Unraid build help

[blazerguns]

Hi All,

 

I have been reading through some of the posts here and now I am confused. I thought I had a clear plan lol. My current Unraid setup had a major snafu. My build was around 2013 at that time I wanted a Mini ITX board and so I got Fractal Design Node 304 with https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/AM1H-ITX/ Mobo. I never wanted more than 4 disk setup. 2021 the motherboard sole PCIe slot is not working so my SAS card does not work and have only 4 SATA ports. Expansion is not possible so decided for new setup.

 

However, I wanted to still use mITX boards because of case. But research showed there are very few boards with abundant SATA slot to allow expansion for 6 data disks and 2 SSD cache disks. Is this a trend now? Also have only 1 PCIe slot means I must use onboard graphics for 4k transcoding in plex (only 1 stream support). Given the limitations I decided on the following:

 

GIGABYTE B365M DS3H (Intel) - Micro ATX (6 SATA PORTS) - MicroATX instead of mITX

Intel Core I5-9400 2.9Ghz Socket LGA1151

Fractal Design Node 804

 

Aim is to keep cost low as possible. When I researched this forum, I noticed many people are buying dated xeon processors and super micro boards and adding a PCIe3 graphics card for transcoding. I live in Australia and cant seem to find many of the old boards. Is this cheaper option than going intel core CPUs as above? Does Supermicro also have many mITX boards rather than Micro ATX?

 

I have never used xeon processors before and would not like noisy system as this is for home use and something I use at low power for next 6 years at-least. Any suggestions?

Edited August 19, 2021 by blazerguns

[trurl]

4 minutes ago, blazerguns said:

use mITX boards because of case. But research showed there are very few boards with abundant SATA slot to allow expansion for 6 data disks and 2 SSD cache disks.

 

[blazerguns]

Thanks for the response. I actually did read that thread and understood my poor knowledge of xeon side of compute world.

 The MOBO mentioned there https://www.amazon.com.au/AsRock-C246-WSI-Mini-ITX-Motherboard/dp/B07Z4XWNHY is lovely, just perfect but costs $350 AUD and processor E-2278G (https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/174822532616?hash=item28b43c2608:g:fOIAAOSwifVg3ZOf) is about $524 AUD. While I understand the compute power and thread count, I wanted to understand if this is over kill for my needs.

 

2 docker containers (Plex and OpenVPN)

Plex does transcoding (4k stream occasionally). Limited to 1 stream. 95% I only use HD content which are H264 encoded (no transcoding). 

File storage

 

I dont need or use VMs in that machine. My spec which I shared cost me $550 AUD (cost of the processor). Would my setup not suffice for such low use case? 

 

[trurl]

9 hours ago, blazerguns said:

My spec which I shared cost me $550 AUD (cost of the processor). Would my setup not suffice for such low use case? 

Should be fine.

 

My main criteria for my rebuild was keeping my mITX case, and budget wasn't a big concern, so I thought I would go big (in a little way).

[Zonediver]

My ASRock Board can handle 6x SATA + 2x NVMe simultaneously...

[blazerguns]

thanks a lot for you response. I think it is clear for me now.