Zonediver

Nice Graphs - what exactly is this or how do you measure these values?

I tested my HBA on various ASRock-Boards and they worked all well - but its an original LSI-Controller... So (maybe) try this brand and Boards... But... it might be tricky to find (a working) one for this old CPU...

...using unraid since 2010 without ECC-RAM and never had problems... So for me, it's useless... but it comes "for all" with DDR5 👍

500GB min. See my Signature - using a SSD 970 Pro with 512GB. And avoid Kingston SSDs - some of them have problems with Linux (the A2000 for example).

A Cache-SSD is "mandatory" in my opinion. .) It holds all Dockers .) It caches Plex-trancoded data (if not transcoded to RAM) .) It holds all stuff what you move from your PC to unraid, and then the Mover can move it to the array - so it "speeds up" your File-Transfer. So its one of the most important drives for unraid.

Buy it and try it

Yep - Parity-disk must be in the "Parity-Slot" - rest doesn't matter 👍 In other words: Be careful to asign the "right Disk" to the Parity-Slot! This has nothing to do with the SATA-Connector - unraid identifies the disks by their serial numbers. So check the SN from the Parity-Disk and asign it to the Parity-Slot 👍

You are right... i didn't see the "TrueNAS" and was thinking about "unraid-to-unraid"

Yes - just "switchover" your disk and done - Beware the position of the Parity-Drive!

If you are an "expert", you can use AMD-hardware - when you know what to expect... I stay away from AMD since 11(!) years because there are a lot of restrictions and other strange things... Regarding Plex: If you plan to use HW-transcoding, go for Intel and a iGPU - at least a system with a Gen 7 CPU (with Intel HD630 Graphic) or newer.

Thats very important - take the advantage of this "more powerfull" iGPU. The iGPU on the i7 is way to old and doesn't have a good quality compared with the HD630 from the i5. The question is now, what is more important - CPU-power or iGPU-power

Just one thing to mention: The i5 has a modern iGPU - this makes HW-Transcoding for Plex much more powerfull. So in this case i would take the i5, if HW-transcoding is a thing for you.

Depends... Both CPUs are very old - but i would take the "more cores CPU" 👍 RAM-Speed is not relevant on Intel-CPUs and it doesn't matter for unraid... But that's just my opinion

Its not a secret - this "fact" is mentioned in every AMD Mainboard-Usermanual 🤣 Here an Example of an ASRock B550 Board:

Thats not a question of RAM-speed, its a question of the platform. On "all AMD-platforms" the RAM-speed goes down if you use more then two RAM-Sticks - That's the crux of the matter with AMD systems.