Unraid Hardware Upgrade 2022 - Need advice

[pantheis]

I'm looking for advice and suggestions on an Unraid server upgrade I'm planning on doing within the next few months.

 

I have parted out the following as an upgrade. The RAM is on the approved list for the motherboard.

PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/cBvx9r

 

CPU: Intel Core i7-11700K 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO V2 62 CFM CPU Cooler
Motherboard: Asus TUF Gaming Z590-PLUS WIFI ATX LGA1200 Motherboard
Memory: G.Skill Trident Z Neo 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory
Storage: Samsung 980 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive
Case: Fractal Design Define R5 ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply: SeaSonic FOCUS Plus Platinum 850 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply

 

My current Unraid box is running on an Intel 3770k with 32GB of ram. I have the plus license for Unraid, 7 drives total attached (1 parity, 5 array, one 240GB SSD as Cache and for the VM running on a PCI-E 2 port SATA card using an ASMedia ASM1062 controller), I run multiple docker containers, including Emby, and a Windows 10 VM I use for hosting my own game servers.

 

I am figuring out an upgraded server to replace the current one with an eye towards Emby's hardware transcoding requirements and an improved VM server hosting experience. I have two questions I'm hoping to leverage the vast experience in the community to help inform my decisions.

 

1) Will the below system be able to do HEVC 4K HDR to 1080p non-HDR transcoding in hardware? From everything I can find online, it should be able to do the transcoding and tone mapping in hardware. Does anyone have experience with this CPU in Emby on Unraid that can confirm? I know the Intel CPU I picked does support x264 and x265 in hardware, and should support GPU hardware tone mapping, but whether this actually works is unknown.

 

2) It's been a long time since I've had to buy a hard drive for my Unraid box. Some of my drives are going on 8+ years of online time in the current Unraid box and still kicking, but I know it's only a matter of time before I finally have a failure. When I first built my Unraid box, 2TB drives were all the rage, and so I've got a set of 2TB drives in my array. That's tiny by today's standards. I'd like to start adding larger drives to the array and I know that means swapping out the parity drive for something larger.

 

What are the current recommendations for drives (make/model/size) for home Unraid boxes? The case I spec'd below will take up to eight 3.5 inch drives in the main drive cage. My plan would be to buy two larger drives, add one as the new parity drive, and convert the current party drive to a data drive. The 2TB NVMe drive in the list below would replace the current 240GB SSD as the cache and VM drive.

 

Any advice is appreciated! Thanks!