bhootz

Hello. Thank you for the reply. Yes my knowledge of unraid is limited because the only way I've learnt about it a few years ago when Linus started making crazy storinators for various people. I liked the concept and thought I'll use it some day. After that I've seen a few videos and everyone is talking about populating x number of disks. I really don't need that part. I mean FREENAS does the same thing (sw raid/parity) The existing freenas system is doing fine except the cpu is weak to transcode media, so now I want to run this unraid machine to be transcoding the media and access the freenas as SMB share or something. TLDR For me Unraid takes the media from FreeNAS, transcode it into the desired format and spits it out. Sent from my HD1911 using Tapatalk

Just to add. Transcoding and direct play are different things altogether. If you have a good network within your house, you'll not need transcoding at all and 4k will direct play. The reason most people buy the GPU for plex is for the reason that they need to share things outside the house. My Freenas box which I built about 5.5 years back (not an advertisement) is running on a xeon E5-2609-v3 on an asus server board. I have hand-braked or found x265 HDR bluray with multi channel audio (including atmos/DTS-HDMA) . All run perfectly coz most of house is wired. Only audio needs transcoding coz not all tvs are attached to a home theater and that takes minimum efforts by the cpu. Just my [emoji3577] cents. Sent from my HD1911 using Tapatalk

Anyone?? Anything? Sent from my HD1911 using Tapatalk

So I've been running a freenas server for almost 6 years now and it has served me well, but with the introduction of x265 formats for space savings my old cpu (xeon E5-2609 v3) is easily overcome with plex transcoding. Out of the 2 options of either upgrading mobo + cpu for the freenas server I've decided to make another (separate) box to solve my needs in 2020. So while I don't really need the "raid" part of unraid, someone still recommended Unraid for the ease of UI (I don't really like CLI/Terminal though i can copy paste) and VMs. My current requirements are PLEX server running 24x7 using freenas as the data pool Windows VM on demand for when I need to do some gaming (8.1 or 10). Pihole vm running 24x7 Ubuntu/Linux distros VMs on demand. 1 permanent 1 for experimentation. A few more 24x7 lightweight VM and maybe another windows 8.1/10 on demand VM for professional setup. I want all the systems/vms do be running with the same monitor, keyboard and mouse of the Unraid as I want to get rid of my old alienware laptop. So while I can use a separate laptop setup of the "tower", but eventually it'll get binned. I'd want this to be a single machine solution. The windows and/or Linux maybe used for gaming. Basically my gaming has stopped coz of alienware getting very hot, so this might rekindle my dead passion. Hardware I'm planning #CPU : Ryzen 7 3700x #Gfx card(s) : ? I guess I'll need 3. -Quadro P2200/P2000 for plex -One cheap one for display of the OS -One more for running win and/or Linux for gaming. #Ram : I could populate maximum #HDD a couple of NVME. 1 for os/storage and 1 as a cache. I have a lot of wd red (4tb lying around) which I may repurpose. #MOTHERBOARD : ? Torn between a few kindly help me choose coz I'm getting mixed answers for running so many gfx cards. -Aorus X570 Pro (non wifi) -Aorus X570 Master -ROG strix F X570 -Aorus X470 wifi 7 I'm sure I'll not go Ryzen zen 3 since there is nothing 8 core with a 65w tdp plus I found the X470 to be the best VFM since all boards are very similarly priced. Couldn't really find the thermal performance and PCI performance but I'm also not interested in the PCI 4 as of now. PCI 3 is plenty enough for me. #Case/SMPS/ accessories can be obviously purchased once I finalize the core of the system. Also since storage isn't in the primary concern, is there an OS based on BTRFS that supports VMs/dockers and has an active community. Every kind of these searches has led me to a NAS solution or a hypervisor (yet to research those). I hope the post was self explanatory, but incase someone wants to ask a few more questions I shall try to answer everything to the best of my knowledge. Sent from my HD1911 using Tapatalk

Well. I have wd reds stacked up (8x4tb) in a mid atx case (Antec X1) and they are running in the lower 40s when I leave it on for days together. I have not fitted it with any additional fans, just the 2 that come on the case by default. Planning to get some sp for the front x 2 and 1 af for the rear, to maintain positive pressure and cool the disks. Processor temps are hitting late 40s and early 50s. Ambient temperature is about 40C without ac