6illes

Hi All, I'm new to Unraid and thinking about building a setup. Requirements: Media storage (movies 4K, tv shows 4K, back up photos from iOS devices) Plex Server (not a hard requirement as I can also run it on the nVidia Shield Pro) Transcoding: be able to transcode at least 1-2x 4K H264/H265/AV1 with or without DV/HDR Applications/OS should be on a SSD Separate SSD caching pool for write actions (read should not be required I believe, I'm not planning any heavy I/O operations) Ability to extend the HDD storage pool with different drive sizes (future proof), simular to Synology SHR1/2 looking to start with at least 50TB of actual usable storage scalable to max. 100TB Low power (as low as possible or similar to a Synology) Low profile, looking for a SFF case with min. 5 and max. 8 bays, ITX and ability to add a GPU if required (Jonsbo , silverstone?) Do I need a raid controller? I understand it's not required with Unraid as it uses its own parity system without any striping? I've been reading a lot through various forums and reddit. I'm still unsure if it's better to go with a decent but less power efficient CPU with iGPU (Intel or AMD) or a very efficient CPU with an external GPU such as nVidia A400 or even A1000 or an Intel ARC? The idle power of the GPU is ofcourse important. I'm reading mixed experiences. For drives I'm thinking Ironwolfes Pro 22TB (256MB Cache)? Many thanks for any recommendations.