New motherboard time

[andyjayh]

It's about time I retired my old server that's been going well for over 10 years now! Had a few HDD failures over the years plus one PSU but it been pretty reliable and served me well. Current build spec is;

 

Zalman MS1000-HS2 Case

Zalman ZM-HDR1 3-Bay HDD Rack x 3

Corsair CX650m psu

Asus M4A78LT-M AMD 760G AM3 

AMD Phenom™ II X6 1100T @ 3300 MHz

12Gb DDR3 1600

Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8, 8-Port SAS/SATA Card

4Tb WDC Parity

7 x 2Tb drives

1 x 4Tb drives

2 x Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500GB for Cache pool

 

This runs;

Plex

binhex-nzbget

tautulli

radarr

sonarr

pihole

 

This setup is doing ok but it is noisy (not wife friendly as it's in her office) and not very efficient power wise and we have a big focus on this currently with energy prices going through the roof. According to my Eve Energy plug the server ticks over at approx. 110W and will draw 160W when doing a parity check.

 

So my aim if to start with a new MB & CPU combo that are much more efficient, high SATA connection count and a boost in performance for Plex if possible. Once I have this locked in I can slowly upgrade the HDD's too much larger ones to lessen the count for less power draw.

 

Finding it hard to hit on a recommended board to be honest by trawling the forum, especially that is actually available. A recommendation I did find was the Asrock Rack E3C246D4U paired with i3 8100 CPU. Seems to be a board many have used but I can't find that anywhere now.

 

Another MB recommendations I have seen used are;

ASRock X570M Pro4 with AMD Ryzen 5 5600G - my preferred based on 8 SATA and available to buy

Asus PRIME Z590-A with Intel Core Intel Core i3 10300 (only 6 SATA ports I believe though)

 

If starting from scratch with a new build to be single user Plex server, storage, pihole but efficient energy wise, what would you chose?

 

 

 

[Dazza993]

I’ve opted to build my custom unRaid server with the ASRock X570M Pro4 and the Ryzen 5600G

Not yet built as awaiting case and memory but the 8 Sata ports were a big plus for me along with the M.2 slots for when I want to upgrade my cache drive

It also seems to have decent power control 

[andyjayh]

It was your thread I read that led me to look at that MB & CPU, thanks. Also interesting reading on the PSU. On my shortlist and will be good to hear how you get on with it once fully built up.

[andyjayh]

I have down selected the following MB & CPU

 

ASRock Intel Z690 Steel Legend ATX Motherboard

Intel Core i3 12100 4 Core Alder Lake

 

Seem to be good future proofing and performance. Any concerns with either of these?

[peterg23]

If I were you I would be tempted to go with at least the i5-12400 (6 cores 12 threads US$180) rather than the i3-12100 (4 cores 8 threads US$130).

4 cores 8 threads is not really future proofing I feel in 2022! If you can afford it, I would spend the extra US$50. (Prices are from Newegg).

[andyjayh]

12 hours ago, peterg23 said:

If I were you I would be tempted to go with at least the i5-12400 (6 cores 12 threads US$180) rather than the i3-12100 (4 cores 8 threads US$130).

4 cores 8 threads is not really future proofing I feel in 2022! If you can afford it, I would spend the extra US$50. (Prices are from Newegg).

Thanks for the feedback on the CPU spec. I’m pretty sure the i3 will be a big step up from my current system but, I do see what you mean so if I can afford I might go that little further.

[JP]

Timely post here.  I too have had an Unraid server for ages and I thought the PSU just died.  Turns out is has to be either the MB or CPU.

 

Our needs are pretty much the same (I'm not all the concerned about energy though), but I haven't kept up with the how hardware has changed in the last few years.  So you've helped me a lot just by posting a few recommendations. 

 

One question though.  Why opt for the ASRock Z690 and I3 combo versus the ASRock X570M Pro4 and AMD Ryzen 5 5600G combo?  It seems to me that they are closely priced with the AMD outperforming it?    

[JonathanM]

23 minutes ago, JP said:

Why opt for the ASRock Z690 and I3 combo versus the ASRock X570M Pro4 and AMD Ryzen 5 5600G combo?  It seems to me that they are closely priced with the AMD outperforming it?

Historically there have been more minor issues getting and keeping AMD equipment running well with anything but Windows. There is an entire thread here dedicated to troubleshooting issues with AMD.

 

Intel is more likely to work out of the box and stay working. If you like tinkering and problem solving, the extra performance from AMD may be worth it, but for me I prefer to spend a little more for less troubleshooting.

 

Opinions vary, and AMD vs. Intel is almost like discussing religion and politics.

[ConnerVT]

I run a first generation Ryzen 1500X, and I have had no issues in the nearly 2 years the server has run.  First gen Ryzen had issues with Linux when it was first released, as AMD focused so much of their effort towards Windows based OS.  And where AMD was at that time, I don't really blame them for doing so.  But it has been 5 years since Ryzen was first released (April 2017) and most issues are in the rear view window now.  EPYC processors are quickly filling data centers, which are mostly running Linux based code.

 

The majority of the issues folks posting here on the forum are systems that are overclocking, running their RAM too fast, or have not set a simple BIOS setting correctly.  All are listed in the FAQ entry  What can I do to keep my Ryzen based server from crashing/locking up with Unraid? .  Folks don't like the idea that the 4 3200 RAM DIMMs the marketing people sold them need be run at 2133.  For the majority of Unraid use cases, you will never notice the difference.  This from someone running a 4c/8t processor in his sever, with 18 running dockers.

 

As much as a AMD fanboy I may be, if building an Unraid server for mostly media/video serving (Plex/Emby) and working from a clean sheet of paper, going the Intel route makes sense to take advantage of Quick Sync for hardware encoding/decoding. 

 

 

Edited September 13, 2022 by ConnerVT

[JP]

Thanks for the perspective here.  My current unraid server (now toast) had an AMD Athlon in it for about a decade.  Never had any issues really.  Honestly, I was always pretty shocked how well it worked year after year.  

 

However, it doesn't take much to sway me especially with this statement, "If you like tinkering and problem solving..."  I don't.  I hate it.   I much prefer stability over anything so it is Intel for me now.  I was willing to take a risk many years ago when I first setup my unraid server, but not any more, even if that risk is really low.  Thanks again.

 

Now I just need to determine what a good price / performance option might be for an Intel combo.   

Edited September 14, 2022 by JP
typo

[andyjayh]

Sorry, had missed posts to my thread…

 

I didn’t know about potential AMD issues but chose an Intel chip purely for the Quick Sync advantage on media streaming, which is most of my use.

 

I have found it much harder this time around to find MB recommendations. When I first built over a decade ago there where good lists and approved boards for UnRaid, doesn’t seem to exist now. I appreciate that today most boards will work with UnRaid so less point keeping lists up to date but I was hoping for ratings and recommendations for SATA port connectivity, memory speed, BIOS, power ratings etc. Trying to find this info from scratch has been a challenge! I’m also replacing my drives for much larger but lower amount and there in lays more head scratching and deliberation 😆 

 

I think I am getting there now, same board as listed above as it has 8 SATA ports. Still weighing up the i3 vs. I5 expense. Chosen 16Tb Seagate EXOS drives. Seasonic PSU. Probably a Fractal Design R5 case to house it all in. Fingers crossed that will be dead quiet and consume far less power on idle 😬 

[ConnerVT]

These days, there really isn't much to say about motherboards.  Especially when the build is for a server.  Once you select which chipset you will use, the differences in MB mostly tend to be geared towards gamers and bling - beefier power delivery for overclocking, lots of LEDs, maybe some better analog for audio.  In modern processors, most of the functionality is baked into the processor itself with the MB chipset enabling what the processor offers.

 

With an Unraid server (really, any server) the goal is stability.  So unless you know you have a specific need, anything other than a budget board from your preferred MB manufacturer likely won't do you wrong.  EXOS, Seasonic (always been a big fan) and Fractal Design are solid choices.

 

As for i3 vs i5?  No man has ever come home from the store and said, "You know?  I should have bought the smaller television..."

[JP]

3 hours ago, andyjayh said:

I think I am getting there now, same board as listed above as it has 8 SATA ports.

 

Yea, that is a huge selling point for me too.  If anyone thinks they know of a better MB option with 8 onboard SATA ports, please let us know.  

[JP]

On 9/8/2022 at 4:26 PM, peterg23 said:

If I were you I would be tempted to go with at least the i5-12400 (6 cores 12 threads US$180) rather than the i3-12100 (4 cores 8 threads US$130).

4 cores 8 threads is not really future proofing I feel in 2022! If you can afford it, I would spend the extra US$50. (Prices are from Newegg).

 

Out of curiosity, if you were going to move a step up from the i5-12400....what might that be?  Do 10th and 11th gen Intel CPUs make any sense now given that 12th gen is here?

[peterg23]

You can probably buy 10th and 11th gen CPUs used on eBay and they would run Unraid fine, although the 11th gen was never very  popular. I would still go with the current i5-12400. The 13th gen is due for release soon and will be compatible with your new motherboard, but by the time your i5-12400 actually needs replacing we may be up the the 16th gen !?

[hellasus0001]

On 9/17/2022 at 10:11 PM, JP said:

 

Out of curiosity, if you were going to move a step up from the i5-12400....what might that be?  Do 10th and 11th gen Intel CPUs make any sense now given that 12th gen is here?

I have an i5 11500 and I can unfortunately not see any possible way for me to continue using it with the B560 board I have - I am capped out of pcie lanes essentially.

I was just looking at upgrading just the board to a Z590 - like the top models - they all have split x16 down to 8/8/4/4 etc and granted they have more m.2 gen 4 slots, but that's all i would get.. I don't know how well I can enable a z590 to have at least 15-16 drives connected with sata/sas and + the nvmes...

So I'm either looking to sell my entire build in a nice fancy case with some noctua fans I got laying around since I merged unraid and my gaming pc (which is the base of the current system.. I just never expected to re-purpose it for unraid..) and basically an entire PC incl my 750w seasonic gold psu with 8 years warrantly left, and an rtx 2070 super... And be content with no GPU until I can find (granted, better) one to use with my VM on ebay or such. To be fair I am kind of underpowered in gpu performance; vs my screen which I would like to run at more than low settings; 3440x1440p even if its through the local network, and more than 60 fps stream.

 

I don't know, I feel like I'm in such a bind; and it feels risky to sell essentially all but my drives + my nvme gen4 ssd and the server case - and hope I get enough to cover most of an entirely new base - which could be either AM5 or 13th gen intel... I do kind of want to go the real ECC route with AMD, because the W680 motherboard aka ECC on intels core 12th gen cpu's (and the new 13th i9 only, i cant find compatability with any other 13th gen on intels site - so its unknown for now! It would give you much more lanes for expansion through the card (w680 is like a z690 without the fancy bling) with 13th gen, but i think 12 should give enough anyway.... The problem for me is that it's difficult to find here in europe, the german sites refuse to ship outside germany as an example of the only sites that actually have a few on stock.......... So the W680 cards do exist, if you're american it can be bought on newegg if not in the perfect board build, it is available. Also available to germans - but it does cost around 500 dollars/euros.  It will likely be Supermicro that's in stock, but even their ATX boards (usually 3 gen4 nvme slots + decent lanes for expansions, ignore the PCI slot -are difficult to find in stock.  The best model is in my opinion still the Gigabyte MW34-SP0 - https://www.gigabyte.com/Enterprise/Server-Motherboard/MW34-SP0-rev-10

 

That Gigabyte card basically has everything I would ever need - two x16 lanes that works, in total 4 gen4 x4 nvme slots and cheap ECC memory support; DDR4. Try finding DDR5 ECC memory above 16gb.. The biggest stick currently sold is 32gb and they're pricy as Fuck.

 

If I was going to build an AM5 system with their best CPU, which costs 1000 dollar in my country, and a good enough board is about 400-600 - around 1500 dollars for cpu+mb.

If I could find a W680 for around 500-600 and pair it with the i9 for comparison which is going to sell for 850 dollars - it would basically come out the same; however it would only cost around 650, vs 699 dollars for the ryzen 9 7950x, not much of a difference - yet. There is a locked i9 that is not yet listed on sites, assumingly it will drop out without much notice after the big release day - but it's perfect for an unraid build and what i can gather it's actually pretty powerful, same amount of cores - just lower speeds. 

Or you could pair the W680 with a decent i7 12700/k or i5 12500k.. Maybe find a used CPU selling for cheap cause they want the new gen asap and already got a board for it...?

 

It's def. a good option to go if you want to get some extra umpf without paying much for it. And the expansions W680 offers is equal enough to the AM5 top chips, and allows ECC DDR4 with your intel core cpu - which will be much cheaper so the total build cost is still a lot less than the equivelant of any level AMD latest gen.
I am fairly uncertain what I will do still, I truly wish a z590 would solve my problems, but if im upgrading im def. not going to spend 350+ dollars on a Z690 card when I can add a couple more and get real ECC memory support; and not the expensive DDR5 version that AMD mostly has on their good cards.. 

 

By the way AMD does have an APU on all their zen4 CPUs now, which encodes and transcodes everything up to AV-1 which it decodes but can't decode. It's more a question of how quickly the graphic cores on the AM5 processors will be supported in Plex for transcoding. It's also only 2 cores, you could probably assume intels graphics will transcode more 4k streams at once..? And support for APU transcoding? Maaaybe in a year? I don't know if 13th gen igpu is supported already either tho, maybe not.

 

Decisions... Good luck!

[JP]

Wow @hellasus0001.  Amazing information and thanks for all the detail.  I'll admit, some of what you are speaking to is over my head, but I get a lot of it.  Ultimately, for me, I took @peterg23 advice and got an I5-12400.  I paired it with the Asrock Steel Legend Z690, 32 GBs of G.Skill Ram, and put it in a Silverstone CS380 case.  

 

I haven't built a PC in ages so my troubleshooting was a little rusty.  Bad RAM and a bad HDMI cable (how?) had me scratching my head for a bit, but eventually figured it out.  The only other hiccup was high temps for the hard drives, but I expected that after so many people had complained about the same thing with the CS380.  Replaced the stock fans with 3 cheap Arctic P12 PSM fans and completed a full parity check without any hdd getting too hot.  It all works great and just blows my mind how stable the Unraid software is.  Move to entirely new components and it just works.  Amazes me.  

 

Anyway, I have meager needs right now and the I5-12400 seems to crush it.  Holding media and some transcoding here and there, it seems to handle it just fine.  The only thing I haven't dipped my toe in yet is VMs.  I'm not a gamer, but I would like something that I could do some 4K video editing (family videos) with using Davinci Resolve.  Render times aren't a big deal to me since I just leave it alone when I'm rendering.  But having enough "horsepower" for scrubbing the timeline efficiently with 4K videos is something else.  As I understand it you need a pretty decent video card for that.  Maybe an AMD RX 6600 XT coupled with the I5-12400 is enough?  Not sure, but I'm trying to understand more to maybe give it a try. 

 

Anyway, all the best and thanks for the info.         

[hellasus0001]

On 10/7/2022 at 10:24 PM, JP said:

Wow @hellasus0001.  Amazing information and thanks for all the detail.  I'll admit, some of what you are speaking to is over my head, but I get a lot of it.  Ultimately, for me, I took @peterg23 advice and got an I5-12400.  I paired it with the Asrock Steel Legend Z690, 32 GBs of G.Skill Ram, and put it in a Silverstone CS380 case.  

 

I haven't built a PC in ages so my troubleshooting was a little rusty.  Bad RAM and a bad HDMI cable (how?) had me scratching my head for a bit, but eventually figured it out.  The only other hiccup was high temps for the hard drives, but I expected that after so many people had complained about the same thing with the CS380.  Replaced the stock fans with 3 cheap Arctic P12 PSM fans and completed a full parity check without any hdd getting too hot.  It all works great and just blows my mind how stable the Unraid software is.  Move to entirely new components and it just works.  Amazes me.  

 

Anyway, I have meager needs right now and the I5-12400 seems to crush it.  Holding media and some transcoding here and there, it seems to handle it just fine.  The only thing I haven't dipped my toe in yet is VMs.  I'm not a gamer, but I would like something that I could do some 4K video editing (family videos) with using Davinci Resolve.  Render times aren't a big deal to me since I just leave it alone when I'm rendering.  But having enough "horsepower" for scrubbing the timeline efficiently with 4K videos is something else.  As I understand it you need a pretty decent video card for that.  Maybe an AMD RX 6600 XT coupled with the I5-12400 is enough?  Not sure, but I'm trying to understand more to maybe give it a try. 

 

Anyway, all the best and thanks for the info.         

Hey no problem Happy that my research and insight helped^^ And that sounds like a really solid build &  yeah that is one of the (imo) best priced z690 motherboards for expansion out the gate + enough m2 drives (imo 2 is enough for most; assuming they do a cache pool that's 1:1 software raid and use idk a regular sata ssd drive for the dirty work if m.2 slots are scarce (but the cost is equal and m2s tend to have longer warranty / TB written before it's likely to die vs sata SSDs. i

I have actually been looking into getting that specific board myself the last days, because a) i found the 12th gen celeron and pentium selling for really low prices, and seems perfect for plex transcoding and basic unraid cpu host to a nice board filled to the rim with the best storage options you expect from a consumer board, and it b) I have started considering a second server to actually trust my important data being stored locally when it's in two seperate units, right now i only use it for replaceable content really.

 

Just today i saw the new Z790 board which actually is priced similarly to the z690 steel night here (the z690 boards have gone up a lot since the 13th gen release, as an example steel night is now 340 euros here, while ASRock Z790 Pro RS/D4 is 325 (atm the z790 steel knight adds a 5th nvme slot using gen5 speeds which is nice, but relative to the Pro RS it also adds wifi and bluetooth.. which i dont really value in an unraid server much. Also ram costs play in to the options; the steel knight is DDR5 which is expensive vs ddr4 that i already have 16gb extra off) I don't think the "on die ecc" that doesn't report the problem nor does anything about it so is it actually worth double the cost for worse ecc compability / functionality than on amd consumer cpu's and motherboards? I don't think so, and you could get ddr4 used real cheap im sure.

Z690 vs Z790 is almost identical in terms of these asrock boards. You get nearly at minimum; 4 nvme slots, 8 sata ports, the regular x16 gen5 + on most an x16 second slot, possibly a x1 on some too, but the second 16 slot is usually mechanically gen3 x4 /w z690, gen4 /w z790. Lanes of which are routed through the chipset not straight to the cpu - which might worth noting if anyone who reads this is thinking they will have 5 nvme's and a full x16 gen5 lane, its it'll be a monster but if you want a GPU with that check for a board with bifurication between first and second x16 - to x8/x8 if two are used, right now you need to spend at least 450 euros here in sweden for such a board in z690 ddr5 (ddr5 is necessary for this from what iv gathered, any board with bifurication does not use ddr4 anyway), up to 650e for "better" z690 boards that allows this split - if you want Z790 and bifurication expect to buy the most expensive board from either vendor, so 800-1500e somewhere between that.

In short you arent missing anything of relevance using a z690 this generation, especially if you opt for ddr4 models, the only reason i am looking at the z790 boards is because the z690 ones that offer the same expansions as yours, are all either out of stock or cost equally or more than the Z790 version of the RS at least.. So ofc I would choose it to get the extra m4 gen4 - not that i necessarily have a strong need for it - but its nice to have. The biggest upgrade came with your 12th gen build vs my 11th gen; 4 times more bandwidth between CPU and chipset - which is cruicial for your expansions out the gate - and I am feeling the limit from my current motherboard, i am literally out of options if I want to add more drives.

These boards cost between 200-350 retail (atm z690 is pricier than it was a little while ago for the cheapest two, but its still 250-350 so far). Regardless these versions of Asrock cards are virtually identical in terms of expansion in z690 versions with minor differences;

Steel Knight,

Pro RS,

PG Riptide

Extreme

 

But even further, they are also basically the same boards with Z790 too, the actual difference in between Z690 and Z790 is 4 more gen4 lanes allowing the 4th nvme to be gen4 instead of gen3. They also come in both ddr4 and ddr5 versions; both identical otherwise too so far; and they cost the same with either type of ram, too. I believe Z790 allows higher ddr5 OCing, but I am not interested in that for a server anyway, it'll run XMP if i even get ddr5, which is unlikely.

To summize they all have 8 sata ports, 4 nvme slots, 2,5gbit nic and one gen5 x16 slot. And ofc one mechanically X4 slot; which becomes gen4 on the new boards - however I am relatively certain that one m2 will either run at x2 and the pcie at x2; or one is shut off if the other is used.

 

So...  what if you want more than 8 sata ports?

There's a decent solution that doesnt include a controller! turn one of the m.2 slots into 5 sata ports!

It's still all routed through the 16000 MB/s with everything else, but how often would all of the drives and nvme's be used at once?

It's unlikely to become an issue since you're really removing one m2 drive that could do 5000-7000 MB/s peak speeds for 60-180 seconds then most of them drop to 1000-2000 MB/s if theyre being used to the max for longer.

Each sata drive will use at most 250 MB/s; it's basically a 1:1 trade in possible write speeds if you were to move Large data at once... 

And realistically all 5 drives would never use max speeds at once, the reason hba controllers work and support hundreds of drives through an x8 port is the fact that not all of them are used at once right.. so a few sata drives in unraid should def not slow down stuff imo.

So there's actually a reasonable option to expand into a silly number of sata ports with these asrock boards..

While still keeping two nvme drives for a cache pool mirrored, the other two slots you convert into 2 x5 sata ports, for the total sata drives possible becoming a whopping 18 drives, since there's 4 slots it's absolutely acceptable to lose one or two for 5-10 sata ports, since I consider 2 being the necessary amount anyway - well technically any board that has 4 nvme slots.

With the Z790 steel knight and it's 5th gen5 slot.. there's even more options, It would be technically possible to add 3 of the 5 sata controllers and still have 2 nvmes.. 23 sata ports; yeah the gpu would run at x8 lanes, but any gpu below 3090 is not going to be affected what so ever, even my 2070 super that's using pcie 3.0 - runs at full performance on x8 3.0, only 3090 is going to suffer a 1-2% loss if it was ran at x8 3.0 - however the 3000 series is using gen4 pci express, so it would be running at x8 4.0 - no reduction in performance. I would assume 4090 is either running gen 5 already, or it wont cap out x8 4.0 either. Basically any card is going to be using its complete performance on x8.

Just wanted to share this insane but fantastic idea, which granted is most effective in itx and matx sized boards with few sata ports to start with. I actually just found out about the m2 sata controllers this weekend.. Really opened my eyes to possiblities of itx builds with 4+5 sata ports, and still have 2 m.2 slots for nvme's if you use the itx cards with 3 slots! (two at the back, so sata port will be on the front, easy!)

 

Regarding the question of video editing and which GPU you should get. but I did some research and well, I tried to keep it short anyway!

 

I looked into the video editing and which GPUs is ideal, or if the one you mentioned were included anywhere in those discussions.

I did find "the magic combo" or at least what works the best and roughly what cards are 100% smooth to ? maybe smooth, maybe good enough?

I would just go for the minimum or better, btw. about the CPU and rendering, if you still havent bought the cpu I would choose the 13th gen i5 - even if you dont overclock it's a solid increase in overall performance, what i gathered it's about 15-19% faster doing pretty much anything if i understood the reviews iv looked between the generations.

 

I think ddr5 close to zero performance impact on the bump in performance, it's like 1-2% i would just guesstimate if at all, using ddr4 - maybe a tiny bit more if you OC the memories to high speeds - but that's unstable and not good for our use case; unraid. we want stable cpu and ram. I would use XMP profile at most, and zero cpu overclocking really.. maybe unlock power limits; but idk  if they are even locked on the K models - probably not?

Anyway so I found some posts about picking drivers while editing video and wouldnt you know... Nvidia releases 2 different drivers specifically for productivity, and one for gaming, so the "studio version" of the drivers are a key part of nvidia cards being really good with productivity. Supposedly the studio driver is more refined & stable before it's released, and is used for 3d software, well basically anything creative on the PC I suppose, including video editing.

 

Seems interesting, but not really what you were asking... So I looked further and i found this post which mentions specific card and how it performs in his bitrate and everything:

 

Quote

Yes, I can scrub 4k video (4.2.0 at 100 Mbps) smoothly without using optimisation or proxies. This is with the timeline set to 4k and it doesn't matter whether it's 8-bit or 10-bit video. However, any clips which have a lot of effects or colour grading applied will slow down timeline playback sometimes.

Also, I have 2 NVME M.2 drives in the system which probably helps with overall performance.

(source https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=164568 )

 

So he points out that nvme drives are really good for improving editing, what he didnt say until later in that thread is that he's using an RTX 2060 Super to do this, with studio drivers of course.

 

I also found an interesting thread on reddit which enforced that RTX cards are superior for editing. They even mention a RTX 1050 card being acceptable, and it seems like a lot of people pooint to the 1660ti for performance/cost alternative - ofc better is better, to some point - but clearly there's a ceiling somewhere performance wise; and then I found a post with this guy mentioning doing 4k editing with an 3080ti, and for some reason changing to an RTX 2060 non super version - and it made zero difference to him scrubbing and editing 4k videos.

 

In conclusion, it seems it's all about having some CUDA cores + the nvidia nvenc & studio drivers, and whatever budget you opt for; the more vram the better. And there's definitly a dividing point somewhere between the RTX 1050/1660ti and RTX 2060 - which is confirmed to work just as well as the second best GPU for the last year - of course rendering time will be better the higher you go above 2060 - but the requirement you have should be met by getting at least RTX 2060 or better.

I think it's very possible to find 3070 cards for 400 or less these days, if you look around maybe even an 3080, maybe ti too - for a hundred more probably around 500-600? Not completely sure, I am personally waiting a few months, but those are the cards I'll aim to get for my gaming VM - since my 2070 Super is a bit underperforming at 3440x1440p (The screen got 180hz, but parsec only allows 60 fps; and it's still a great card for 1080 or 1440p in many games, but the added pixel area of an ultrawide 1440p made it struggle - not that surprising of course. 

How much lesser of a GPU, before you dont get completely smooth 4k scrubbing? Impossible to determine without looking around and asking people editing until you find out where the limit is actually drawn, I would recommend just buying a 2060 at least, they're not very expensive, I think a 2070 Super that I have would sell for like 200-250 alone at most tbh.

 

This post below is worth reading, he mentions very solid nvme drives & names a few RTX card options if you're having doubts or budget concerned, but at least from what I gathered it's strongly advised not to use AMD cards for this, "they are made for gaming" is the reply one had on reddit, regarding them.

 

Considering this info and the fact that you got a mb with 4 nvme slots available all with heatsinks already in place (saves you 10-20 bucks each)

You could easily get 2 and mirror them as a cache pool; move all important things like VM and the system files there - perhaps all non array things in essense - and you would likely not see much of a difference from actually passing through an nvme to the VM - and idk if it's possible to use a dedicated drive as host OS drive when it's a VM - like you would pick that bare metal essentially and run it off of that nvme - maybe?

It might be worth looking into it, another way is ofc to add an nvme drive as a second hdd in the VM - but I don't know how performance would be affected since the host drive is on the cache pool?

 

That's some things you'd have to figure out, I would probably try running it straight on a cache pool first of two gen4 nvme's - how large you need i am not certain, i picked 1tb x2 for my cache pool - it feels like 1TB that's mirrored keeps the files kind of safe and you could do regular backups to the array as a precation, too.

 

The performance when I used a single 1TB kingston renegade fury as cache pool & VM files, I didn't feel like any background systems were slowing down anything. I also pinned 5 out of 6 cores - so unraid had 1 core and 1 thread to run with iirc, but i bet 4 cores for the VM would suffice since my GPU is the weak point atm - it felt very smooth and worked really well and using wifi on the client i still only had a few ms delay.

 

It's clear as day that using nvme drives is going to be a big improvement overall, if possible i'd get two of the better gen4 ones that you find on sale or around 1tb/100-120e each. Scales in price pretty much up to 2TB, larger and it for sure costs more per gb.

Personally i have a Samsung 980 PRO and a Kingston Fury Renegade both at 1TB, i havent installed the samsung yet cause of my current mboard being so shit anyway and ill likely upgrade this week.. But i got the 980 pro with heatsink for only a hundred on amazon prime day - so you could def save money on those nice nvmes (980 is one of the best, the fury is not that far behind but samsung is better at prolonged heavy workloads; i think that's kind of what you would prefer to get most improvement editing, i know the 980 pro is pretty much the top 5 nvmes esp. with productivity tasks afaik maybe the best? I would probably look for samsung drives on sale, or buy whatever is good value vs performance and consider the budget; i would at least get 2 for data parity 1:1 software cache pool - idk if its possible to passthrough an M.2 directly to the windows VM and use as the host OS drive rather than a virtual one in the VM folders - but if its possible - or if adding it as a second harddrive in the VM will improve editing - You'd have to look around to find out what's possible and the benefits and negatives on whats a good alternative or even possible.

 

IMO I would not care that much about the TBW as much as the price per GB, all gen4 drives that try to perform in the top tier levels are all around 600 TBW range per 1TB, all last longer the bigger they are; usually 2tb is rated for 1200 TBW & price/gb is like 1TB drives. 4TB = expensive AF.

 

Quote

AMD graphics cards are great at gaming, but not great at other applications.

Nvidia graphics cards are much, much better with video editing, and are especially optimized for Adobe Creative Suite. Nvidia even has special drivers for the purpose - change the download type from Game Ready to Studio:

https://www.nvidia.com/download/index.aspx

Something like a 1050 Ti, 1060, 1650, 1660, or 2060 would be a good choice. The Quadro T600 would also not be bad.

My other recommendations is to consider 32GB of RAM - it can be found for under $100.

Most importantly though I would recommend a high endurance SSD. 500 TBW minimum, 1000+ TBW is ideal. When you edit videos, the programs will keep writing a bunch of temporary files to the SSD for any change you make. These temporary files are massive and will quickly wear out cheaper SSDs.

In the US, the 1TB Sabrent Rocket would be my top recommendation, it has 1,600 TBW and is $99:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07LGF54XR

Other good SSDs include:

Seagate:

Firecuda 510 - 1,300 TBW per 1TB, standard speed

Firecuda 520 - 1,800 TBW per 1TB, but faster

Firecuda 530 - 1,275 TBW per 1TB, but super fast

Western Digital:

SN700 - 1,500-2,500 TBW depending on size, standard speed.

Inland:

Premium - 1,600 TBW per 1TB, standard speed

Performance - 1,800 TBW per 1TB, faster

Corsair:

Force MP510 - 1,600 TBW, standard speed

Force MP600 (not pro/core) - 1,800 TBW, faster

Samsung 970 Pro - 1,200 TBW per tb, standard speed

Phison E16 SSDs - 1,800 TBW, faster:

PNY XLR8 CS3040 (except 4TB model)

Gigabyte Aorus NVMe 4.0

Team Z440

Patriot VPN4100

Sabrent Rocket 4 (not plus)

The absolute worst SSDs are QLC models like Samsung QVO, Western Digital SN550 (formerly TLC, now QLC), Sabrent Rocket Q or Q4, Crucial's P series, Intel 660P, Corsair Core, Inland Platinum, etc.

(Source https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/tc72pw/comment/i0c5vub/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 )

 

 So for me, I think my current setup is at a dead end for me, since I am down at 11th gen I am getting 1/4th of the bandwidth from the chipset to the CPU... It's horrendous. 
 

Quote

Z690 uses DMI 4.0 (Which is equivalent to PCIE 4.0 x8, in speed is 16,000 megabyte/sec) while Z590 uses DMI 3.0 (Which is equivalent to PCIE 3.0 x4, in speed is 4,000 megabytes), in terms of value Z590 is an awful value if you care about chipset bandwidth, M.2's and/or PCIe devices.

 

And I have a b560, it's down right the worst version of all asus boards - no 2,5gbit, one x4 gen3 slot and 6 sata ports. That's it. The only upside is that the vrm fins are good enough to allow unlocking the power limiter, which is mainly good for gaming.

 

I initially thought i could add enough drives with the x4 slot; it's just a struggle using 4000 MB/s between 8 sata drives and only having one gen4 nvme slot to cpu,  and then the 4000 mb/s is shared between the gen3 nvme slot, with the 6 sata port drives as well as the x4 pcie slot which i was originally planning to use for expanding at least 4 more drives with. A large reason I want to replace the entire build is to get my two gen4 nvme's to work at their best and have a good foundation like the asrock boards provide; in fact it's pretty much spot on what I need.

 

So for now I'm very likely ordering a Z790 atx for storage and expansion being spot on for my ATX case. However since I am playing on a budget, the second build will have to wait a little, and for now I  plan on using either a celeron 6900 (2c) which has UHD 710, or the pentium g7400 (2c2t), Not sure if i plex, sonarr, qbittorrent, deluge and maybe radarr would be needing the extra 2 threads to function. The UHD 710 has QuickSync, but with 16 execution units vs i5 12th gen's UHD 770 or 750's 32 exection units. The assumption I am making is that I can transcode about half the amount of 4k as it is literally half the gpu power comparing the two. If it doesnt work I guess I will deal with it; it's very rare for me to transcode things unless im travelling anyway.

 

So for now I'm very likely ordering a Z790 atx for storage and expansion being very much spot on for my 8 bay case, and if i did decide to expand i have a case with twice as many bays - altho it feels unlikely to happen within several years.

 

My dream build would to be fair require an mATX card, but I have to look past ideal and use the things I have to cut costs as much as possible and that includes picking an ATX card with a lot of expansion ports and enough sata ports to begin with, honestly i dont think i would need to buy any controller card of any kind and still make it into a gaming VM host when I have the funds, while also looking a server grade itx board with either 6 sata slots or one m.2 i can turn into 5 ports.. worst case id just put a controller card 8i in it and be done with it, it's likely the easiest way. I do feel like remote control of box is going to be necessary or it will have to be in my home - its better than no backup at least.

 

But if I had the money and found a board suitable to build a power gaming VM unraid from the larger yet compact and very well planned Fractal Design 804 matx case - it's probably my ideal NAS if I am going to have a gaming VM - it allows so much:

30cm gpu, 28cm if you have a fan infront of it as intake.

280 AIO slot that isn't removing gpu length mounted in the bay behind MB + GPU venting out the area the drives are located

8 3,5" fits in the compartment behind MB togheter with a full length 170mm PSU

2 more 3,5" fits in front of the motherboard and can be mounted on the bottom.

2 2,5" sata drives also has mounting available if you really need any in there.

mATX so while it's  difficult to find any with more than 6 sata ports; there are cards with one 16 lane and one 8 lane; either they split 8/8 and you add a HBA controller - consider if there's only 6 ports; you need another 6 to max it out with two ssds, you could technically add more ssds  - but that would probably be excessive unless it's one or two for installing games on the VM, that you dont wanna waste nvme space on.

There's space for 3x 120mm fans intake front; 4 if the gpu is 28 cm or shorter.

There's a 140 mm exhaust behind the motherboard

There's a 120mm exhause in the drives/psu compartment

There's the 280 AIO exhaust in the top of same compartment - 2x 140mm fans there too.

There's also space for two 140 mm fans to exhaust the MB/GPU compartment in the top; it's just not enough space room for an AIO+ fan thickness, from what I gathered. 

 

It will allow cpu coolers up to 15 cm or so, so basically any CPU cooler which is good and air cooled is an option over water AIO. Personally I would get an AIO simply because there's a window on the GPU/MB side; and I would have my server located in a way that anyone who comes to my home can not miss it - cause why not
 

I do have a choice of building on an AMD matx board which fits the description, but I don't know if it's going to work without problems, iv read many having trouble with it, and ecc memory being iffy on consumer cpu's and so on.. I am not very confident in the build holding up to expectations if I do go with it. Also it would pretty much force me to keep both servers here, but I guess its a bit over the top to relocate one server for data backups..

 

With all this building I would throw in my gaming stuff into a nice case and hope people like the visual representation and that it's still a really good gaming pc for 1080 and 1440p. i5 11500 (with a basic b560 board, perfect for gaming even with an 11500, the power limit is unlocked and theres enough cooling  to allow it to run free, so cpu does go up to 150w peak turbo instead of being locked at max 65w.
For me it's just limiting too much - and the GPU is too weak after the screen upgrade. Basically it's not worth keeping even as a backup server, id rather have it be ecc server grade itx or a cheap lga 1700 since i have a cpu for once i upgrade the first build.

 

The best cost effective move is to get the Z790 board for now and using it with the cheap celeron cpu, it'll allow me to get it up and running and pretty much zero downtime, if i wait to build it until the board arrives before friday. Which would be ideal for me, and the gpu is likely a last on the list priority over getting both boxes work tbh, but eventually i will most likely upgrade the CPU & add an GPU when or if I feel like gaming again.

 

Anyway I hope my small novel was worth reading, and that I replied in time before you might've gotten the AMD gpu - or if you did -  how is it working for you?
Hopefully I gave you or anyone who finds this post later of interest and that i at least gave you some new info of value ^^

 

Good luck with the build if not yet done! You can always DM me your discord and I'll add you if you want any inputs that's a bit faster -  i dont really visit this forum that frequently unless it's troubleshooting stuff

Edited October 25, 2022 by hellasus0001