Motherboard/cpu change. Cache change. Upgrade to 6.9??

[MMChris]

Hey so my motherboard was having lots of issues so i'm changing it out for a new one. Whilst i'm doing that i bought 2 m.2 drives one for cache and one for plex meta data/maybe other stuff. i bought a 10th gen intel so i assume an upgrade from 6.8.3 to 6.9.? is also necessary.

 

here's a list of what i bought. 

 

MotherBoard: MSI Intel Z490-A PRO Intel 10th Gen ATX

CPU: Intel Hex Core i5 10400 Comet Lake CPU

Ram: Corsair 16GB DDR4 Vengeance LPX 2133MHz Memory Kit for Skylake

NIC:  Intel Gigabit Pro 1000CT PCI Express Gigabit Network Card OEM

Cache: Samsung 500GB 970 EVO M.2 NVMe 3D V-NAND SSD

SSD: Seagate BarraCuda 510 250GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD  ( this is going to be for plex meta data)

SATA Card: IO Crest 4 Port SATA III PCI-e 3.0 x1 Card Non-Raid with Low Profile Bracket ASMedia 1064 + cables

 

Heres a list of my drives

1 x 4TB wd red parity

3 x 4TB wd red & 2 x 3TB wd red  Array

1 x 250gb Cache ( will be changing this out for the 970 evo 500gb)

1 x 500gb sata ssd ( unassigned drive for use with a docker) 

 

Dockers

plex, tatulie, qbit,

 

No vm's are in use.

 

 

So the actual question. How best to do this?

 shall i just put it all in upgrade OSv and then reconstruct system layout and rebuild meta data? ( put plex meta data in a new pool instead of unassigned drive?) 

Do i need to upgrade to 6.9.? as i bought a NIC card?

Shall i back up anything and how do i do this? 

 

Just looking for a little guidance before i start. 

 

Many thanks for looking and any help is appreciated.

[Frank1940]

One thing you have to be careful of is the use of the M.2 slots will often override the use of some of the SATA ports.  You will need to read the MB manual to find out for certain.

 

I (personally) never like doing two major changes at the same time.  I would (personally) upgrade the MB first IF you are going to use the Intel NIC card.  (Be sure to disable the onboard chip.)  That MB does use the RealTek 8125 NIC chip which (as I recall) requires the 6.9 series for a driver. 

 

You might want to be looking at one of the LSI (IT mode) SATA cards to provide you some additional SATA ports.  They can be found for quite reasonable prices on E-bay.  (Be sure to vet the vendor very carefully as you are really buying the vendor rather than the card.  Lowest price should not be your first priority!!!)