Hi Everyone! Yet Another Newbie Introduction

[Rhuarc]

Hey everyone, I wanted to introduce myself as yet another soon to be convert!  I have been a long time Drivepool on Windows user doing the typical Plex / Sonarr / NAS setup.  It has worked for me for quite awhile, but I have wanted to look to move to a more robust server setup for quite awhile now.  My current setup is:

 

Case - Antec Gaming Series 300

Motherboard - Gigabyte Z97-HD3

Processor - Intel Core i5-4690K

RAM - GSkill 2x8GB / Crucial 2x4GB - Total 24GB

Graphics - Radeon HD5750

Network - RTL8125 2.5Gb NIC

SSD Boot - Kingston 256GB

NVME Cache - ADATA 500GB

Storage - WD 7x8TB \ Hitachi 2x3TB

 

This setup has worked, but some limitations I have found are that transcoding on this setup for Plex is woefully inadequate, I do not like using SnapRAID, Windows is a hog!!!!!  I want to be able to start getting into virtualizing when needed, and using Docker containers for things liek Sonarr, Deluge, Plex, even Backblaze for backup.  I currently also have a gaming PC (old one) but I am moving to my primary pc being my laptop that I hook up to a dock when I am home (I am a pilot and travel a lot so being portable is of number one importance).  I am going to take my previous gaming parts and repurpose them to a new unRAID install.

 

My planned setup will be:

 

Case - Rosewill L4500U (the one with hot swap bays)

Motherboard - ASrock AB350 Gaming K4

Processor - Ryzen 5 1600x (will probably upgrade this at some point soon. I can go all the way up to a Ryzen 9 with this motherboard)

RAM - Team Elite 2x8GB (for now, plan on upgrading with at least another 16GB kit)

Graphics - eVGA 1060Ti (basically using for transcoding in Plex)

Network - RTL8125 2.5Gb NIC (my current network gear is all 1Gb, but I want to upgrade my Ubiquiti gear at some point to 2.5Gb)

USB Boot Disk - (just using a basic 8GB USB key that seems to be working fine in my testing)

SSD/NVME Cache Pool - Kingston 256GB / Samsung 850 EVO 500GB / ADATA 500GB / Another 1TB NVME (I don't know the brand right now)

• This is one area I have some questions about.  Basically should I set this Cache Pool as my target directories for downloading via Deluge etc?  The idea being that I download to this Pool then ingest into the folder structure I have setup for Plex media?  I'm sure I'll be asking lots more questions about this as I get further along!

Storage - WD 7x8TB \ Hitachi 2x3TB

 

Using the 1060Ti should let me do much faster transcoding without slowing down the rest of the system. I really like that unRAID gives me the protection of RAID, but still lets my drives be readable to a bare metal unRAID system in case I had to swap it to for recovery.  I also really like that every drive does not need to be the same size.

 

Anyway, I hope that wasn't too much!  I look forward to learning and being involved in the community going forward as I start this journey!

 

Prost,

Rhuarc