Unraid noob needs opinions

[ralop]

Hi,

Ive been looking to do a unraid server build. I need your guys opinions should i use my old motherboard and cpu or go the route all the cool kids go and build a 10/11/12th gen server.

Server will be mostly just storing my movies/tv shows and have the automation for torrent etc. At this moment not planning to run plex or jellyfin, just straight connection between main pc and server, but if i do its only to my tv.
At start one hba and sas expander (dual link) giving me 16 drives but later if needed add second hba and expander and also run a 10gbit nic.

My old computer has asus tuf z370 pro gaming mb and intel i3-8300 cpu

Edit1
So the question is do you guys see a problem using the old cpu for
all the *arr
usenet/torrent downloads
Watching movies shows on main computer with mpc-hc+madvr

or

just go straight to the newer hardware

Edited December 3, 2022 by ralop
was missing the actual question

[trurl]

You could try it with your existing hardware. Easy to transfer to new hardware later.

6 minutes ago, ralop said:

16 drives

Why so many? Instead of new hardware it might make more sense to consider new larger drives instead of reusing a lot of smaller disks. Reliably rebuilding a failed disk requires reliably reading every bit of all other disks, so you might not want old disks in your server.

 

I always recommend fewer larger disks instead of more smaller disks.

 

Each additional disk is an additional point of failure. More disks requires more hardware and more power. Larger disks typically perform better than smaller disks.

 

And of course the licensing tiers depend on drive count, though I have always just gone with Pro despite never using that many disks.

[ralop]

5 minutes ago, trurl said:

Why so many?

Not going to run 16 drives out of the gate just meant that hba+expander gives me option of running 16 drives in dual link. But for start will be using some of my old hard drives and slowly updating them to bigger ones.

Edited December 3, 2022 by ralop

[Lolight]

17 hours ago, ralop said:

So the question is do you guys see a problem using the old cpu for

all the *arr
usenet/torrent downloads
Watching movies shows on main computer with mpc-hc+madvr

or

just go straight to the newer hardware

No need for new hardware