bmcent1

For the final system, I decided to lower the NVME mirror to 1TB each. Current system has spare room on 250 GB, decided 1TB is big upgrade by comparison. Intel i5-12700, MSI MAG Z790 TOMAHAWK WIFI ATX Motherboard, 32GB DDR5, 2x 1TB mirrored NVME. Full build, all new parts ... $1563 https://pcpartpicker.com/user/bmcent1/saved/#view=xsvDkL Alternate: Intel i5-12500, MSI PRO B760-P WIFI DDR4 ATX Motherboard, 32GB DDR4, 2x 1TB mirrored NVME, 9207-8i SAS HBA plus forward breakout cables needed since the mobo has 4 sata ports and I need 6 hdd support. Full build, all new parts ... $1255 https://pcpartpicker.com/user/bmcent1/saved/#view=VwCZzy Still on the fence about the Fractal Design Define 7 XL ATX Full Tower Case. It seems to be a clear favorite but $240 for a case seems high.

Looking for feedback on this parts list. Did I miss anything or make any big mistakes? RAM is ridiculous right now, but I don't want to wait. Goals for this build are reliable / set and forget, low power draw (without limiting things I expect to do), quiet if not silent, and enough horsepower to last a while now that I'm doing a real build. It's in a basement office that is used sometimes, so it doesn't have to be silent but I want to avoid loud fans or whining disks. Outgrew my first Unraid build that is well over 5 years old. It started with really old HDDs and spare parts. Loved it, got hooked. Once you have a reliable server that easily runs containers, it can kinda snowball. Upgraded over time with compatible parts from e-Bay, but have outgrown those too. Current "old" server: Intel Core i5-7600 CPU @ 3.50GHz, 24GB RAM Running Unraid 6.12.11 / plan to stay there for a while (unless something in this new build requires upgrading) 5 HDD disks in the array, 1 is parity, 23 TB total This was hanging-in strong until I wanted to stream UHD 4K on my local LAN to LG TV or FireTV stick clients, it just can't transcode to them, pegs CPU. It runs months or years at a time without any issue, that's definitely a feature I need in the next build. I never though I'd be interested in UHD, but today's big 4K TVs changed my mind. Old and New system run - Home Assistant as a VM Containers - Plex, InfluxDB, and Grafana, PiHole, and a few others. If there's head room, I'll probably experiment / add more New system will have 6 disks in the array (2 of them parity disks), 2 NVME disks for mirrored cache. Target array size 34TB, maybe more later. PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/dw7Pt3 CPU: Intel Core i7-12700 2.1 GHz 12-Core Processor ($318.99 @ Amazon) CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U12A chromax.black 60.09 CFM CPU Cooler ($139) Motherboard: MSI MAG Z790 TOMAHAWK WIFI ATX LGA1700 Motherboard ($237.89 @ Amazon) Memory: G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR5-6000 CL30 Memory ($699.99 @ Newegg) [ Decided this was overkill ] G.Skill Ripjaws S5 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL36 Memory ($350) Storage: Western Digital WD_Black SN850X 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($219.99 @ iBUYPOWER) Storage: Western Digital WD_Black SN850X 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($219.99 @ iBUYPOWER) Case: Fractal Design Define 7 XL ATX Full Tower Case ($239.99 @ B&H) Power Supply: SeaSonic FOCUS GX 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($150.43 @ Amazon) 1) PC Part Picker said the Noctua cooler is compatible but there's a note that some adapter parts may be needed, not sure how to figure out exactly what's needed? 2) I could forgo the case and rebuild in my old case server case, but I want to minimize downtime, so I'd really like to build it and at least make sure everything starts up okay before moving the array disks over and restoring the dockers and VM from backup. 3) Speaking of testing the new build, is there a 7 day free trial or some other way to boot Unraid on the new system to make sure it's fine before moving the USB key with the license over to it? Thank's for any thoughts!

Thank you!

Hi All, hope I am in the right place. Happy to say (and fingers crossed) Unraid has been incrediby reliable for me and so this is the first time in years I'm looking for support / community feedback. I am adding and removing disks from the array for the first time ever, looking to confirm that I am about to do this correctly, or any feedback appreciated. My server consists of 5 hdds: Parity - WDC_WD80EMAZ Disk 1 - WDC_WD80EMAZ Disk 2 - WDC_WD80EMAZ Disk 3 - ST4000DM000 Disk 4 - Hitachi_HDS5C3030ALA630 Some of these are shockingly old but still working. It's time to replace them. The Parity and first two disks are 8TB, then 4TB and 3TB respectively = 23TB Total The state I want to get this server to is 34TB total with 2 parity disks: Parity 1 - WD Red Plus WD120EFGX - 12 TB Parity 2 - WD Red Plus WD120EFGX - 12 TB Disk 1 - WDC_WD80EMAZ - 8 TB Disk 2 - WDC_WD80EMAZ - 8 TB Disk 3 - WDC_WD80EMAZ - 8 TB Disk 4 - WDC_WD101KRYZ - 10 TB My plan is do it this way: 0) Shutdown. Open the case and add two WD120EFGX disks. Power up. 1) Stop the array, Add first WD120EFGX - 12 TB as Parity 2,Start the array, Let the array rebuild 2) Stop the array, Remove Parity 1, Start the array. Stop the array, Add second WD120EFGX - 12 TB as Parity 1, Start the array, Let the array rebuild 3) Stop the array, Remove Disk 3 (ST4000DM000). Add the previously-a-parity-disk (WDC_WD80EMAZ) to the slot where ST4000DM000 was. Start the array, Let the array rebuild 4) Stop the array. Remove Disk 4 (Hitachi_HDS5C3030 ) because it's old and I want it out of there. Start the array, Let the array rebuild. 4b) ... [Down the road, when WDC_WD101KRYZ has been freed up from another box] Shutdown. Remove ST4000DM000 (old disk 3) and Hitachi_HDS5C3030 (old disk 4) from the case, add WDC_WD101KRYZ into the case. Power up. Stop the Array, assign WDC_WD101KRYZ to disk 4 slot. Start the array, Let the Array rebuild. Did I miss any steps? Missing or extra starts/stops of the array? Looking at that, it's a lot of steps, array rebuilds, and 24h+ waits for array to rebuild. Doesn't really matter unless there's a better way to do it?

Thanks for the replies. Upgraded to a Core i5-7600 from eBay ($20, awesome). And added 16 GB RAM to bring it up to 24. More responsive now.

Ok, absolutely will do that. Anything else? Feels like going to 4 cores over two should help with VMs and containers.

Hi all, I've been running Unraid for several years (maybe 5 now) and love it. When I built my Unraid server, my main purpose was just for storage, so I went with a low power consumption CPU: Celeron G3950 in a MSI Z270 SLI Plus motherboard. It's been rock solid. Also 8GB RAM. But over the years, it's been so useful having a server running all the time, and so easy to run containers, I've added quite a bit to it. Now up to: - VM: Home Assistant locked to 2 cores - Containers: Plex, Grafana, Influx, UniFi controller Most of the time, it handles all this well and CPU load stays under 25%. I don't run Plex often, or even access the storage that much. Mostly its the containers and VMs getting more use these days. Occasionally, Grafana will be really slow to load some dashboard panels. And Occasionally CPU will go over 75%. It was convenient, for a while running transcoding with a HandBrake container, and I could do that again at some point so I don't want to rule that out, but not using it lately. Question: What's the best "bang for the buck" upgrade I could do here? It seems like possibly I can upgrade just my CPU to a i5-6500 without upgrading my mobo, and that would give me 4 cores instead of 2. That CPU can be had for about $120 and has higher single threading score as well as double the cores (for VMs) and more than double the PassMark score. Is there a more capable processor-only upgrade I should be looking at? Granted, the motherboard is limited to 6th and 7th Gen i3/i5/i7 processors in 1151 socket type. Buying a new Mobo to support a new CPU obviously adds to the price of an upgrade, and might even need different RAM then. Any suggestions for this use case, how to get more muscle for VMs and containers on a shoestring budget?