Advice on new build, 8 sata drives, iGPU passthrough

[The_Bell]

Hi all,

 

I wanted to ask for advice on a new setup I am planning on building. My plan A was to reuse an old PC with an HBA PCI controller but the one I ordered on eBay fried my motherboard (some lessons learned there), now the PC motherboard won't even boot. Tried everything but can't make it even power on

 

So back to plan B which is to unfortunately build a new setup from scratch, since the old parts are over 10 years old so not really feasible to replace only some bits of it. I am planning on having 2 SSD drives as caches and then 5 HDD drives (western digital red plus). I plan to use my server mainly for Plex and then some other dockers/vms but not too intensive stuff (roon server for music, adguard for DNS, stuff like this).

 

Could someone let me know if they think the following components will have any issues with what I have planned?

 

- Motherboard: AsRock C246 WS. Should give me 8 SATA ports via the C246 chipset which is supported by Unraid

- CPU: Intel i3-9100. Not going with a Xeon because I won't be doing CPU intensive stuff and because I want the iGPU for Plex. Can someone confirm if this motherboard will let me do passthrough for Plex transcoding?

- Memory: 2x 8gb kingston ECC memory: KVR26N19S8/8 (listed on the mobo compatibility list, going for only 16gb as I can add another 16 later of if I need them)

 

Motherboard question: Asrock has a similar model: C246M WS. Smaller form factor, would that work with iGPU passthrough? Why should I get the ATX one instead of this, which is slightly cheaper? 

 

Planning to put all this on a Fractal Design Define 7 which I already have.

 

It all adds up to roughly 600EUR which I'd rather not have spent right now (thanks old mobo for dying now), but hoping this will last me a few years... and to be fair the old motherboard and CPU lasted more than 10 years.

 

Anyone here running a similar setup can share how well it's doing for them? Or any issues I should have thought about with incompatibility or Unraid support?

 

Many thanks!

Edited April 1, 2022 by The_Bell
Comments wrt motherboard

[mgutt]

On 4/1/2022 at 8:41 AM, The_Bell said:

would that work with iGPU passthrough?

Each C246 will

 

On 4/1/2022 at 8:41 AM, The_Bell said:

Motherboard: AsRock C246 WS.

Never seen someone with this board.  Someone needs to test it ^^

 

On 4/1/2022 at 8:41 AM, The_Bell said:

listed on the mobo compatibility list,

Not important. Each Non-Reg Non-LR ECC DDR4 RAM will work.

 

On 4/1/2022 at 8:41 AM, The_Bell said:

Why should I get the ATX one instead of this, which is slightly cheaper? 

Maybe the smaller one will consume less power because the ATX version has the additional SATA controller?! 

 

On 4/1/2022 at 8:41 AM, The_Bell said:

600EUR

Uff. Are you sure the board has a "normal" price? Should be ~250 € and the CPU <150 €.

[The_Bell]

Actually I've just realised the i3-9100 only supports 2400 RAM. Will a stick of 2666 work underclocked or should I get a 2400 one just in case? For some reason they are harder to find and more expensive