AMD processor has 4 cores, and is quite inexpensive.  Gigabyte motherboard has 8 sata ports, good enough for a lot of future upgrades on the HDDs. 

 

http://www.legitreviews.com/amd-kaveri-a8-7600-a10-7800-apu-review_147879

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5354#ov

 

 

Main function of this Unraid server is to run docker, and docker apps such as sonarr, plex, nzbget, couchpotato.

 

I believe the hardware is more than enough for the functions above?

 

 

 

 

I'd say the A8 you picked would be solid. My unRAID machine has a FX 6300 and three cores are dedicated to a VM, and one core for each of my two dockers, with one core for unRAID itself and it runs fine. I only have issues during drive spin up.

 

Plex will be your biggest CPU hog if you are doing transcoding, so probably best to tag it to just three of the cores (search the forum for CPU pinning).

 

Plus if you need more drives you have an x16 and x4 slot to pick from since you don't need to burn a slot on a GPU like I do. Granted, my GPU gets passed to a VM that doesn't require DTS-HD Master Audio, so I can use an AMD GPU (NVidia requires another GPU in the mix).

I have similar but a F2A88XM-D3H motherboard. It works great for unRAID with no stability problems. The onboard is a little overkill when it never get used, but a straight 4-core AMD processor isn't that much cheaper.

 

I played around with VM's just to see what would happen and found I could pass the onboard graphics and HDMI audio to a VM. Windows worked but I never got the audio working then I messed-up the VM trying stuff and gave up on it. OpenELEC worked great, but I had to reboot the server to restart the VM or else the whole server would crash.

 

CPU selection is likely going to come down to how many Plex streams you want to run concurrently.

 

Typically when sizing, we use PassMark score to help assess. Each Plex stream will require 2000 ParkMark. The CPU you are looking at rates as follows:

 

AMD A8-7600 APU             5213

 

You can find this by searching for you CPU on the following site:

 

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php

 

So, you can safely run 2 Plex streams, so if you are not looking at VMs, and only want 2 Plex streams this gives you good headroom. If you think you need more from Plex then you may need to look at another CPU.

Hello guys, thanks for the input. 

 

So far, you've given me good positive answers.  Yes, 2 Plex streams should be enough for me.  Need to clarify a few things:

 

1. Are you guys saying this board/ processor combination allows passthrough of gpu directly to vm?

 

2. Does the Sata chipset of this board critical to the performance of unraid?  I'm looking to use WD reds.

My board would pass the onboard to the VM, but it seemed to require a reboot if I wanted to stop and then re-start the VM. There might be some extra setup stuff I could have done to help with this, but I really haven't researched it.

 

The SATA ports are fast enough. I have a 4 drive array and can parity check right around 150MBps

Consider the Asus A88X Gamer. 

 

Similar to the Gigabyte, but it has an Intel i211 NIC on it.  I run one with an A10-7800 in my backup UnRAID, and it's been very, very good.  Low power consumption, Asus' fantastic fan controller, stable, and reasonably cheap.  It is full ATX, not microATX, though.

Thanks for all your input.  This has been very helpful.

+1 on GPU passhtrough for A8-7600 sitting on a GA-F2A88XN-WiFi. The server hangs if trying to reboot the VM (OpenELEC) but if I shut Kodi down from within the VM, then the server is still working properly.