HellDiverUK

Just be aware many 8TB drives lack the mounting holes required to properly mount in a Node 304.

My server is using 348MB on the USB, and that's been in use for several years. 2GB is plenty.

To be fair, Intel's chipsets haven't really changed much in the last 10 years.

No, you're not missing anything. NVMe (or the defunct AHCI PCIe SSDs) won't use up a SATA port. I'm running a NVMe SSD for my cache (an old 950 Pro 512GB), and have all 6 SATAs available on my TUF Z370-Pro Gaming board. I tried a Maximus Hero Z370 board which has 8 SATA and they all worked along with two NVMe SSDs.

Install trial version, see if it works. Your proposed method of running is a pretty fringe use case. I don't see why it wouldn't, though, just ignore the NVMe RAID in unRAID.

My Ryzen board has 8 SATAs - 6 from the chipset, 2 from the SOC.

Well, I'd have to argue with Squid, I ran a R5 1600 for a month or so, and it was as stable as the Intel machines once C-states were disabled. My only reason for going back to Intel was idle power consumption, which was more than double on the AMD compared to the Intel i5.

Well, I ended up going for an R5-1600, but power consumption was too high, well over double the i5-6500T machine it replaced. I've since swapped the R5 for an shiny new i5-8400 and no problems to report.

There's not real issues with Ryzen now - either turn off C-states in BIOS, or add the zenstates command in your go file. Stable as a stable thing if you do either of those. My only issue with Ryzen is a high idle power consumption, or at least it was on my Strix X370-F board. Probably better on a B350 or whatever the cheaper boards have.

I just changed over to the setup in my signature - i5-8400, Asus TUF Z370-Pro Gaming board. Heatsink is a Arctic Freezer 13 CO, which I have set to have the fan stopped in normal use using Q-Fan in the board's BIOS. All case/drive cooling is via two 140mm Corsair ML140 fans in the front of the Define R5 case. PSU is a very over-kill Corsair RM750, but it does have a fan that only runs at high load. Its basically silent, and idles around 25W. I was running a Ryzen 5 1600, with the stock cooler and it was quiet and fast too, just used nearly 80W of power idling - possibly due to having to disable C-states to make it not crash.

I ran a Ryzen 5 1600 for about a month, but just swapped back to Intel - I got a cheap Z370 board and an i5-8400. The Ryzen was using over double the power of the i5, the R5 idles at about 75W, where the i5 idles at 32W. The i5 can also do transcoding with a lot less power consumption, which is better for me as most of my home runs off solar power all day, and I'd rather be using free electricity when at all possible. Other than the higher power consumption, I had no problems at all with the Ryzen, worked really well. I'm considering getting one of the new Ryzen2 chips for my workstation, to replace the i7-5960X which is pretty hard on power, but it performs great so I'll have to see how Ryzen2 compares performance wise.

Discontinued? Seems very unlikely, especially considering it's not listed as discontinued by Intel's ARK.

It should, but go for a 1600 if you can afford it.

CPU Pinning is what you're doing - assigning a VM specific cores. So VM1 you might tell it to use Core 0 and Core 1 only, VM2 you might tell it to use Core 2 and 3 only - that's core or CPU pinning. You don't need to do it in my opinion, let KVM do it automagically and you generally end up with better performance.

Server case were dicks when I dealt with them. Ordered an overpriced 1U PSU adaptor (a tiny piece of tin with a few holes in it for £6.95 off eBay), which they refused to deliver because I was in Northern Ireland, which is still part of the UK but a different island. They were quoting £20 for delivery. They wouldn't put the thing in an envelope and post it (70p), but took 2 weeks for them to tell me they weren't sending it. I left neutral feedback on eBay and got a string of angry emails from the owner about it. I'm left wondering why the owner gets so uppity about a single neutral feedback over a £7 part that probably cost 20p to make. What would they be like if I had to go back to them about something important?

Almost all of my drives that failed went in the first few months of life. Generally, if they make it past the first 2 months, and barring any external influences (drops, power surges, etc), they'll run for years. Heck, at work I've still got Pentium D machines running with IBM 60GXP drives in them, at over 10 years old.

Well, drives don't wear out when they're not running, so I'd pull them and stick them on a shelf until you need them.

QuickSync gets about 5 transcodes, depending on the content. The CPU has some work to do while Quicksync does it thing, probably about 10% CPU per steam.

You probably don't need to CPU pin. Some people say doing that can actually slow an emulated machine down.

3TB Seagates just need taken out to the back field and shot. I wouldn't bother wasting your time with them, other than pulling your data off and getting rid.

Nope, nothing to do with that, at all. The SATA standard has changed, changing the old never-used 3.3v power pin to a RESET pin. WD are just complying with the new SATA standard. Expect all drives to follow suit.

My WD 8TB drives all have a sort of trundling noise going on all the time, which is probably the head patrolling. It's not what I'd call loud, but I don't suppose I'd want it in a HTPC sitting under my TV. It's not an issue in a well sound-proofed case like the R5 in the spare bedroom.

I have a few 8TB Helium drives. The oldest is 2 years old, a white-label WD80EZZX. No problems with it at all, and I have two other WD80EZZX. Those were all shucked from MyBooks. I have a 8TB Purple running in a CCTV server, recording 24/7 for about a year now. It runs quietly and cool, even in the really badly designed Dell it's in (no airflow at all in the drive bay). Finally I'm preclearing a 8TB Gold, and it seems really nice too, it's the first 7200rpm helium drive I've had, and it's as quiet and cool as the other 5900rpm ones. The other 8TB drives I have are traditional air-filled Seagates, and they're loud, hot and use nearly 10W compared to 5-6W for the helium WDs.

One thing I learned is, don't use a cheap USB for unRAID. Go buy something decent like SanDisk or Kingston. I use both a SanDisk Fit and a Kingston Datatraveler 3.0 and both have been really reliable. Other elcheapo ones burned out in no time.

No problems so far...