I've been running a Xeon E3 in a bitfenix case stuffed with SSDs plus and external (usb3) 10gb drive for media storage.  It's my main windows workstation, 'gaming rig', virtualbox host, and sonarr and plex server.  It still functions great but I'm out of space.  Its time to try unraid and upgrade that storage. I also need a bit of 4k transcoding so looking for something with a Passmark score of 17000 or above.

 

Budget is about $2300.

 

The Fractal Define R5 case looks great and people seem to love it.  I see no reason to look at any others.

 

I'm pretty set on the i7-10700k processor.  It can do the transcoding work and leaves a ton of processing power for a few random linux VMs and Windows with approximately 749 Chrome tabs spread across three dozen windows.

 

Really not sure what MB to go with.  I chose the MSI MAG Z490 but not for any good reasons.  It has a lot of SATA 6 connections, 4 RAM slots, and is in stock.  Somebody please tell me to buy a different one.

 

Also not set on the # or size of drives to start with but I know I need 20tb slow-storage + 3tb for windows and linux VMs.  A cache drive, fast VM drive, and parity drive...right?

cache: 1tb ssd

VMs: 3tb ssd

parity: 10tb hdd?

data: 3x 8tb?

Doesn't leave much room to grow, does it?

 

I'd like to do PCI passthrough of a GPU for light gaming in windows.  I have an asus GTX 750 Ti 2GB in my current machine and eventually I could put it in this new build.  Or I could buy something y'all recommend instead.

 

Here's what I have right now.  Roast m...wait, is that how this works?

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/H68x7X

 

 

 

 

 

Hey, although I have an AMD build, what you've listed is essentially what I've been doing with my setup.

 

I've had great results, everything is listed in my signature below.