First unRAID build - Plex and VM

[SonnyMarrow]

My current storage solution is a Windows 10 PC with a Pentium G4560 (7th gen), 1050 Ti, and dual 8tb WD Red in software RAID 1. I want to build a proper NAS to also host my Plex server and a simple Windows 11 VM for light emulation stuff (Dolphin). My planned build and setup:

 

• CPU - Intel i5-14500 (UHD 770)
  • iGPU, 2p and, 4e cores for unRAID/Plex
  • 4p and 4e cores for Windows 11 VM
• GPU - Arc 380
  • Passthrough to Windows 11 VM
  • Will eventually move over to unRAID
• Mobo - ASUS Pro WS W680-ACE
  • Supports ECC RAM, dual 2.5Gb NIC, 3 NVME slots, 8 SATA drives
• RAM - 64GB of Kingston ECC RAM (validated for mobo)
• SSDs
  • 2TB Western Digital Black SN770 for VM, dockers, Plex metadata?
  • 2 x 1TB Western Digital Red SN700 in RAID 1 for unRAID cache
• HDDs - undecided, but likely 5 or 6 18TB drives with two parity drives as the array
• PSU - Corsair RM750x Shift
• Case - Fractal Design Define 7

 

Does this setup look good enough to have roughly 50TB+ of storage, good unRAID and Plex performance, decent Windows VM performance for light emulation gaming and occasional internet browser streaming, and reliability?

 

The SSD setup is what I'm most unsure about. I've read a lot of different approaches for where to put a VM, appdata, dockers, cache, Plex metadata. I had even thought about tossing in a separate SATA SSD for the Plex metadata to isolate the VM? Would appreciate any suggestions or advise as to the SSD setup. 

[Spunner]

I like the setup, but have questions myself on the video choice, for VM and Plex use.

 - I know Intel makes drivers for virtualization, but I'm uncertain how far the ARC series is supported.  I see giganode has a "Intel i915-SR-IOV" App on the main screen, being uploaded recently, and it clearly does NOT support Arc boards.

 - I'd verify on the Plex forums on Arc support as well, to get an idea on compatibility and capability.  I know the integrated graphics support on newer Intel chips lags a bit, but I'm not sure on the Arc series itself suffers from the same.

 

As for the SSD's, I don't know that you need two sets, but I am no expert.  Having a 2TB mirrored set, I feel, is more than enough.  The real storage-hog are your plex videos, which will reside on your disks, so everything else you noted should leave you more than enough on the WD Black's you mentioned.  Would suggest doing more research here...

 

The processor, for me, was the biggest catch when picking a setup.  Intel desktop proc's are very, very limited to PCIe lanes used for expansion.  If you ever expect to install other boards, besides the video card, like SAS, 10Gbe, etc., you'd need to have a workstation or server motherboard that supports a Xeon (Intel) or Epyc (AMD).  Several benefits open up here, like IPMI, that allows you to KVM into the system, all the way down to the BIOS/UEFI settings from a remote location, even if its only in the other room.  Not having a keyboard, mouse, monitor is nice too.