Don't laugh too hard, but I started this about... Ohhh 10 years ago. I started by buying a S5000PSL board with two x5450 xeon processors and 16GB of ram off of eBay. Then I bought a Antec P100 case, and a EVGA 750w modular power supply. Then I did nothing until now, I have been trying to assimilate info from here, reddit, youtube, among others. I landed on keeping the case and power supply. Dual 120w TDP processors and generally older hardware I think there are better ways to go. I intend to run Jellyfin and Home Assistant at a minimum. I have around 30 or so TB of movies and TV. Just starting down the smart home road. I started looking for a 12100t for the 35w TDP, but scored a great deal on a 12400, i also found a real good deal on 140mm pwm noctua fans to maximize the case fan potential. My MB requirements were usb-c, dual m.2, 2.5g lan, and lga1700. I settled on a GIGABYTE B760M DS3H DDR4, 16gb of G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series ram, LSI-9207-8i HBA, and a Noctua NH-U14S. The MB, ram, and cooler are in my Amazon cart just waiting for me to pull the trigger, just figured I would wait to see your guys feedback. I am looking for a recommendation m.2 cashe drive size, can i get away with 256gb or 512gb raid1? 

 

I will appreciate any feedback on the build. I do have a couple of 2060 cards for transcoding but I was told on reddit that there wouldnt be any benefit to it.

 

First post, I tried to follow the post guidelines, i am just trying for a reasonable budget, I already have the case, CPU, and power supply. I was trying to stay around $100 on the MB, $50 or less on RAM, I am splurging on the cooling. I have a bunch of external drives I plan to shuck, the case is maxed out at 8, so is the HBA. I am sure I will find some apps but nothing in mind other than jellyfin, and home assistant right now.

 

Thanks,

George

I'd run what you have and learn what needs improvement first - though you might miss transcoding potential from the 12400 you may still be fine. Experience before spending when you can always wins. That may also give you a little time to save if you find you want any parts slightly more $ - server builds can last many many years.

Make sure you get pci lanes to give you room for everything you might need (e.g. CPU transcoding falls short and you need a standalone card).

I feel like 16gb ram may be selling yourself short - though that depends so much where this journey takes you next. Cache size depends on your usage. Bigger drives usually have better write durability.

I run 1tb for docker/VMs with good use ratio. 1tb is nearly always adequate for a write cache for me, but not quite (depends how multiple systems overlap or don't) - with other use cases since added that's now 4x2tb raid 1+0.