Build check: NAS/media server/seedbox/personal cloud

[KnifeFed]

Hello!

 

I'm about to start on my first Unraid build. It will serve as a NAS/media server/seedbox/personal cloud and whatever else I might come up with along the way (nothing graphics-heavy though, most likely).

 

I'll run PMS but will barely do any transcoding – maybe a single stream once in a while. I'll run a bunch of Dockers (*arr/jackett/torrent clients etc.) and may play around with some VMs. I may run a game server for a small group of friends.

 

My budget is kinda loose and I mainly want to make sure to get it "right" and have some room to grow. I live in Sweden so e.g. US eBay, despite its vast selection, is never a good deal for me and the "home server scene" isn't very big here – hence I'll be getting most parts new (we at least have Amazon now, yay :D).

 

Here are some parts I'm considering and some stream of consciousness:

 

Case

Fractal Design Define 7 (FD-C-DEF7A-09)

Roomy with support for lots of disks, is supposedly quiet with good airflow and easy to build in. I also think it looks good. Comes with 3 × 140mm fans (Dynamic X2 GP-14). I'll have to evaluate the case fan situation after the initial build.

 

CPU

AMD Ryzen 5 3600 or Ryzen 7 3700X

65W TDP with plenty of cores/threads. Whichever I can find at a decent price. I've also considered a Ryzen 5 5600X but they're really hard to come by here right now.

 

Cooler

Scythe FUMA 2

Seems to be efficient and silent enough while slightly cheaper than an equivalent Noctua or be quiet! cooler.

 

Mobo

Asus ROG STRIX B550-E GAMING

I'm thinking B550 rather than X570 due to heat and power consumption + avoiding a chipset fan.

This currently seems to be the only ATX B550 mobo that has: ECC support, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 header and 3 × PCIe x16 slots that can be run at x8/x8/x4 (which leaves room for a 10GBe NIC in the future).

I'm aware of the issue with a potentially faulty Intel I225-V NIC in this mobo, but I'm thinking I can just return it if I get one with an early revision.

I was initially considering an ASRock Rack X570D4U server board but it's just way too overpriced here + it seems to have some issues with IPMI and BIOS updates.

 

RAM

2 × Kingston Server Premier 16GB DDR4 3200MHz ECC (KSM32ES8/16ME or KSM32ED8/16HD)

KSM32ES8/16ME is single rank, 16Gbit while KSM32ED8/16HD is dual rank, 8Gbit. I'm not sure if it matters much.

 

Cache drive

1 × Western Digital Blue SN550 2 TB M.2 NVMe (WDS200T2B0C)

I was inspired by this Reddit thread so I'm thinking I'll do something similar with the cache. It seems to me that the SN550 is in the sweet spot right now for price/performance at 2 TB, even compared to 2.5" SATA SSDs (disregarding the lowest-end, e.g. Crucial BX500). I might get a second one to run in RAID 1 if I feel the need (occupying the second M.2 slot will disable SATA 5 and 6 but that's fine).

 

GPU

Asus GeForce GT 710, 1GB GDDR5 (GT710-SL-1GD5-BRK)

It feels bad to even pay actual money for this crap and have it occupy a PCIe slot, but I need something ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

PSU

Seasonic Focus GX-550 / PX-550 or Seasonic Prime Fanless PX-450 / PX-500 or Corsair RM550x

I assume any of these would work great. I used the outervision.com PSU calculator and with this build "fully decked out" it recommends a 420 W PSU.

 

HBA

LSI SAS 9300-8i

I already got this for a great price. Now I just need to get a pair of SFF-8643 -> SATA cables. I'm thinking angled SATA connectors.

 

OS drive

Kingston DataTraveler SE9 or SanDisk Cruzer Fit USB 2.0 Flash Drive

I've seen these two recommended for Unraid. Might get an adapter to connect it directly to the mobo.

 

UPS

APC Back-UPS 700VA, 230V, AVR, SCHUKO Sockets (BX700U-GR)

I already have this for my current NAS and it's been working well so far.

 

Array

1 × Western Digital Gold 18 TB (Parity) (WD181KRYZ)

1 × Western Digital Ultrastar DC HC550 18 TB (WUH721818ALE6L4)

1 × Western Digital Red Pro 8 TB (WD8001FFWX)

2 × Western Digital Red Pro 6 TB (WD6002FFWX)

These are drives I already have and will use initially for the array. My current goal is to slowly approach 8 × 18 TB.

 

I'm open- and thankful for any feedback!