New to Unraid, some questions

[nguyenpk]

Hey all, I recently built a new pc and wanted to convert my old one into an Unraid server. The main purpose of the build is storage first and tinkering second, I have a DAS I want to move all the drives from.

Parts:
Fractal Meshify 2

Intel i7 7700k

EVGA GeForce GTX 1080Ti SC2

ASUS ROG Strix z270g

G.Skill 32GB (2x16) DDR4 3200

Corsair AX760

Samsung 960 EVO 250GB SSD (NVMe) x2

Samsung 850 EVO 500GB SSD (SATA)

Samsung 860 PRO 1TB SSD (SATA)

Seagate IronWolf Pro 12TB x2

And x4 drives of varying size from 2-4TB

As mentioned before I primarily want to use this for storage and to consolidate my current DAS. I currently use it for storing photo/video but would like to eventually host a plex server with 3-4 users at most. I don't plan on hosting VMs anytime soon, but will likely tinker with lightweight containers for learning.

 

I'm unsure what configuration of drives I can use given my mobo and cpu combo. I'm a little fuzzy on how PCIe lanes exactly work, but if I understand it correctly x16 slots go direct to the cpu while the chipset gets x4? Right now I can easily max out my 6 SATA slots, but if I wanted to expand it down the line with an added SATA controller to potentially use all my drives, is this possible while using the 2 NVMe drives and the GPU slot for the 1080? Looking for any clarity or advice on the matter, thanks for looking.