. At least, it was on both the chassis and then the power distributor. So Expedited might get me 1-2 days less wait time. If not, it's no big deal. But wow, they're willing to do that for me without even asking. So cool. In the mean time, I've now got the 2x12tb parity drives and 2x1tb M.2 drives all precleared. I just assigned the parity drives so they're ready to go. Until I get the backplane, I've got another 12tb drive about to start it's preclearing for my first true storage drive. I've got a lot more to go but it's going to take time. I'm having to move data off one server over the network (1gb, not 10gb) to the new one, and then as drives clear out I'll be moving them over too. I've never used unraid before, so this is a bit overwhelming. One issue I'm having... I've got both the "Unassigned Devices" and the "Preclear Disks" community addons installed, but I'm not seeing the option on my main screen to do the preclear. I've seen Youtube videos where guys just go to that screen and it's an option next to the drive. I don't see it. Instead, I have to go to the Plugins tab then select the Preclear Disks addon. Is there a setting somewhere I'm overlooking? Or is it maybe because I'm still running the trial? Another thing it might be, although I had the problem before, is that I updated to the latest beta version of unraid so I could get CPU/Motherboard temps. Anyway, things are slowly coming together for me. I'm excited!

Ok, last update before bed. So I contacted the seller about the HBA. "TheArtofServer". Swell guy. He helped me troubleshoot the problem a bit. Apparently the controller is working like it should. There is a lack of communication between the backplane and the controller. Could be with the cables, could be the backplane. He had me go into the controller's settings, where there is a screen you can see the attached devices. It says there aren't any. He said that even without a drive connected, it should still report a connection to the expander chip on the backplane, indicating it as an "enclosure". I'm not getting that. He remembered my issue with the power distributor, because I reached out to him to see if he thought it might be the backplane making the sound. He suspects that the power distributor being blown probably fried the expander chip on the backplane too, which is why it's not able to be detected on the controller. I tested this further by connecting some old forward breakout cables to the HBA. They essentially convert 1 SAS connector to 4 SATA connectors. When I did that, and attached a drive, the controller detected it exactly like it should. So the problem is definitely with the backplane, or the cables, and not the controller card (that's a relief). I agree with him about it being the backplane though. And here's why. When I took a much better look at the backplane, I noticed a chip that was blown with some tell tale scorching around it. Bingo. So the backplane might be getting power, but it's communications are gone. I just sent another email out to Nate to see if he might be willing to do an exchange. If not, I can always get one from TheArtofServer for a decent price. It just sucks I'm going to have to wait even longer now. I'll report back once I hear from Nate. In the mean while, I took some proof pictures with my cellphone and uploaded them to an online album. Feel free to look and judge for yourself. https://ibb.co/album/ScZX9W

They've been good at replacing DOA parts. I really don't think it's a bad backplane. It lights up, front and back. With a drive connected to it, it does spin up. The only part that might be bad would be the connectors that the SAS cables connect to. There should be a buzzer on it that will go off if there is any failure. I just think the problem is further back, like the cables themselves or the controller. Like I said, I contacted the seller of the controller so I'm going to see what he has to say.

Oh my F-G... @#)(H$T I'm so bummed I'm pissed. When I got home today I unboxed another 12tb drive to put into the first drive caddie. At first, it seemed like a struggle to get it to close in place. With the top cover off, I watched very carefully at what was happening. It looks like the backplane wasn't fully secured in the case. In fact, it was held in place by only 1 screw at the top (should have 4) and the 5 screws at the bottom. So when I was trying to insert the drive, it was pushing the backplane away. So for a test, I just held the backplane while I put in the drive. Ok, connection was good right? Powered up, and the stupid HBA comes up saying it couldn't detect any devices! WTF. Also to note, there wasn't any power light on the front of the drive bay to indicate the drive was spinning. If I put my hand on top of the bay, I couldn't feel it spinning either. But, on the back of the backplane, there are 3 lit up LEDs, so I know it's getting power. I took the whole backplane out as a test, and just set it down on it's back with the drive ports facing up. Then I put the drive in a different port. Interestingly, with the setup like that, I could definitely tell the drive was now spinning up, but the HBA controller still isn't detecting any devices attached. I don't know what's wrong. I found the manual online and found a jumper that needs enabled to show the Activity LED's, so I connected that. Now ALL the drive bays are lit up (good I guess to indicate they should all be working). But I'm still not getting any detection on the HBA. I don't know if the backplane is bad, the SAS connectors/cables, or the controller. I don't even know how to test without additional cables/cards. I really don't want to have to buy more stuff just to find out it still does it. ARGH! Anyway....

I've got it mostly assembled. I still need to move over the tuner card from my current server. And yea, I'm just preclearing drives from my old server right now before I start migrating all the data over. As it is right now, I have got the P2200 installed, and used it to configure my BIOS. I haven't installed the PLEX stuff yet, so I don't know how well it will perform. I would imagine it will work just as good if not slightly better. I'm not planning on doing a massive 20+ stream test if that's what you're looking for. But so far, I was able to use it for BIOS and for initial setup of unRaid, if that's helpful. I guess that means the drivers work with it. I didn't need to do any manual driver updating, etc. UnRaid detects it and displays the details like it should. I won't be able to test it's hardware encoding/decoding for quite some time, as I'm just now starting to get drives installed and moving over my data.

Quick update. Got the replacement PDU yesterday and it works perfectly! Starting to preclear my nvme and parity drives!

Same to you - good luck! I've only been in chat/email communication with Nate. He's definitely a good guy near as I can tell. Sounds like they were able to get a build for you too. Hopefully you won't have a defective power distributor. I wasn't aware of any lack of benefits with the SQ's other than they were of lower wattage. I know these are redundant supplies though, not combined. So for me, I'm only getting 920 watts, not 1040.. Should still be adequate I would think. I know they have different distributors that provide different amounts of connector options, but other than that I think they just are lower wattage and quieter fans. >shrug< As for my situation.. I haven't heard anything more from Nate or TheServerStore in the way of a confirmation or tracking number. But I have a strong faith in that company and they've been good to their word so far. Hopefully they will solve my problem.

I did another test. I pulled out my main computer and set it side by side with the server. I wasn't able to get the 8-pin cable loose without having to completely gut the machine. But I got the 24-pin out and connected it to the server motherboard. It powered on. Since I didn't have the 8-pin connected, I didn't want to test fate any more than necessary. The CPU fan powered on with it's RGB stuff. And the case fans came on. Everything looks good. I didn't have video connected so I just turned it off. After that, I pulled out the power distributor to see if I could see any damage. There didn't seem to be anything visible on the front/top of it. But then I took it off the mounting plate and DAMN. It's definitely a bad distributor. I contacted the sales rep at TheServerStore. Before I took the picture he replied back saying it would be no problem to replace. Apparently they have a few damaged chassis to get spare parts from. He's out of the office until Tuesday but said he'd contact them right away to have somebody there get a replacement out quick. That's awesome. I found a few eBay items that were just impossibly expensive because they'd be internationally shipping for like $80. Before Nate said he could get me a replacement, I found a cheaper option on Amazon and was about to click the order button before he replied back. So hopefully I'll get this part in and I'll be good to go. I'll update as things progress. ======= UPDATE ======= Funny thing too. When I first took the top cover off the chassis when I got it, I noticed a slight metallic smell. When I started taking things out, like the fan shroud and fan wall, I noticed the smell was coming from the plastic shroud around the power distributor wires. I didn't think anything of it at the time, chalked it up as a "new case smell". When I started to install the motherboard, I had pulled that shroud cover off to reorganize the wires better. I saw some darker splotches at the top of the shroud that smelled even stronger of that metallic smell. I figured it was just because it is an old chassis and had been used and that was just some dust or something that got stuck on the inside. So yeah, I think this was DOA and not something I had done wrong. I just hope that when I get the replacement I don't do something to screw it up, in case it WAS me.

I definitely think it's a bad power distributor. I just tested the 24-pin connector with a multimeter. When I test the +12v leads I'm getting some crazy numbers like 67-68v. When I test the +3v leads I'm getting only about 1v. The +5v leads don't even register. Granted, I could be doing it completely wrong, but I watched some youtube videos where they're testing on GOOD power supplies and I'm not getting anything like what I should be expecting.

Yes I tested with nothing connected. I just touched the leads.

I don't know yet. Today was build day. Newegg finally delivered my motherboard and ram. When I got off work I started putting things together. I went bare basics first. Just motherboard in the chassis, cpu, and then the ram. Connected the power cables and the front panel. Then I powered it on. AND.... 😛 There was a beep and a tiny blue LED on the backplane but nothing else. Connecting the power supplies to the motherboard gave me a nice lit up led on the motherboard, so I knew it was getting power. But I'm completely lost now as to what's going on. I initially thought the backplane was where the beep was coming from, so I googled that. Some other people had similar situations. Theirs were related to things like the backplane not liking the fans of the fan connected to the motherboard instead of the backplane, etc. I tried that. There's also a jumper you can set to disable the fan check. Tried that too. Nothing. Then I thought I'd just disconnect everything that uses power, and just test the power supplies. I looked online to be sure, and used a set of pliers to force close the pins on the 24-pin connector that trip the power-on with ground. Sure enough, it does the same thing. Beeps then dies. So I don't know if I've got a bad power distributor or 1 or 2 bad power supplies. Would explain why the original company that owned it would have recycled to TheServerStore. I'm just not sure though. It's my understanding that TheServerStore fully cleans and tests their products before shipping. So either I screwed something up (unlikely) or the power supplies or distributor got damaged after they tested it. For all I know it could have been damaged during shipping. I did notice that one of the power supplies was crushed a little, causing it to be very difficult to extract. But these are redundant, so I tested them one at a time with the other pulled partially out.. still nothing. I tried to contact SuperMicro's web chat, but their office was closed. It's possible they're going to be closed all weekend. But I did request in their bot chat to have them contact me. I gave them the details about the chassis, the power supplies, and the distributor. Hopefully I'll get a response back in email. But as it stands, I have a nice case with nice parts, with no power.

I did receive the case. Have a look here. I really appreciate the offer Nate was able to do for me. I don't recommend trying it though, simply because he indicated to me that they DO want to try to keep the prebuilt systems as prebuilt. However, I was fully ready to buy a prebuilt system too, just though I'd see if he could do anything. Honestly, a prebuilt system isn't that bad, they come with 2 processors and fully loaded with RAM. But since I was initially going to to build with new parts (mobo/ram/cpu) I was hopeful to get a barebones. I was just going to gut out their parts and maybe flip them on eBay. So that's definitely still an option. Ebay/Craigslist has listings all the time too. The main reason I wanted TheServerStore though is because my last case I bought off eBay arrived damaged because of how it was packed. TheServerStore packs their stuff using a "Foam-In-Place" system that protects all the edges. I did notice the front plate has a small bend in it, but overall it's a HUGE improvement over what I had before. I'm very happy it. That's good to hear about the cache drives. I'm still not sure about a good capacity. The motherboard I bought (still shipping) has 3 M.2/NVMe slots. I did order a 1tb Samsung EVO PRO 970. Initially I was thinking of 2 cache and then an OS drive. But, I've changed that over to just the 2 cache and decided to use the new 1tb drive as a Plex metadata drive. I'm thinking about just going with more 1tb EVO PRO drives. The reason being, smaller capacity drives have a much smaller onboard flash cache that improves the writing speed when transferring files. So much smaller in fact, that in video's I've seen it literally kills off the speed after like 10 seconds. I don't want that to happen. 1tb seems to be a good medium versus cost. 2tb drives are even better with the cache size but they're WAY more expensive too. So that's what I think I'm going to do unless I can be convinced otherwise. As my build stands right now, I've got most of the main hardware stuff. The motherboard, ram, and 120mm fans are coming from Newegg and have been sitting with a label on it's box since Saturday (it's now the following Thursday) in their California warehouse waiting for UPS to pick up. I'm starting to get upset about it because I ordered everything on Friday and the following day it said the label/tracking was made, and they STILL haven't picked up yet. From Amazon, I've already got the processor, exhaust fans, P2200 GPU, and a 16gb Kingston flash drive (along with a motherboard mounting USB cable). From eBay I got the motherboard front panel adapter and the HBA controller card. These have all been delivered. So right now I'm just waiting on UPS to pick up and start shipping the motherboard and ram. While waiting on UPS, I've also started to order some other parts. When I got the chassis, I took the cover off and saw that there ARE mounting holes for 2 of the 3.5" hard drive caddies along the power supply wall. So I've ordered 2 of them. Of course, I ordered them from Newegg because Amazon and eBay wanted WAY to much for them, and I got free shipping. Surprisingly, it showed shipped the next day, and according to the tracking it's already half way here and expected to be delivered Monday. Other parts I've been getting include some 4-Pin Molex splitters and 4-pin to 15-pin SATA power adapters. The PDU looks like it comes with enough connectors for the backplane (already installed) plus 1 extra standard 4-pin. Then it has 1 24-pin connector and 1 8-pin connector for the motherboard. My motherboard requires 2 8-pin connectors so I ordered a splitter for that as well. I don't know how well it will perform, but hopefully 2x920w power supplies should be enough to drive 5 fans, 24 drive bay drives, 2x3.5" power wall drives, and a small collection of 2.5" ssd drives. I still need to figure out how to handle those. I might just dangle them for the time being. So... yeah that's where I'm at.

Hey guys, sorry for the multiple threads. I wanted to get input at the various stages of my build parts. I pulled the trigger on TheServerStore, eBay, NewEgg, and Amazon!! Parts are in shipping status, not yet received. Here is the planned build: Case SuperMicro 4U CSE-846 Barebone with 2x PWS-920P-SQ Redundant Power Supplies - (link) PLANNED ADDITIONS: 2x Single 3.5" Fixed HDD Tray (or) 1x Dual 2.5" Fixed HDD Tray (depends on what model revision my case will be when I get it) - (link) or (link) These will hold my 2x 12tb Parity Drives, or if I determine I can't have 2x 3.5" drives, it will hold one of them and the 2.5" drives will be for things like VM's and Plex Metadata 2x Noctua NF-A8 PWM 80mm Fans - (link) These are going to be installed on the back of the case to vent case heat. 3x Noctua NF-A12x25 PWM 120mm Fans - (link) These are replacing the current fan wall. Hopefully this will be a quiet system. Motherboard MSI MEG X570 UNIFY AM4 AMD X570 SATA 6Gb/s ATX AMD Motherboard - (link) SELLING POINTS: Support for 128gb DDR4 RAM (ECC or not), up to 4600Mhz Support for 3rd Gen Ryzen CPU Needed for Ryzen CPU 3x PCIe 4.0/3.0 16x Slots Needed for GPU and HBA Controller 2x PCIe 4.0/3.0 1x Slots (although only 1 can be used at a time) Needed for TV Tuner 3x M.2/NVMe 4.0/3.0 4x Slots Needed for unRaid Cache and OS (or) Plex Metadata, etc. CPU AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12-core, 24-thread unlocked desktop processor with Wraith Prism LED Cooler - (link) SELLING POINTS: 12 Cores, 24 Threads - Great for Plex transcoding and VM's 3rd Gen Ryzen - Stable History 4.6 GHz - Super Fast! PCIe 4.0 Ready - Great for my needs! It was on sale. RAM G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 64GB (2 x 32GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3600 (PC4 28800) Intel XMP 2.0 Desktop Memory Model F4-3600C18D-64GVK - (link) SELLING POINTS: DDR4 3600 MHz The 16GB size is on the motherboard's compatible list 1/2 the total I can install, a good starting point No fancy RGB crap I don't need inside a server case adding extra cost It was on sale. GPU PNY NVIDIA Quadro P2200 - (link) OOPS! SH!T I meant to get the P2000. Hopefully this is compatible with the modded firmware/driver thing people are using with Plex. If not, I'll have to return it. SELLING POINTS: Does not require additional power (pretty sure my case's PDU doesn't come with enough plugs for it). Can be modded to drive a lot more Plex hardware transcoding (hopefully) ...comes with a fan? I guess?.... not really a whole lot of selling point details needed. Might be useful for gaming inside a VM? HBA Controller Lenovo 03X4446 9217-8i 6Gbps SAS PCI-E 3.0 HBA P20 IT Mode ZFS FreeNAS unRAID - (link) SELLING POINTS: Preflashed to IT mode - Excellent because I don't know how to do that and might screw it up! Based on the LSI SAS2308 SAS controller chipset 6Gbps Speed Utilizes standard SFF-8087 plugs so I don't need to order different cables 2x internal (vs 1 internal and 1 external or 2 external) SFF-8087 connectors carrying x4 SAS lanes each for a total of x8 lanes Case backplane has a built in expander, so I should only need 1 connector to drive all 24 bays. Using the 2nd connector may or may not make transfers faster, have to research more. If not, I could end up using it to connect to an external plug and bring it to another 24 bay case. The only next upgrade would be to get the SAS3008 controllers which would: Upgrade speeds to 12Gbps (Only useful if I had 24xSSD drives) Require different cables (SFF-8643 -> SFF-8087) Require a different backplane to support the 12Gbps Cost a lot more. So that's where I'm at now. I also have said 2x 12TB drives for the Parity, as well as an assortment of 24x drives varrying from 4TB to 8TB. I also have a 4x SSD drive collection that holds my current server's OS; a dedicated "download" drive (essentially like unRaid's cache), a dedicated Plex drive, and a dedicated VM drive. The part I need help with now is the M.2/NVMe drives. I definitely want to use 2 of the slots for unRaid's cache. But I'm not sure what I should get. I don't want to buy more than I need. What is a good base level? 256GB, 512GB, 1TB? From watching many Youtube videos, I've learned it's best to not utilize the cache drives when first dumping files from one server to the other, but after that? I do a lot of BluRay/DVD rips on my main computer then dump them over to my server currently. The filesizes are rather large, but I don't forsee having to do more than 60GB per. But, I do occasionally do many at a time. So I don't think something like 120GB would be sufficient. I'm thinking the 256GB might be a little small too, but I'm not sure. What is the average size most people are getting? As for the other M.2/NVMe slot, I was going to go with a drive just for the OS. But it looks like that's going to be tremendous overkill for unRaid. I could put in a 512GB or 1TB for Plex metadata though. My current metadata drive is a 1TB SSD which already has about 200GB on it (I also use this to store my recorded TV/PVR stuff). I'm trying to think of a good use for this that I know I'll have in my future. I know I'll have VM's, specifically one that runs Windows Server so I can continue to make backups of my computer. So I think if I move the Plex metadata off the SSD and onto an M.2/NVMe it would not only make things run faster, it will free up the SSD for using those VM's on a dedicated disk rather than having them be in the pool. Thoughts? I absolutely appreciate all the help and community input for my build so far. It's only been 2 or 3 people but it really has helped me make the right decisions. I just need this last bit of help with recommending the right solution for the M.2/NVMe for cache and I'll be "off to the races"! After that, it's just a matter of getting everything in, built, and running. Thanks again!