Hey folks,

I have decided to finally upgrade my old Ubuntu server and after reading a little about unraid i dont really see how i could use anything else

 

So lets get to the point, what i need is:

- smooth Plex Media Server streaming - no transcoding

- low power consumption

- 4 SATA ports is enough. 6 would be awesome, but not necessary

 

My main concern is NIC, and as i'm on a tight budget i'm having REALLY hard time choosing a motherboard, most of them seem to have Realtek chips

Yesterday i saw this: http://usa.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_CPU_on_Board/C60M1I/#specifications

and it looks great, but 1GHz CPU is scaring me off.

I also found this: http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=E350M1, but unfortunately its running RTL8111E chip, which is potentially problematic. I cant find anything with Intel chip that would cost ~100USD where i live.

This one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131731 is also running 81111E.

 

So my questions are:

- should i go for the RTL8111E and not worry it wont run when unraid 5 stable comes out?

- if i just buy an Intel PCI NIC, are there any other motherboards that you guys could recommend?

 

Thanks for your help!

Hey folks,

I have decided to finally upgrade my old Ubuntu server and after reading a little about unraid i dont really see how i could use anything else

 

So lets get to the point, what i need is:

- smooth Plex Media Server streaming - no transcoding

- low power consumption

- 4 SATA ports is enough. 6 would be awesome, but not necessary

 

My main concern is NIC, and as i'm on a tight budget i'm having REALLY hard time choosing a motherboard, most of them seem to have Realtek chips

Yesterday i saw this: http://usa.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_CPU_on_Board/C60M1I/#specifications

and it looks great, but 1GHz CPU is scaring me off.

I also found this: http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=E350M1, but unfortunately its running RTL8111E chip, which is potentially problematic. I cant find anything with Intel chip that would cost ~100USD where i live.

This one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131731 is also running 81111E.

 

So my questions are:

- should i go for the RTL8111E and not worry it wont run when unraid 5 stable comes out?

- if i just buy an Intel PCI NIC, are there any other motherboards that you guys could recommend?

 

Thanks for your help!

 

Simple explanation as I understand the problem.  The RTL811E has problems with the R8169 driver but works fine with the R8168 driver.  The RTL8111E is a widely used for NIC duties so Tom has elected to include the R8168 driver in to the recent builds with the exception of V5-rc8 which was QUICKLY replaced with rc8a.

 

See this thread:

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=22605.0

 

Hope this helps.

 

 

Thanks for the reply, Frank!

Yeah, I've seen the thread you linked before posting, but honestly - i still dont know if i'm safe buying motherboard with RTL8111E or should i keep looking.

If you should run into an unsolvable issue with Realtek NIC, you can always get an Intel NIC card.  But I would bet that if that situation occurs, you will be only one of many, many unRAID users who are up in arms...

The RTL811E has problems with the R8169 driver but works fine with the R8168 driver. I do feeL you should keep looking for other options as well.

 

__________

HP utility

Hey,

Thanks for the reply.

Right now money is tight, so I didn't make any move yet, but I have decided to go with E350M1, unless I can find C60M1I somewhere in my country and give it a shot. If NIC is going to give me any trouble I'll just pop PCI Intel card in - that's what I'm doing now, so I don't think its a big deal. My main corncern right now is lowest power consumption possible with enough horsepower to run plex+sabnzbd+sickbear+couchpotato.

So lets get to the point, what i need is:

- smooth Plex Media Server streaming - no transcoding

- low power consumption

 

Plex - this is not controlled at all by Unraid, but by PMS, your client, and your choice of file encoding.  My experience, harder to make happen than it should be, but that is mostly a function of my use of a ROKU client.  If you were using a Plex client, or XMBC with Plex add-on all on a PC based HTPC then you should be fine

 

Power - if you can accomplish the above then it will let you use an even lower power CPU, but really most CPU/APU/GPU now can handle can handle full BD transcoding anyway.  The main thing is using green drives, and configuring your system to keep them spun down.  For reference, PMS will keep your apps/tmp drive spun up so you do not want this to be an array drive.  Use a cache drive and configure PMS to use that instead.

 

Power 2 - don't get too hung up on 80+ efficiency ratings (bronze, gold, platinum) in general those ratings are suspect.  Most PSU's now from reputable vendors get you the bulk of efficiency you need / care to pay for.  Chasing that last few % of efficiency is both a fool errand, and not worth the $ saved for the $ spent.