Hardware Replacement/Upgrade (with planned/hopeful VM implimentation)

[grandprix]

Regarding "tower" as found in my signature.

 

I believe the SATA controller on my Jetway Mobo is going out (parity no matter the drive used seems to have varying number of sync errors and seems another using a very similar setup to mine using the same Jetway board was having the issues as well), so before things get truly messy (thankfully data drives seem just fine regardless of parity calculations), it's time to replace the hardware, but, I wanna have a go (for the first time) at virtualization.

 

 

Just when I thought I had settled on :

 

CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116906

Looking as passmarks, the 1240v3 would be comparable to the i7-3770k which is good because the i7-3770k is what I have in another 24/7 machine for the purpose of running Plex Media Server (assuming I can get VM'ing to work).  I could have sworn I looked at the 1240 before and decided to stick with the 1230v3 for some reason.. that reason escapes me.  Both support the same instructions and both support vt-d and vt-x, so dunno.

 

Mobo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182820

Ram: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148770

 

 

The more I read, the more I shift, contemplating other things.  For instance, I have a PSU that is nice, supplies 66A on it's 12v rail, but, is not so much as bronze certified, so I'm sure that's costing a pretty penny consumption wise.  Besides it's not Haswell certified, so would it even work?  I don't know.  Then there are the MV8's, which I thought I recall reading they weren't ideal for VM.  Though, I already have two of them.  Now, I DID just read that the Sil3132 cards (which -were- acceptable during the initial build) have been "un"recommended, so I'm adding this to replace it:

 

www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124045

 

What I -do- know is I need to switch out the motherboard and I figured I may as well go with a little more umpf -and- ECC RAM like I should have from the get go.

 

But, I would love to have a single machine that allows me to have my 24 drive system (it's a RPC-4224 after all), though I'm content with only 22 being used for unRAID (that number including parity and cache drive, which I don't currently use a cache drive on this system as it is).  It definitely needs to allow 15 drives for unRAID as that is the current number of drives being used (again, cache is present but I never activated/used it).

 

Here is what I would like the machine to do:

 

1: unRAID

2: PLEX Server w/ 2 1080 WAN streams (to various devices) and up to 3 1080p LAN streams (Transcoding from raw MKV rips, albeit, I'm considering converting to MP4, that's still in the air) to 2 Roku boxes and/or a Plex Home Theater (or whatever they call the client side program anymore)

3: pfSense (quad nic) IF I went with http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157410 (4 PCIe x16 slots, running at x8, albeit, really only x4 since the e3-1230v3 and e3-1240v3 only support 16 lanes)

 

TL;DR -- Do you have time to help me out?  I'm a serious VM noob and while I would typically read, read and then read some more, researching fully before asking questions, because a hardware change is required and required soon (tower is currently down to minimize chances of catastrophic losses), I have to go the route of "please tell me what I need", as much as I HATE that.  To add, this of course all came up at the most inconvenient of times moving over 400 miles away.  I'm settled in the new place now and the family keeps asking when this server will be back in operation.  "Family" including the wife..... so yes, unhappy wife here fellas.  Rational, patient, but I'm testing that patience more than I would like!

 

*Edited: Cleaned up some completely incoherent spots.