hoppers99

I did definitely look at the AMD side of things. My last build was AMD and price wise it would have likely come out cheaper. But I wanted this to be a flexible and generally lower-effort machine to run and I still see a lot of people having to work harder than ideal to get things working or performing on AMD at the moment. I can't remember where but I found someone on here summarised it basically along the lines of; you can get it to work either way, but AMD might require some effort to get it going where Intel will just work. If I had more time and inclination to put more effort into things, I would happily go with AMD and save a few $ along the way, but I wanted something that would pretty much do the things I asked out of the box, and this build has definitely done just that. The only things I'm planning to change on it is to swap the two Intel SSD's (2nd Cache) out for a couple more 10TB Red storage since I have almost filled my 30TB and trying to add capacity while keeping those will require an expansion card (I'll likely add 1 drive at a time, maybe going more than 10TB depending what deals I can get to up parity and capacity). I'm also about to order some more RAM - while the 16GB is plenty for running Unraid and all the docker stuff, I've ended up probably running more (finding more to run) than I had expected, so when I load up a VM that I want to commit some memory to things get a little constrained. A new GPU is still on the list but to be honest using the iGPU for transcoding has worked well (I have had the occasional issue with the green artefacts that are discussed in elsewhere on here, but it's only been a couple of movies I've seen it on so not looked too deep into it yet) and the old GTX 950 has worked perfectly fine for my Windows VM and running StarCraft 2, so I'll probably wait until availability picks up more and prices stabilise before I worry too much about that one. Unless I find a better game I want to play :D. No doubt once I get the new RAM and have the VM running more commonly I'll start to find drivers for improved GPU. Other than that it's running great - CPU and MB temps sitting around 35C atm and the fans are about 40% and barely audible, so I don't have a need for more cooling yet, probably look/lighting will be more a driver for LED fans than the actual cooling requirement! I'll try and do an update on the container setup I have operating this afternoon and detail a little more of how things are going etc. actually. Since it was one of the things I didn't know what I'd end up running as there are some great tools I hadn't come across yet!

I have finally seen the dashboard show the iGPU as doing something, after I finally got hardware transcoding for Plex going. I did do what may have been an otherwise redundant modprobe, but after next reboot I’ll see if it’s still behaving or confirm if the modprobe played a part.

Easily 11, however I'd need 5 more trays than comes with the case. And the 2x 2.5" in addition. I'm pretty sure I'd need to do some more work on cooling in a decent way if I was to fully load it though. That's part of my plan. I got the VM and passthrough working great. However I came out the next morning to find the screen off and when I looked in unRaid the VM was paused. I assumed the VM had just tried to go to sleep or something so I may need to tweak the power settings, but when I tried to start it again it froze my entire unraid server so that all I could do was hard reset the entire server! And when it finally started again, the VM tab was disabled. I'm nervous to try again but by all accounts it's certainly doable so my journey continues!

I've come across https://github.com/P3R-CO/openrgb-container which seems promising for my RAM, but thee OpenRGB site suggests they no longer support Mystic Lights as there are different implementations and basically, you can brick things. It comes with lots of warnings in general so I'm hoping to try look at it and read up when I have a good chunk of time rather than rushing... I don't fancy breaking things just for a bit of colour control lol. If I get it working though, I'll probably aim for things listed as compatible when I eye up some colour fans. I did wonder that but I'd expect to at least see something for GPU clock or something. No doubt I've missed something but I'll spend some time RTFM/support threads to see if I've overlooked something obvious to start with.

Oh that is a nice motherboard. I think it was one I looked but but iirc price drove me to where I ended up. Those do look very nice. I was debating something like https://lian-li.com/product/uni-fan-sl/ as I had seen a nice looking build with them but of course the trouble with RGB is being able to control them from unRaid! I haven't done any research yet but I was planning to see if there were some I could pass through the controller to a windows VM to program and then just let them do their thing from there. And volume/noise will be a factor in the end selection as I still want to keep the noise levels down. Single colour may end up being the practical choice at the end of the day. Awesome thanks, I'll check that out! Have you had any joy with stats from the iGPU? I've installed the gpu_top plugin and added the component to the dashboard but as yet it gives me nothing. Haven't spent any time trying to debug yet, but it's still on the list. Slightly behind getting Plex to use the iGPU for HW transcoding

I haven’t had that particular one, but I did accidentally turn on large tooltips on another page by clicking the info icon up near the top right corner (along side the terminal icon, feedback, etc.) so toggling that may help.

After my trusty old NAS started throwing errors (the drives did have a run time of around 7.5 years so they had done okay) I did some emergency backing up to a QNAP I acquired, but ran unRaid on it as a trial. It went so well that I brought Pro within days, and planned a new server to allow me to decommission that NAS and ~12 year old box (my last custom build) that did little more than create noise and draw power, and almost as a secondary function ran Plex) both of which were maxed out for storage space and lacked much transcoding ability. The QNAP had 20TB with all the drives I cobbled into it (most of which were probably approaching failure also), and emptying both the old NAS and server left around 300GB, so that wasn't going to cut it, and it was a rack mount noisy beast that at night had a hum that could be heard in the other end of the house with no virtualisation support! The plan was for a new build to not only expand the storage I had, and up the specs to handle more transcoding, but that also: Was quiet enough to live in the office instead of the garage Would run a Windows VM with GPU passthrough to be a new daily driver for some light gaming (I am otherwise typically a Mac laptop user) Could run home automation bits, Zabbix, and some other dockers which would also allow me to decommission a 3rd computer (linux box) I had running as a bit of management server. Would hopefully use less overall power than those 3 machines combined. This is yet to be tested, but when I started speccing options, my debate was either quiet enough to live in the office and replace all 3 machines, or low power oriented (and maybe noisy) in the garage but requiring another new daily driver; obviously quiet won out. Build updated with additions up to 21-08-19 OS at time of building: unRAID 6.9.2 Pro CPU: Intel Core i9-11900K 3.5GHz 8-Core [Intel Ark | PBTech | Benchmark] CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 82.5 CFM CPU Cooler [Noctua] Motherboard: MSI MAG z590 Torpedo ATX LGA1200 MB [MSI] RAM: Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 48GB (2 x 16GB, 2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 [Corsair] GPU: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 950 2 GB WINDFORCE 2X Video Card (from parts on hand, while the bank balance recovers) [Gigabyte] Case: Fractal Design Define 7 Dark ATX Mid Tower Case [Fractal Design] Power Supply: Corsair HX Platinum 850W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX PSU [Corsair] Fans: 3 stock fans with the case plus 2 on the Noctua. Parity Drive: 1x Western Digital Red Pro 10TB 3.5" 7200RPM [WD] Data Drives: 5x Western Digital Red Pro 10TB 3.5" 7200RPM [WD] Cache Drives: 2x Crucial P2 1TB M.2-2280 NVME SSD [Crucial] Other: Fan Controller: iCue Commander Pro [Corsair] (Comments on my experience on this in a post below) In-Case Lighting: iCUE LS100 Smart Lighting Strip Starter Kit [Corsair] Primary Use: Plex and friends (Radarr, Sonarr, qBittorrent, SABnzbd, Overseerr, Gaps), general file store/backup, and Windows gaming (lite) VM (Windows VM shut down while I'm preclearing some disks that its storage is being moved to, but otherwise It's been running well) Likes: Very quiet, should have plenty of power to experiment with. And I like the look. Also, I was worried that the z590 and 19-11900K might be too new to be well supported by unRaid, so I quite like that it actually works!! Dislikes: Other than my cabling skills to work with the available space, not a thing! Actually, it's just that as I've added things, I've not shut down and cabled nicely, I've tried to keep downtime minimum at the cost of tidiness. Future Plans: [Done] Get hardware transcoding going [Done] Trying to get a Win10 VM with GPU passthrough going (Result: It worked easily and well. I did have to set power settings to not turn off otherwise I'd have to use other machine to power it on from Unraid again which makes sense but I didn't consider first boot) [Still todo] Also getting back to Home Automation [Done] Need to see how the temp's go and determine if more cooling is required (Result: More not "needed" but looking to add some for redundancy and future proofing) [Still todo] Probably move my website back to internal hosting [In Progress] Lighting has never really been my thing, but this case was cheaper with the glass, so perhaps I'll get some more RGB fans or something to brighten it up (Update: Lighting Strips don't position particularly well around the edges of the case. Still playing with layouts that hide the lights but light the case. More to be done, possibly use more top-of-case RGB fans to assist) [New/In Progress] Good authenticated/authorised external access portal to expose the likes of Overseer to specific friends. [New/todo] Setup mail services so I can move all my accounts from GSuite/Office365 (I have a number of accounts) possibly based on Mailcow [New/todo] Migrate my old Zabbix config and get it running in docker form [New/todo] Start researching expansion cards. I'm filling space fast and don't have any more usable on-board SATA, so expansion will require a card and that's an area I'm just not familiar enough in yet so I expect more research than I'd really like 🤣 Power Consumption: (Still needs to be both measured better, and updated for latest additions) Boot (peak): 156W (very briefly. Mostly about 123W) Idle (avg sample): 97W with drives running, 82W with 2 drives sleeping (3rd was too active to get a decent read with it down). Both with 13 various docker containers running. Active (avg sample): 130W to 250W, average around 170W running a Windows 10 VM with GPU passthrough, playing Starcraft 2. Light use (avg sample): Samples between 82W and 130W, mostly around 92W watching a movie with Plex. Measured with a rather crappy TP-Link smart plug so subject to my poor sampling.

Have a look for "Connection Settings" under settings. Similar to connecting your Indexer and Download Client, this area will give you options to connect Plex in a similar way. My setup currently has Radarr/Sonarr successfully communicate the requirement for a file to the Download Client, and then moves it into the correct location for Plex to see it when the download is complete, then updates Plex to make it available. If you get stuck I can confirm more specific settings/setup when I'm back home this evening but there were a number of good guides around google that I used to get mine setup.

I can only speak to my recent experience with plex/unraid on a new build, but I have not had any issues for users with disks having to spin up other than maybe a few extra seconds load time. Basically nothing the user has noticed. My disclaimer is I've only been running this setup for a bit over a week so issues may yet arise, but I tested the loading as a specific curiosity of mine before I moved my content over to this server en-masse. As for scanning new files, I disabled the periodic checks and either manually start a scan if I have added new content to a library, or I use Sonarr/Radarr to update the library itself when they add new content as they will be my main source moving forward. They seem much more efficient at just telling Plex "here's this new thing I just added for you" rather than Plex having to rescan everything. Depending on how long your scans take, and your spindown time, I imagine this should still be achievable, however I would be wary of the "monitor for changes" setting as I can only imagine how this would behave in an unraid world (I haven't tested, purely a thought exercise says there is more room for error with that one without understanding how the fuse filesystem works in more detail).

Okay, I've been doing more and more iterations of options and I've arrived at the below. Does anyone have any warnings before I start pressing "buy now"? And I acknowledge some of it is likely overkill, but I'm hoping to have something that will last a good while and not end up resource constrained within a couple of years slowing what I can do). CPU: Intel Core i9-11900K 3.5GHz 8-Core (Intel Spec here, Passmark 25701) CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 82.5 CFM CPU Cooler (Noctua Spec here) Motherboard: MSI MAG z590 Torpedo ATX LGA1200 MB (MSI page here, Intel Z590 chipset spec) Video Card: Palit GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB Dual Video Card (Palit page here) (to be used for VM passthrough - iGPU to be used for unraid) Memory: Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 (Corsair page here) Storage: 3x Western Digital Red Pro 10TB 3.5" 7200RPM (WD page here) 2x Crucial P2 1TB M.2-2280 NVME SSD (Crucial page here) (short term will run 2x 250GB Intel SSD but intend to replace with these for cache) Case: Fractal Design Define 7 Dark ATX Mid Tower Case (FD page here) PSU: Corsair HX Platinum 850W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX PSU (Corsair page here) Intended usages: Plex/sonarr/radarr/etc with up to ~5 1080p transcode jobs Win10 VM (with GPU passthrough) Home Automation and various other docker containers Basic bloc diagram:

I've had unRaid running happily for less than a week but already see the potential. Sadly, the hardware I have on hand does not necessarily meet the capability that unRaid can wield! So a new build is in order! I tried, without luck (it was a long read, Im not surprised), to get some guidance in a prior post, but in lieu of that I've tried to piece ideas together to achieve a solid build. I'm looking to do: Host Plex/Radarr/Sonarr/etc. A VM or 3; particularly looking to have a windows VM with GPU passthrough as my daily driver and for some gaming. Other docker bits around Home Automation etc. Nextcloud. Telegraf/InfluxDB/Grafana, Trilium, MariaDB, PiHole Stretch goals of ingesting data from my security camaras, and really nice would be some object recognition (a la Frigate) Also I'd like something that doesn't sound like a Harrier Jump Jet on takeoff... Not sure that either of these will tick all the boxes but I came up with 2 options as a starter. Any hints, thoughts on where I should look to scale up or down etc. would be appreciated. If I'm spending this much I would like to make sure it's well spent and likely to succeed! (Differences in red) Option 1 (iGPU for plex transcoding, additional video card for passthrough) : CPU: Intel Core i9-11900K 3.5 GHz 8-Core Processor CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 82.5 CFM CPU Cooler Motherboard: MSI Z490-A PRO ATX LGA1200 Motherboard (https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/Z490-A-PRO/) Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB Video Card Power Supply: Corsair HX Platinum 850 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply Case: Fractal Design Meshify 2 ATX Mid Tower Case Storage: Cache: 2x Crucial P2 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive Data: 3x Western Digital Red Pro 10 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive Option 2 (Probably relying on CPU for transcoding still, until I add a 2nd video card perhaps) : CPU: Intel Core i9-10940X 3.3 GHz 14-Core Processor CPU Cooler: DARK ROCK PRO 4 Motherboard: Asus Prime X299-A II (https://www.asus.com/motherboards-components/motherboards/prime/prime-x299-a-ii/) Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Dual Palit GPU (1 initially, second after the wallet recovers a little) Power Supply: Corsair HX Platinum 850 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply Case: Fractal Design Meshify 2 ATX Mid Tower Case Storage: Cache: 2x 250GB SSD SATA (from my existing parts) Data: 3x Western Digital Red Pro 10 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive Either option may need an expansion card to add some more drives over time; I haven't looked into that part yet. It's been a long time since I've done a home-build so getting my head around current options has been a stretch, so be brutal, I've probably messed up plenty and may need to go back to the drawing board several more times!