astromd77

Thanks garycase. Great advice.

Thanks hugenbdd, my goal is to save money on the fees of hosting data with my current provider. I looked into Amazon Cloud Drive on the Plex forums and the results weren't favorable, especially on the Mac. People reported stuttering and buffering, even with good connections. I used to use Bitcasa many moons ago and had similar issues, even though the latency and throughout between the data center and Bitcasa was excellent.

Thank you, everyone, for your insights. Most of my media is 720p or 1080p H.264 encodes from BluRay sources in MKV or MP4 containers. I think the i3 should be fine. The only other scenario I can think of where I might want more horsepower is to run a Windows VM since we don't have any Windows systems and there are occasions where we might need to have one. Then again, we could just run one locally on our MacBook's when we need to. I'm going to explore the UnRaid feature set and see how others are using theirs before I commit to the i3. On the storage end, I'll mull it over, but I get your point about managing less drives.

Thank you garycase! I've tweaked the list a bit to remove the video card and the cooler. I'm working on the drives now. I have a new part list with three Red 4 TB drives to get me started. I feel like the 6 TB drives (even at the Green level) don't offer any more bang for the buck. As prices go down and the cost per GB goes down I'll add larger drives. Any case for getting the larger drives now?

Thanks, tdallen, for your thoughts. I'm not looking at the Synology any more based on your feedback. I am seriously considering building it to replace the Mac Mini. It could be easier to maintain my system if I have all the components on a single device. I'd have to determine if the i3 could handle my transcoding requirements for Plex and for the couple of other services I use (NZBGet and Sonarr). I only have a couple of clients running against my Plex server, so the needs aren't great. If so, I could see not having to use the Mac Mini at all.

Thank you for the feedback. I think you're right about that case. I'm going to spend a little more. At this point, I wonder how much of a savings this will be compared to a Synology or something similar.

Thanks for the info. I'm beginning to think the Silverstone is too much for me right now. Maybe the Refine R4 or R5. I'll look into it.

I put this smaller build together as an alternative, to get me started. PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant CPU: AMD 3850 1.3GHz Quad-Core Processor ($29.95 @ SuperBiiz) CPU Cooler: ARCTIC Alpine M1 Fluid Dynamic Bearing CPU Cooler ($9.99 @ Amazon) Motherboard: ASRock AM1H-ITX Mini ITX AM1 Motherboard ($48.99 @ SuperBiiz) Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($22.99 @ Amazon) Storage: Western Digital Green 6TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($221.99 @ SuperBiiz) Storage: Western Digital Green 6TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($221.99 @ SuperBiiz) Case: Fractal Design Define Mini MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($79.99 @ NCIX US) Power Supply: Cooler Master 550W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($55.98 @ Newegg) Total: $691.87 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-28 16:58 EST-0500

Hi there! I've been hosting my Plex Server at a colocation facility and I'm hitting their barriers for storage. Therefore, I'm looking to move my Mac Mini Server that hosts Plex down to my house and adding a separate NAS for storage. All of the transcoding will still run on the Mac Mini, I just need a place to store the data. I am currently using 6 TB and I'd like room to grow, possible to 20TB, eventually. I'm not planning on doing VM's or Dockers (I don't think--since I have all that working on my Mac Mini). Here's what I have so far: PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant CPU: Intel Core i3-4160 3.6GHz Dual-Core Processor ($113.89 @ OutletPC) CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-L9i 57.5 CFM CPU Cooler ($44.33 @ Newegg) Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H97N-WIFI Mini ITX LGA1150 Motherboard ($111.99 @ SuperBiiz) Memory: Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($64.99 @ Newegg) Storage: Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($104.89 @ OutletPC) Video Card: EVGA GeForce 8400 GS 1GB Video Card ($29.49 @ SuperBiiz) Case: Silverstone DS380B Mini ITX Tower Case ($147.99 @ Directron) Power Supply: Silverstone 500W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular SFX Power Supply ($94.99 @ NCIX US) Total: $712.56 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-28 13:18 EST-0500 I am trying to stay around 700 for the initial build that provides 12 TB. Thoughts? Are there any components here that are overkill? I'm eyeing the CPU but not sure if I should go with something less powerful. Also, not sure I really need 16 GB memory.