Good day, all.

 

I'm currently running unraid on a Gen8 with a Xeon 1265L on a very hot country.

Although it's been solid, the CPU fries often, when encoding PLEX stuff and the performance is just not there when compared with newer CPUs.

 

I'd like to be able to extract the 4x HDDs (14TB each) and the 2x SSDs (500GB each for cache) and transfer my unraid into a new, cheap to run and efficient system, that would support my repurposed GTX 970 card whenever I need some extra oomph for encoding stuff.

 

Here are my answers to the "read before you post" topic:

 

What is your budget?  

- I need to spend no more than USD $ 1000 on RAM (32GB ECC), motherboard and CPU.

 

I have a separate budget for fans, PSU (will likely repurpose my EVGA Supernova 750W) and case and this will remain a headless server, so nothing else is required. I also already have a LSI IT Mode 9207-8i PCI-E 3.0 card on my HP Gen8 to support 8 additional HDDs, so that's not a problem and I can easily repurpose that.

 

How many drives do you want your server to be able to support and how much capacity do you need?

At least 4x HDDs of 14TB each and 2x SSDs of 500GB each.

 

Is expandability important to you?  If so, what's your long term goal?

Happy with this, but I'll aim for a case that allows me to expand to a max of 8x HDDs in the future.

 

Are you interested in running additional apps?  If so, which ones?  Be specific.

PLEX is the primary goal, with adguardhome, speedtest-tracker, searx, urbackup and other local storage (private cloud storage) docker apps in the future.

 

Do you want to run green/low power drives or faster 7200 rpm drives?  If you don't have a specific need for 7200 rpm drives, then choose green drives.

Already running WD REDs.

 

What do you plan to run for hard drives?

As above.

 

Do you have any spare parts laying around that you would like to apply towards your build?  This includes drives.

Already have all the drives. 4x WD REDs 14TB and 2x SSDs for cache. I also already have the PSU, an old GTX 970 and an expansion LSI IT Mode 9207-8i PCI-E 3.0 card.

 

If you already have parts in mind, please oh pretty please post links to them so that we don't have to look them up.

I'll really only need recommendations on a CPU with low TDP but still powerful, Mobo and ECC RAM.

Since I'm coming from a server to a "regular build", I want something that's rock solid and efficient and doesn't have any incompatibility issues with unraid.

 

Thank you all, I appreciate you taking the time to assist me with this.

Edited March 24, 20224 yr by Digaumspider

I know it's been a while, but I'm revisiting this and was wondering if you guys had any recommendations.

Thanks!

3 minutes ago, Digaumspider said:

I know it's been a while, but I'm revisiting this and was wondering if you guys had any recommendations.

Thanks!

I'm doing a low-cost Mini-ITX build right now but with non-ECC RAM.  Both of my existing servers have server motherboards that support ECC; however, this new build is intended sporadic use in my vacation home. 

 

Details here.  And I just added component prices.

 

If you really want ECC RAM, some W680/Z690 based boards support ECC RAM with 13th generation Intel Core (i5/i7/19) processors.

6 hours ago, Digaumspider said:

I know it's been a while, but I'm revisiting this and was wondering if you guys had any recommendations.

Thanks!

ECC is not necessary for a Plex server.

Especially when working with a limited budget.

 

You can start with https://pcpartpicker.com/list/

Intel's 12100 (non-F sku) with the built-in iGPU should be more than sufficient for transcoding tasks in Plex.

Any Asus, Gigabyte, ASRock, MSI branded motherboard should not have any problems with Unraid.