FAWKES
I've spent the last year or two lurking here, thinking about an upgrade for my trusty Synology DS416j which is currently rocking two 4TB WD Red drives in SHR mode. I haven't included drives yet, as I'm still deciding if I want to go the shucking route, or buy retail/OEM. My plan is to get two drives in the 8-14TB range for the initial Unraid setup with a single parity drive, then move over the 4TB drives after migrating my data.
Purpose
After owning a DS416j for 4+ years, and having it serve me well for local network storage, and Plex, as my experience has grown, so have my demands, and it quickly became evident that I needed to upgrade to something that will better serve me on a daily basis.
My plans for the server include:
Running Plex with hardware transcoding for 3-4 simulaneous users.
Archiving YouTube and other web content with an automated transcode pipeline using something like tdarr.
Running various Docker containers for downloading and managing content.
Offloading some workloads from my desktop to either a VM or docker container.
Running Kiwix to self-host Wikipedia and Stack Exchange.
Components
Silverstone SST-CS380 V2 Midi-Tower
AMD Ryzen 5 1600 3.2GHz 6 Core (Socket AM4) CPU
Kingston 16GB DDR4 2666MHz ECC DIMM Memory KSM26ED8/16ME
Kingston 16GB DDR4 2666MHz ECC DIMM Memory KSM26ED8/16ME
ASRock AMD Ryzen X570 Pro4 AM4 PCIe 4.0 ATX Motherboard
Crucial P1 1TB NVMe M.2 PCIe Performance 3D SSD/Solid State Drive
be quiet! Straight Power 11 Platinum 550 Watt 80+ Platinum Full Modular PSU/Power Supply
NVIDIA Quadro P2000 5GB Graphics Card
Cooling
Noctua NH-L9a Chromax Pure Black CPU Cooler - 92mm
Noctua NF-F12 PWM Chromax Premium Grade Fan - 120mm
Noctua NF-F12 PWM Chromax Premium Grade Fan - 120mm
Noctua NF-F12 PWM Chromax Premium Grade Fan - 120mm
Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut High Performance Thermal Paste - 1 Gram
Accessories
Supermicro CBL-0186L SATA Cable Set (4)
Supermicro CBL-0186L SATA Cable Set (4)
SanDisk Cruzer Fit 16GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive
Build Log
I've started receiving the bulk of my parts, after a long wait due to delays related to Covid-19.
It's one of the first computers I've built where I've strictly adhered to the motherboard's manufacturer QVL, with Kingston ECC DDR4 and Crucial P1 1TB being the most logical choice for RAM and Cache. The Ryzen 5 1600 AF model is a Pinnacle Ridge-based refresh of the original 1600, so running on the Zen+ architecture, being roughly equivalent to the Ryzen 5 2600. In my mind it's one of the best value CPUs right now, and even though I was very close to going with an i3-9100, I opted to go AMD for the following reasons:
The AMD combo was significantly cheaper than an i3-9100 and an equivalent, modern server motherboard for ECC support.
10th Generation Core CPUs will definitely be moving to a new socket/chipset. 4th Generation Ryzen is more likely to run on existing AM4/X570 motherboards. This gives me more upgrade options in the future, as well as potential PCIe 4.0 support if I decide to upgrade my cache disk in the future.
The 1600 runs about 4% slower than the i3-9100 in single-threaded workloads, but has 200% more threads that make it three times faster in multi-threaded workloads.
I'm really happy about the Quadro P2000, I grabbed it off eBay and the listing described it as a fresh pull from a brand new workstation, definitely brand new, and a steal at 250 GBP. As I mentioned previously, I was originally considering the i3-9100, but opted for the 1600 AF, which means I lost out on an iGPU and QuickSync support so I needed something to enable video output, and hardware trandscoding with Plex. I was thinking of just getting a Quadro P400, but at 130 GBP, and seeing the P2000 going for the price I got it for, I decided to take the leap.
I've never used a be quiet! power supply before, but it was one of the A+ recommended PSUs on the latest version of the Tier List over on the LinusTechTips forum here.
Obviously the most crucial part of the build, a Sandisk Cruzer Fit USB 2.0 drive 👏
I'll update this thread as I make progress. I'm currently just waiting on my cooling stuff to arrive. I have the case in my posession already, but I haven't taken it out of it's shipping box yet, so I'll post some images of that in due time.
Thanks for reading 🙇♂️