Need some advice on a light gaming / plex server / NAS tower build


thither

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Hi everyone.

 

Sorry, this turned into a wall of text while I was editing it! Basically I'm looking for advice on a tower build, and I have some specific questions.

 

After a bunch of reading, I think I've selected most of the parts I'll want for a new unRaid machine. I'd appreciate some advice on it, especially about PSUs. First, here's what I've got so far:

 

Part List

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

 

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($329.89 @ OutletPC)

Motherboard: ASRock Z170 Extreme7+ ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($192.98 @ Newegg)

Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-2133 Memory  ($184.99 @ Newegg)

Storage: Western Digital Red 6TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  (Purchased For $0.00)

Storage: Western Digital Red 6TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  (Purchased For $0.00)

Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 960 4GB Video Card  ($199.99 @ Newegg)

Case: Fractal Design Define R5 Blackout Edition ATX Mid Tower Case  ($109.99 @ SuperBiiz)

Total: $1017.84

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-03-04 20:13 EST-0500

 

What it's for

 

This is a tower machine that I'll have in my home office. The main purpose for it will be acting as a media server for the rest of the house (via plex) and running a few other dockers with NZBGet and similar stuff. Since I've got it in the office already, I'd also like to run a Windows 10 VM on it for occasional gaming, and possibly have it act as a Steam server. I'm a developer, so being able to spin up a Linux VM is also appealing.

 

For the specs here I'm trying to find a balance between decent but not amazing gaming performance, flexibility/future-proofing, and being reasonably quiet. Since it will always be on I'm hoping I can minimize the amount of power it uses at idle.

 

As I've looked into this, I've realized that I'd probably be better off building one low-power system for a NAS/media server and a different system for gaming, since they have a lot of conflicting goals. I only want to build one new PC for now, though, so I'm trying to split the difference.

 

My thoughts on the parts so far

 

The Skylake i7 seems like potentially too much CPU for this system, but it gets me 8 cores and still has a fairly-low 65W TDP. The integrated GPU seems like it could be handy as well for installation, since my motherboard doesn't support IPMI.

 

32GB of RAM also seems like an extravagance, and I've thought about just getting 2x8GB instead in order to to knock $100 or so off the price. I'm not planning to do any overclocking, so the low speed seems fine. Data integrity isn't a huge concern for this system so I'm not bothering with ECC.

 

I saw the ASRock Z10 motherboard mentioned in another thread and there's a pretty thorough review on Anandtech. It's got 10 SATA connections, plus 3 M2 ones(but it seems like they can't all be used at once, in ways that confuse me). It supports VT-d and has USB-3 headers.

 

The Define R5 case seems like it's got flexibility, has good reviews for being quiet, and will support all the drives I need.

 

I'm not sure if the video card makes sense. I've read that the nVidia cards tend to work better in unRaid for VMs, the GTX 960 seems like it will be relatively power-efficient, and the MSI ones seem to be very quiet from what I've read. The 4GB version doesn't seem to be much more expensive than the 2GB versions, so I went with that.

 

Storage and unRAID setup

 

This is where my knowledge about what configuration I need gets pretty shaky and I could really use some advice. I've got two WD Red 6GB drives which I'm planning to use for parity and as the first drive in the array. I also have an assortment of various lower-capacity HDD drives, maybe 2 or 3 depending on what I can scrounge up, largely in the 1GB-3GB range which I'm planning to add to the array.

 

Then I've got 2 SSDs, probably totaling maybe 1-1.5GB, which I was planning on using for the cache pool, and a Cruzer Fit USB drive for unRaid.

 

Overall this seems pretty normal and I'll wind up with somewhere around 6-7 drives to start with (2 SSDs), potentially adding maybe 3 more as I need them.

 

I've got 2 questions about this setup:

 

1. Can I use the m2 interfaces in unRaid, and if so, should I? I have read that it's recommended to run a VM on its own SSD (versus the cache pool) - would an m2 drive work for that? Will these tend to be better or worse ways to connect storage than just hooking up another SATA SSD?

 

2. I can't tell whether the Fractal Design Define R5 case has a backplane in it, but it doesn't seem like it does. Actually, I don't even know if I can install one in there, or if I should. Can anyone tell me if I can, and if so what I should be looking for when I shop for one?

 

PSU questions

 

I don't have a PSU in the list above. From looking around online, I'm guessing that a 600W PSU will be about right for this, but I don't know much about what I should look for (and I'm not positive I'm even correct about that being enough power). My main priorities are (1) be able to power the system, including more drives as I add them, and (2) be fairly quiet.

 

One thing I'm not sure about, again going back to the backplane for the drive cage, is whether there's something I should be looking for in a PSU that would support it.

 

I've been looking at this EVGA 220-G2-0650-Y1 80 PLUS GOLD, which seems to meet my specifications, isn't crazy expensive, and has good reviews on newegg. Anyone have an opinion on it, or an alternative PSU I should look at?

 

Any advice appreciated! Thanks!

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Can't answer your question about the mSata connector, I don't know if you can use it or not. Definitely running your vm on a dedicated SSD is advisable, but it can be shared with your cache duties too, depends on how much space you need. The GTX 960 is fine, thats what I have for my windows 10 VM and its perfectly fine for gaming the 2GB version is fine too, I think 4GB is overkill. For storage your two 6TB drives are fine to start but I think you need a minimum of three drives plus parity? Not 100% sure about that. The largest drive has to be your parity drive, so as you say, one of your 6TB drives will be parity. Tower cases don't usually have back planes, rack mount cases do, why do you need a back plane? Combining the duties of NAS and a vm on one machine is totally doable, I have two UnRaid servers and my second one runs a vm and it works well with only two cores, 4GB of RAM, its own SSD and the GTX 960 passed through, I can play CS GO at full settings no problems. As for power supply I stick with Seasonic and a 600W would be fine for you with a GTX 960.

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Thanks ashman70. Taking your advice for the PSU, I've got my eye on this Seasonic 660W from NewEgg now, it's a little pricey but should allow some decent expandability.

 

For the back-plane stuff I think I got a little confused reading reviews for the Seasonic DS380 SFF case (which does have one) - it's been a while since I built a PC so I thought maybe they were becoming more common for systems with drive cages.

 

Drive-wise, I've got 2x6GB and 1x4TB for the array, plus I think at least one more 2-3GB drive which should put me at 6GB parity plus a 3-disk 12-13GB array.

 

I agree that 4GB is overkill for the GPU, it's just that the pricing seems to work out so it's actually cheaper than the equivalent 2GB one for some reason - I think the "LE" suffix means it's not as overclockable which I don't care about.

 

Only problem now seems to be actually laying my hands on the i7-6700 CPU, Amazon has it back-ordered until June 8 and NewEgg is just sold out completely.

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Since you're building a new box... have you seen this thread?

 

Oh man... I did see that thread, but I've already spent so much time researching mobo, cpu and RAM that I get a little exhausted by the thought of starting over from scratch, and then the TDP is higher on the chip and there's no iGPU. But yeah, those prices really are insane for the computing power you get. But then again, buying CPUs from some rando on eBay. But then again, at that price it's not a humungous loss if something turns out to be flaky... *sigh* I guess I'll have to do some more research.

 

I see they have the i7 6700k in stock I think the only difference is it doesn't come with a cooling fan but not 100% sure that's the only difference.

 

I considered it, but I was actually originally thinking of an i5 for this until I saw the 65W TDP on this one i7 CPU, for the 6700k its rated TDP is higher and it costs about $60 more plus a cooler, and seems to be designed for overclocking which doesn't particularly interest me for this machine. Overall I'd be more inclined to drop down to an i5-6600 with an eye towards upgrading the CPU sometime in the future.

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Since you're building a new box... have you seen this thread?

 

Oh man... I did see that thread, but I've already spent so much time researching mobo, cpu and RAM that I get a little exhausted by the thought of starting over from scratch, and then the TDP is higher on the chip and there's no iGPU. But yeah, those prices really are insane for the computing power you get. But then again, buying CPUs from some rando on eBay. But then again, at that price it's not a humungous loss if something turns out to be flaky... *sigh* I guess I'll have to do some more research.

 

The board i got has a GPU, but I also pass through AMD cards, so having it doesn't hurt me.

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