[APPRECIATION POST] Big Upgrade — and a Big Thank You to Unraid, Devs & the Community

I just wanted to share my recent upgrade journey and give a big shoutout to the Unraid team, the plugin developers, and this amazing community.

I’ve gone from a very dependable but aging setup to a modern powerhouse, and the whole transition was incredibly smooth thanks to how well Unraid handles hardware changes.

The driver of the upgrade was aging hardware, noise, high power consumption and heat (worsening issue with high ambient temperatures in Australian summers).

My trigger to do this was the sale of my old CPU, Motherboard and RAM for $300 AUD and ability to get new parts for only an extra $150 out of pocket.

Old setup

• CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1241v3

• Motherboard: Supermicro X10SL7-F

• RAM: 32GB DDR3 (ECC)

• Drives: 12 Drives

• Notes: This build served me well for years. Stable, reliable, and efficient.

• OS: 7.1.3 Pro

New setup

• CPU: Intel Core i5-14500 (14th Gen, using iGPU for Plex HW transcoding) using stock cooler

• Motherboard: Gigabyte Z690 AORUS PRO DDR4

• RAM: 64GB DDR4 (Non ECC)

• GPU: GTX 1050 Ti (currently idle, may repurpose or remove)

• HBAs: LSI 9300-16i + LSI 9300-8i

• Drives: 24 Drives 

• NVMe: High-speed SSD in M2A_CPU slot for appdata/cache duties

• OS: 7.1.4 Pro

What specifically went well

• Booted straight into Unraid USB after the hardware swap — no reactivation or surprises

• All hardware detected out of the box — including GPU, iGPU, NVMe, and HBAs and sensors

• Unraid config, Docker containers, and plugins just worked — like nothing changed and no license reactivation needed

• Parity check ran clean, no hiccups with array or shares

• Modern Z690 platform support is superb — no driver hacks or kernel tweaks needed

Build notes

• I relocated my LSI 9300-16i to a different PCIe slot after getting sporadic PCIe errors on the PCIEX16_1 gen 5 slot — resolved instantly I did this so I put a GPU there instead

• Added a silent Noctua Fan to provide

• I’m using the CPU-attached M.2 slot (M2A_CPU) for best NVMe performance

• Thermal pad on the M.2 heatsink was pre-installed and perfect — no extra paste needed

• Cable tie rescue for a minor GPU mounting mishap — works great in a pinch 😅

• Fan and temp sensors all reported accurately out of the box

• Added active cooling for the 16i LSI HBA — the sucker runs hot

Special thanks

Some of the best parts of my Unraid experience are thanks to the incredible plugin devs who make the product and life easier:

• bonienl (Dynamix plugins — essential tools and UI improvements)

• dlandon (great plugins like Unassigned Devices and more)

• ich777 (for Intel related plugins - essential)

• Squid (Community Apps plugin — makes installing anything a breeze)

• SimonFair (for his GPU Statistics addition - excellent)

These folks make Unraid more powerful and flexible every day — massive thanks to all of you.

Final thoughts

This upgrade was honestly fun — and that’s not something you can say about every OS. Unraid’s flexibility and resilience made it easy, and the fact that I can scale up to 22 drives, hardware swap with confidence, and keep all my services running and complete the upgrade in 1 Day!! just proves what a great platform Unraid is.

Server now quietly humming along (I can only assume as I cannot hear it) rebuilding a drive @ 210MB/s with drive temps at no higher than 40'C and CPU temp no higher than 35'C.

Big thanks again to the Unraid team, the devs, and all the folks here on the forum who write posts I have used in researching etc. You all rock.

— Daniel

Edited July 20, 20251 yr by danioj