Are my spare parts for a new build overkill?


TamezPhoto

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Hi. I am new to the forum. Considering using Unraid because of it's ease of expandability vs the competitors. I am pretty proficient with computer hardware in general. I do my own repairs and have been building my own PCs since I was 15, but when it comes to networking I know very little except what I can absorb from watching LTT videos. 

I am a photographer so storage and redundancy are important to me and the main purpose of this build. I'd also like to use this as a Plex server. Aside from my friends accessing the Plex server, I will be the only user accessing my photography archive. Right now my archive solution is just external USB drives and my Plex server is a Windows PC that is always on. 

Here are the spare parts I already have:

Intel i7 9700K
64GB G.SKILL TridentZ RGB (4 x 16GB) DDR4 3200 RAM
AMD RX 5700 XT 8GB GPU (liquid cooled)
MSI Mortar Titanium B360M Motherboard

256GB NVMe PCI-e Gen 3 (for cache)
I have this 2.5G ethernet card from Amazon that claims to work with Unraid. If it doesn't I'll be using the onboard gigabit Ethernet port for now
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08V1HG47H?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details



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My Mobo only has 4 SATA ports so I will be purchasing one of these HBA cards 
https://www.ebay.com/itm/133481123885


I also have a 1TB NVMe SSD, but most of my photo sessions range in the 30-60GB each and I don't see myself uploading more than 3 at a time. I'd like to keep this drive for on-site backup when I'm traveling or shooting on location unless it is recommended otherwise here. 

I'll be purchasing 4 8TB drives with the option to expand to another 4 drives in the Fractal Design Node 804 case. 
If it fits the case with all the drive bays populated, I'd be liquid cooling the cpu mostly because I already have a 280mm AIO and don't have any air coolers to spare. 

The core of my question is, I suppose, if my CPU, GPU and RAM are going to be used to their full potential? Right now my Plex "server" has an i3 8100 and an nVidia GT 1030

 

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On mobile now so haven't looked up any of this hardware. Your intended usage is very similar to what we do with Unraid. 

 

I assume CPU and mobo support iGPU so you don't really need GPU except maybe to play with VMs.

 

The smaller SSD you propose should be enough to support dockers/VMs but might not be enough for caching. Depending on how much you write daily. In any case don't cache initial data load.

 

Also note that parity is not a substitute for backup. You must always have another copy of anything important and irreplaceable.

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Thanks for the reply @trurl. I pay for Plex pass so I had hardware acceleration in mind for the GPU. I Did a little bit of research and it seems like AMD support with both Plex and Unraid (or maybe Linux in general) is sketchy at best and the iGPU acceleration might be better. The info I found was from 2021 so if anything has changed, I'd love to learn more. Otherwise I would not have use for the GPU as you suggested. I am not using virtual machines. 

To clarify my more specific use of the server. I would not be using it as an "active" drive. I will not be working off the drive. The server will host archived files that have already been retouched and delivered to the client. Which is why I mentioned I won't be uploading more than 3 sessions at a time, and 99% of the time, I won't be "updating" the content of each photo session's folder unless I need to pull assets later. 

 I do have other layers of backup from ingestion through production. 

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You're like me before I started.  I had hardware lying around as well as planned to buy some stuff but I wasn't sure what to do.  Now that I've been using unRAID the best thing is to build your system and then simply download the OS to a USB and plug it into that system.  Just start using it!  You have a 30-day trial and if you find that the CPU is not fast enough or the GPU or network card is not quite working right or if you need more memory then upgrade or swap those things out.  unRAID doesn't care about the hardware.  In fact I completely swapped out the mobo, CPU, and memory in one of my systems.  The only things I kept were the HDDs and the system looked just like it did before except that it was now faster and had more memory.

 

A few things to note.  The 2.5G network card is useless unless you have a 2.5G switch and Cat6A cables.  The source, target, and medium must all support the minimum speed you are looking for.

 

Many people here have lots of 4TB and occasionally 8TB drives.  I can only assume that they all bought these a few years ago because the best bang for your buck right now is about 14TB.  I just hopped on Amazon to compare prices and I see 8TB for $190 and 14TB for $230.  Almost twice the space for $40 more and usually the larger drives are faster.

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On 1/16/2023 at 4:04 PM, TamezPhoto said:

My Mobo only has 4 SATA ports so I will be purchasing one of these HBA cards

I'll be purchasing 4 8TB drives with the option to expand to another 4 drives in the Fractal Design Node 804 case. 
If it fits the case with all the drive bays populated, I'd be liquid cooling the cpu mostly because I already have a 280mm AIO and don't have any air coolers to spare. 

You won't need a HBA card if you opt for bigger drives, preferably in the 14-18 TB range.

Every drive is a potential failure point - the fewer the better for the overall server reliability.

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