what board, memory and CPU recommended for decent but not overpriced unraid hardware

[VladoB]

Dear friends

 

I have been running unraid in 2 machines for some time with about 100 TB of space available, but both those machines were simply rebuildt expired, old, otherwise unusable servers from HP Proliant series. They are old, I am unable to insert NVIDIA decent card into it for conversion purposes and PLEX media server. Also they are back from before 2010, not good because of power consumption etc.

 

So I decided to build nice and fresh machines as of 2023 and I would like to know your advice - would you be so kind to comment on my preliminary selection of components?

1. chasis - Fractal Design Define XL R2 Black Pearl - Link to my favorite local shop - it can really keep lot of disks

2. montherboard - GIGABYTE B650 GAMING X AX - Link to my favorite local shop - it has sound card however which I do not need

3. processor - AMD Ryzen 7 7700 - Link to my favorite local shop - TDP only 65W - 8 cores, 16 threads, however I do not need graphic card AMD Radeon Graphics which is in the processor - maybe useless to pay for this

4. memory - Kingston FURY 16GB DDR5 5600MHz CL36 Beast Black EXPO 2x - Link to my favorite local shop

5. cache - WD BLACK SN850 NVMe Heatsink pro PS5 2TB - Link to my favorite local shop

 

Can you please comment and give me your suggestions? I am open to any good idea.

 

Many thanks

 

Vlado

[Lolight]

16 hours ago, VladoB said:

NVIDIA decent card into it for conversion purposes and PLEX media server

Do you mean hardware transcoding?

 

Plex' HW transcoding support is still work in progress on AMD CPUs.

Intel CPUs and their iGPUs have been fully supported for years.

 

 

[VladoB]

Thanks, so I will check some Intel MB and processor, any advice?

[Lolight]

1 hour ago, VladoB said:

Thanks, so I will check some Intel MB and processor, any advice?

For a media server capable of a few of 4K transcodes and no VMs even the cheapest 12-13th generation Intel CPU (non-F SKU) would do.

e.g. the i3-12100.

 

The motherboard choice would depend on the number of HDDs and their connection method.

If connected to motherboard's SATA get one with 8 SATA ports,

e.g. the ASRock Z790 Pro RS/D4.

 

Samsung NVMe drives tend to be more compatible with low power CPU modes if maximum efficiency is desired.

Instead of getting a single big SSD, you might want to get at least a couple of smaller ones for multiple cache pools -  ATX motherboards usually feature 3 or 4 NVMe slots.

 

https://cz.pcpartpicker.com/list/