First unRAID Build - Mind looking over my parts list?

[NorseSock]

I'd appreciate some feedback on my current plan. Thanks!

 

I'm looking at the following components:

   

Motherboard

   

ASRock Z97M Pro4$99.99

   

CPU

   

Intel Core i3-4130T$134.99-$10.00

   

RAM

   

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB$157.99-$10.00

   

Case

   

Fractal Design Define R4$79.99

   

Power Supply

   

Seasonic SS-460FL2 460W$129.99

   

Drives

   

3x WD Red 4TB$174.99

   

UPS

   

CyberPower CP1000PFCLCD$133.99

   

USB Drive

   

SanDisk Cruzer Fit 16GB

   

$19.99

   

Total

   

   

$1,162

 

What is your budget?

I was shooting for around $1000 with drives. I'm flexible though.

 

How many drives do you want your server to be able to support and how much capacity do you need?

I don't see myself needing more than 10TB in the near future. I don't think I'll ever need more than 6 drives.

 

Is expandability important to you?  If so, what's your long term goal?

Yes to some extent, but I don't have any specific plan.

 

Are you interested in running any unRAID Add Ons (see here)?  If so, which ones?  Be specific.

Yes - Plex Media Server, Transmission, and possibly SABnzbd, SickBeard, and CouchPotoato if I ever get around to learning about Usenet.

 

Do you want to run green/low power drives or faster 7200 rpm drives?

I'd prefer reliability, then low power, and finally speed. I think the WD Reds are a pretty good mix of the three.

 

Do you have any spare parts laying around that you would like to apply towards your build?  This includes drives.

I have a 2TB drive I'll be adding as a data drive and a 250GB cache drive.

[mr-hexen]

only issue might be with the LAN chip. http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=33656.0

 

you will be forced to use 6.0 beta's with that motherboard.

[vekselstrom]

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Edited November 16, 2018 by vekselstrom

[NorseSock]

only issue might be with the LAN chip. http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=33656.0

 

you will be forced to use 6.0 beta's with that motherboard.

Thanks for the info. I'll have to look into alternative motherboards.

 

Welcome to the wonderful world of unRAID.

 

Personally I would go for cheaper or second hand parts.

The only hardware I have laying around won't support a 1080p transcoding on the fly. I have the potential of needing PMS to handle two 1080p transcodes. The i3-4130T should be able to handle that, plus it has a very low TDP.

 

Seeing as you want a silent system I would look for a after-marked quiet fan for your i3 instead of the stock fan.

Be sure to measure if you have enough space for it.

That's a good idea. I'll probably see how loud the fan is stock and go from there. Definitely something I'll look into.

 

You might also consider buying less and cheaper ram since ram speed for just the file server isn't that important.

I initially thought about only doing 8GB of ram, but I might get into the whole virtualization thing (and then it'd be nice). I think I'll drop down to a single 8GB stick and we'll see how it works out.

 

Depending on how much you download pr day, I would consider a cheap/slow SSD of about 128-160GB

because of the noise/power, then you will have no disks spinning in normal operation(plex does alot of work on your cache drive(if you store plex on the cache drive). And seeing as that your file library is going to be max 10TB you are going to be fine with about 128-160GB as a cache drive.

I'm not sure how much I'll be adding per day. I was going to use the 250GB disk drive as a bit of a test to get an idea of how much it would be utilized.

 

Having that said if you are going to use transmission and actually upload then you will need data disk access anyway so then it would not matter.

But highly recommend switching to Usenet, it's the most comfortable thing ever, as long as its set up tightly. For example simple go on your smart phone

on your IMDB app, add to watch-list and presto the movie will be downloaded in your preferred quality as soon as its available, and unpacked and updated to plex completely seamlessly.

That's where I want to be eventually. I used to have feeds to do this with torrents and I loved it.

 

Thanks for your help!

[NorseSock]

I figure I'll update this so anyone that stumbles upon this thread in the future knows the outcome/problems I had.

 

The final build ended up being:

 

   

Motherboard

   

ASRock Z97M Pro4

   

CPU

   

Intel Core i3-4130T

   

RAM

   

Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB DDR3-1600

   

Case

   

Fractal Design Define R4

   

Power Supply

   

Seasonic SS-460FL2 460W

   

Drives

   

3x WD Red 4TB

   

UPS

   

CyberPower CP1000PFCLCD

   

USB Drive

   

SanDisk Cruzer Fit 16GB

 

I ran into some problems booting from USB. After changing nearly every setting in the UEFI, I found that simply having secure boot disabled wasn't enough. I had to enable and then re-disable secure boot to get it to boot. Secure boot was disabled by default, but was still stuck in setup mode from what I can gather. Smooth sailing once that was resolved.

 

As mr-hexen said, the ethernet chip did not work in unRAID 5. I planned on running 6 anyway, so no big deal. So far, it's been smooth sailing as far as setup and configuration goes. I'm still getting up to speed on Docker (which looks incredibly cool).