On 11/8/2024 at 8:27 AM, Hereweare2024 said:

Consider mini-pc options with a connected DAS. You will use much less power and should be more then capable for transcodes (INTEL ONLY).

This has crossed my mind, something like the MS-01 is certainly powerful enough for my needs. But I decided against it for a few reasons:

• 12-16 bay DAS hardware seems to geared for enterprise, and doesn't look like it would be be quiet (or afforadable).

• Any energy gains I make with a mini-PC would probably be lost on the 12+ bay DAS anyway.

• My expansion options are severely limited with a mini-PC. I might want to do something like add a GPU and host my own LLM for Home Assistant in the future.

• I'm more comfortable upgrading/replacing components in a full-tower. If something took out my PSU I'd much rather swap out a regular ATX unit than whatever I'd have to do with a MS-01.

Edited November 11, 20241 yr by Gazeley

On 10/27/2024 at 6:32 PM, Gazeley said:

Here is my current tentative plan:

I’ve been exploring building a new Unraid server and these components match very closely with what I’ve been thinking. Did you happen to build your system? Anything you’d change?

@hovee Actually I just started buying the parts (mobo arrived yesterday). I'm going on vacation soon and I'm planning to build it when I get back.

@Gazeley You back yet? Have you built your server? I'm in need of the same and read your thought process and liked it; very complete. Will probably copy a few of those thoughts for my own rebuild.

 

I like VM's and dockers, so I have struggled with what platform to go with. Also availably of MB's that I think I want. Not sure I would use Pro Art in a server more aimed at PC (I have one with 13900K that had the microcode problem)

@grumpy 

 

I really screwed up by not ordering every part before I went on vacation. I returned to find several of the components on my list backordered. Currently I have most of the components standing by, but I'm still waiting for the PSU, CPU cooler, and custom CableMod quad-SATA power cables to come in.

 

I can't believe how many things disappeared off of Newegg/Amazon in the span of a few weeks. Luckily I've been able to find alternate vendors for everything, its just taking a lot longer than I expected. The remaining components should deliver over the next couple weeks, and I should have the build complete before the end of March. I'll post an update at that point.

Edited February 24, 20251 yr by Gazeley

@Gazeley @grumpy
I followed this build and have had my server up and running for 8 days now. The one thing I'd note is that the m.2 SSD is Gen 5, but all the m.2 slots on the motherboard are Gen 4. Other than that the build went pretty smoothly. I haven't installed the sata controller or network cards yet, but I did install an Intel Arc B580. Unraid 7.0 isn't supporting it yet, but I was able to pass it through to a windows VM and install the latest Intel Arc drivers and get it working there. So far very happy with my experience.

@Tineen Thanks for your comment! It's really nice to know that someone has already gotten this combination of parts working well with Unraid.

 

Did you end up going with a 750W PSU? That's my one remaining hesitation. I'm almost definitely going to add a GPU to self-host a LLM at some point, and I'm a tad worried that my 750W PSU won't cut it if I add something like a 4090.

@GazeleyWithout reviewing the build I can tell you a 3080 with an old threadripper 2950 (350W) and 6 HD was using a measly 350 W at idle and about 450 W during transcoding. So 750 is probably fine. With a 14900K and 4090 I alarm my Eaton 1500 Va ups while hammering CPU and GPU

5 hours ago, Gazeley said:

@Tineen Thanks for your comment! It's really nice to know that someone has already gotten this combination of parts working well with Unraid.

 

Did you end up going with a 750W PSU? That's my one remaining hesitation. I'm almost definitely going to add a GPU to self-host a LLM at some point, and I'm a tad worried that my 750W PSU won't cut it if I add something like a 4090.

No, I used this one to be on the safe side: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C571R3V8?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1

Prob overkill, but I'm hoping to run 2 gpus in the future, 1 for gaming vm and another for llms/machine learning.

@Tineen Did you use the Asus motherboard and Kingston ECC Memory on the build list (ASUS Pro WS W680-ACE and KSM48E40BD8KI-32HA)?

 

I finished the build today but unfortunately I couldn't even get to a boot screen. There was no video output at all and I was getting a code 55 on the motherboard, which apparently indicates a memory issue. I tried alternating 1 stick at a time and tried different RAM slots but still no luck. Code 55 every time.

 

So I'm guessing I've either got a bad motherboard, incompatible RAM, or I got incredibly unlucky and got 2 bad sticks of this RAM. From everything I read this RAM should be compatible, but it's niche enough that I can't find an example of anyone using it on this board. It would be very helpful to know if someone else has gotten this combination of parts working.

On 10/28/2024 at 3:12 AM, enect said:

The RAM you chose is outdated and discontinued. It was replaced by KSM48E40BD8KI-32HA. I have this too and it works without problems.

Same question for you. Are you using this memory with the Asus Pro WS W680-Ace? As mentioned above I'm having trouble and I have no idea if it's because of a compatibility issue or a bad component. On the Memory compatibility page for this board I see the KSM48E40BD8KM-32HM memory that I originally had on my build list, but not the newer KSM48E40BD8KI-32HA that I got instead at your recommendation. I'm trying to determine if there's any chance this newer RAM just isn't compatible with the board for some reason.

Update: I bought a stick of non-ECC Crucial RAM to test since the Kingston ECC RAM got stuck on error 55 every time. With the Crucial RAM it successfully boots about 50% of the time, but the other half of the time it gets stuck on one of the following error codes: 7F, 4F, B6, or 33. I tried clearing the CMOS and updating the mobo BIOS to the latest version but that made no difference.

 

Those error codes all seem to be memory related, so on one of the successful boots I ran memtest86+ for 8 hours, but it passed with 0 errors. Next I tried booting to Linux Mint and running stress-ng for about 10 minutes to stress test the CPU. Again, passed with 0 errors.

 

In summary: half the time it doesn't boot and gets stuck on a memory-related error - but the other half of the time where it makes it past the boot then everything seems nice and stable. My best guess is that I have a faulty motherboard so I just ordered a replacement. Not looking forward to redoing half the damn build to swap the motherboard, so hopefully my effort isn't in vain.

 

If the issue persists after swapping the motherboard I think I'll cry.

 

 

 

On 4/1/2025 at 5:40 AM, Gazeley said:

Are you using this memory with the Asus Pro WS W680-Ace?

 

Yes, I have been using this exact RAM (KSM48E40BD8KI-32HA) with my ASUS Pro WS W680-ACE IPMI for about 9 months. (2x 32GB). No problems and absolutely stable. I am very satisfied and can recommend it without reservation.

18 hours ago, enect said:

 

Yes, I have been using this exact RAM...

Thank you, that is reassuring to hear. Guess I just got unlucky with a faulty motherboard, hopefully swapping it out resolves everything.

On 3/31/2025 at 11:28 PM, Gazeley said:

@Tineen Did you use the Asus motherboard and Kingston ECC Memory on the build list (ASUS Pro WS W680-ACE and KSM48E40BD8KI-32HA)?

Sorry for the late response. Yeah, that’s the ram I used, no memory issues at all.

 

Were you able to resolve it?

3 hours ago, Tineen said:

Were you able to resolve it?

 

Yes I did end up getting this build finished. Turns out my CPU had a bad memory controller. After swapping the memory, and then the motherboard, I finally tried swapping the CPU and that resolved the issue. Then I hit some trouble with the BIOS because I couldn't get it to boot the USB in legacy mode, and I didn't realize I had to remove a "-" from the end of the EFI folder name on my Unraid USB to get it to boot via UEFI.

 

Anyway, despite the struggles it was all worth it in the end. I whipped up a before/after comparison chart to illustrate the upgrade to my family and justify the Plex downtime:

 

Almost doubles my compute power, triples my potential storage capacity, halves my power usage, and most importantly (even though I can't show it above) it is completely silent. My wife and I are very happy that we don't have to listen to the old Supermicro anymore.

 

I think I might take on this same build. Anything either of you would do differently?

19 hours ago, drjUnraid said:

I think I might take on this same build. Anything either of you would do differently?

Not really. I ended up going with Samsung 990 Pro SSDs because of price/availability issues with the Crucial T700 at the time. Decided on 128GB of RAM because I was worried it wouldn't be available years from now if I wanted more. I also sprung for custom SATA power cables from cablemod (specs attached) so I could comfortably reach all of the drives without a bunch of cable slack wasting space.

Otherwise I built exactly what I have listed here and it's been great! Dead silent (the HDDs are the only noise), cool temps (screenshot attached), less than half of the power usage of the server it replaced, and about twice as powerful. Plus it has room to add a GPU eventually if I want to self-host a LLM in the future.

All-in-all I'm happy with the build. The only thing I might have done differently is pick a 1000W PSU, because if I get to 15 HDDs and add a beefy GPU someday I'm a little worried that my 750W PSU won't cut it.

You should be able to tune idle power consumption lower (unless you're not spinning down drives). Also vaguely considering a switch to a very similar build, just have to justify the expense and that's hard...

Are you able to share your final build?

I love this write up as I’m looking for very similar. It’s hard to find a thread like this without it being taken into the mud with Raspberry Pi and classic refurb users saying you are an idiot this is overkill. I also loved how the OP showed the work with what was considered and reconsidered.

As I’m doing similar I just wanted to note as of writing the difference between the OP’s i5 and an i7 is just fifteen bucks.

On 7/13/2025 at 9:10 PM, CyberMew said:

Are you able to share your final build?

Here's the final build list:

CPU: Intel Core i5-14500 2.6 GHz 14-Core Processor

CPU Cooler: BeQuiet! Dark Rock Elite

Motherboard: ASUS Pro WS W680-ACE

Memory: 4 x Kingston KSM48E40BD8KI-32HA 32 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR5-4800 CL40 ECC Memory
Cache Storage: 2 x Samsung 990 Pro 4 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive
Case: Fractal Design Meshify 2 XL ATX Full Tower Case + 5 x HDD Tray Kits

Power Supply: Seasonic Vertex PX-750 80+ Platinum Power Supply
Case Fan: 5 x Noctua A14 PWM chromax.black.swap 82.52 CFM 140 mm Fan

HBA: LSI 9201-8i

Network Card: Intel X710-DA2 Dual 10Gbps SFP+

+Custom CableMod SATA cables (details in my post above)

And some photos:

2 hours ago, ZeroKwel said:

As I’m doing similar I just wanted to note as of writing the difference between the OP’s i5 and an i7 is just fifteen bucks.

Things have probably changed by now, but I went with this specific i5 CPU because it is a re-badged Alder Lake and doesn't suffer from the microcode issues that Raptor Lake does (did?). I imagine they've got all that ironed out by now with their current gens.