Transcoding is a little overrated, imho. It's awesome if you're at home and have a solid, unsaturated wireless connection. As soon as you take your mobile device with you on a trip, it doesn't do anything for you. That's why I shifted my strategy away from transcoding on the fly to preshrunk movies. I use handbrake to shrink my movies to 576p, with Dolby Pro Logic II audio, and store them in a separate directory specifically for my mobile devices. If I'm home, I stream from that directory. If I'm leaving, I dump the MUCH smaller files onto the device and have a larger library while I'm on the road (or in the air). TV shows from usenet are already compressed, and so this process isn't necessary for them. For my 450+ blu-ray movie collection, it takes about 1TB to store all of them at 576p (which is still higher quality than DVD at 480). This one time compression saves my server from having to constantly feed and compress, keeping resources available for other tasks. A lot of people would say it's a waste of space, time, money, etc, but really it's only using about 10% more storage, and the result is no transcoding headaches.

 

The only reason I am stating all this is because there are a lot of things you can ask unRAID to do, but you may find that your strategy changes as you incorporate this into your daily lives.

 

I wouldn't say it doesn't do anything for you with your mobile device when you are away on a trip.  I'm not sure if you are saying you can no longer access your content remotely (which you can with Plex) or if you are saying the streaming quality via cellular is subpar.  Of course if you are streaming via cellular it's going to be less than stellar quality due to its limited bandwidth, but if you are connected to WiFi (in your hotel room or whatever) the quality is more than acceptable (or even flawless) unless the available bandwidth is very low on whatever hotspot you are using.

 

With Plex, assuming you are a Plex Pass member, you can even pre-transcode content and have it stored on your mobile device for offline access (such as on an airplane or out of cellular/WiFi coverage).  Just tell Plex what content you want stored locally on your mobile devices and it transcodes and stores it on said mobile device.

 

With on-the-fly transcoding I no longer have to create different qualities of my content for all of my different devices, and no longer have all the additional work and storage that would require.  I store a single high quality copy of my content and let the server do all the work on-the-fly to create temporary lower qualities when needed.  I was recently in Germany on vacation and was live streaming content from my server in California to my iPad flawlessly.  I also have zero issues with transcoding, it just always works, all the time, even with a myriad of different devices using the Plex client (Samsung Smart TV, Vizio Smart TV, 3 different Roku models, iPad, iPhone, PS3, Windows, Mac, etc).

 

My server has plenty of excess resource capacity (it's by no means a monster build) that is otherwise sitting idle, so it's not like transcoding is taking resources that would otherwise (at least in my case) be doing something else.

 

I'm not saying the way you do it is wrong, after all we all do what works best for us as individuals.  All I am saying is while you may think on-the-fly transcoding is a little overrated, I think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.  To each their own!

Your response is why I didn't think I should have brought up transcoding as an example. I don't want to start a debate where there is no need for one. But I was really trying to emphasize that what I planned for years ago has changed, and the hardware I purchased for that job is no longer necessary (overkill). OP, I certainly wasn't attempting to derail this thread, and I apologize for that.

Your response is why I didn't think I should have brought up transcoding as an example. I was really trying to emphasize that what I planned for years ago has changed, and the hardware I purchased for that job is no longer necessary (overkill). OP, I certainly wasn't attempting to derail this thread, and I apologize for that.

 

I wasn't trying to discount what you said by any means. In fact, I agree 100% with the last sentence of your original post. The way in which we each individually use unRAID certainly evolves over time.  The way you envision yourself using it when you build it often isn't how you ultimately use it over time.

Definitely didn't derail the topic.  Actually some really good points on both sides for those considering a new setup.  Personally, my first use of unRAID will be to store uncompressed Blu-ray rips that I am streaming to my mini htpc.  A close second will be to stream those videos to the Raspbery Pi that sits behind another TV in the house.  Since the Pi can't stream the HD audio in the Blu-ray rips, I need Plex to transcode to a format it can use.

 

Now, my plans for the new setup have changed already twice during the course of this thread so I'm sure they will change again.  I think that's the point behind the conversation you had--everyone's needs are different.  Whereas storing smaller copies of movies works for some situations, other situations would not benefit from pre-shrinking.

 

To that point, I have no current desire to run anything more than a couple small plugins and maybe Plex.  Someday soon, I may elect to not run Plex but one of the more heavy plugins.  With that in mind, I want to make sure I don't short change myself in terms of power.  A couple extra bucks today relatively ensures I don't need to replace components in the short term.

 

In any event, I can easily convince the wife that spending that couple extra bucks right now means I can store all of her Twilight and Grey's Anatomy rips    Thanks for the great conversation guys.  Some good points that I had ot yet truly considered that will definitely play into my decision.  Currently waiting for anything to go on sale so I can save some cash and put it elsewhere in the build.

In order continue making your decision more difficult, the N54L is on sale at Newegg for $339.99 - $50 Rebate Card - 13% = ~$245. Plus you get a free USB 3.0 dual hard drive dock. Just wanted to put that out there.

In order continue making your decision more difficult...

 

Just when I get everything figured out and have come to peace with my decision NewEgg pulls a stunt like this

 

Thanks for point it out, though.  Definitely worth a second consideration given the sale price.

A couple of thoughts ...

 

=>  If you want a very reliable, high quality, QUIET system that can grow to 20TB of capacity, I'd build with the following components  [i've built 5 UnRAID servers, and the one I recently built using this case & motherboard is by far my favorite):

 

Case:  Lian-Li PC-Q25B [$119.99 at Newegg]    A REALLY nice case with 5 hot-swap drive bays and a tray at the bottom that can hold up to 2 more 3.5" drives.    Mount your parity drive on the bottom tray;  then you can trivially add data drives as needed in the 5 hot-swap bays.    It's also a mini-ITX case, so it's VERY small (and exceptionally quiet)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112339

 

Motherboard:  Supermicro X7SPA-H-D525-O  [$175.99 at SuperBiiz]    A really nice mini-ITX board with an Atom D525.  Passive cooling so completely silent. 

https://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=MB-X7SPA5

 

Memory:  8GB Kingston SO-DIMMs  [$69.99 at Newegg]    Note the specs for the SuperMicro board indicate it has a 4GB max, but that's incorrect -- it works perfectly with 8GB installed (I believe the specs should have said a max of 4GB/module)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139482

 

Power Supply:  SeaSonic SS-350SFE  [$49.99 at Newegg]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151063

 

UnRAID Plus Registration Key:  $69    You don't need Pro, since 6 drives is plenty for this server.

 

 

That's a total of $484.96  not counting the hard drives.    Note that this system draws 20W at idle !!  And with the drives I use in it (3TB WD Reds) it maxes out at ~ 45W during a parity check.

 

I used 3TB WD Reds in the server I built with these components;  but that puts a limit of 15TB on the ultimate capacity.  If you use 4TB drives, you could grow to 20TB.

 

You could start with 3 4TB drives ... an initial capacity of 8TB ... using 3 Seagate ST4000DM000 drives.  [$189.99 each at Newegg]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178338

 

That would make the total cost of the server $1054.93

 

 

By the way, regardless of what you build for a server, you should consider tossing an extra $112 at it and buy the following:

 

UPS:  APC BR700G  An excellent UPS with AVR and plenty of power.  Obviously an optional component, but no UnRAID system should be without one      [$111.99 at Newegg]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16842101381

Just noted that dirtysanchez also outlined his very similar build using the same Lian-Li PC-Q25B case.

 

If you want more "horsepower", you can build the exact system I outlined above with the P8H77-I motherboard he used and a Core i3 CPU (and of course desktop memory instead of the SODIMMs) and still have an excellent build with the same expansion capability.    The cost would be very close -- depending on which i3 you selected you'd probably spend $20 - $40 more, but you'd have a significantly more power system.    It WOULD, however, use slightly more power (I believe his idles in the 33W range) and would be every-so-slightly noisier (although I doubt it's noticeable).

 

For just UnRAID, there's no reason to use anything but the SuperMicro Atom board;  but if you want the power to run some additional add-ons (Plex, etc.) you may want to use the Asus board.

 

Just to "muddy the waters" a bit, if you don't want to build a mini-ITX unit, the SuperMicro C204 based Server boards are also VERY low power boards.    An X9SCM-F-O microATX board with a Xenon E3-1230v2 (about $435 for the pair at Newegg) would have FAR more power than any i3 system you might build, and only draws about 22W at idle        Of course, once you add a case, power supply, etc. this starts to notably break your budget !!    I'd go with a mini-ITX PC-Q25B based system -- either the D525 Atom or an i3.