This is my first post so please go easy.

 

Hello World,

 

I am building a unraid 6 box. My budget is 500-600$. I am flexible with the budget but want to avoid overkill/overspend.

CPU: i3 6100 (I intend to run to machine 24x7 so picked this chip for its low power consumption)

Motherboard: msi H170M PRO-VDH

RAM: 8G Single DDR4 2133 Patriot

PSU: 500 watt corsair (from existing machine)

Hdd: SanDisk PLUS 240 gb and 2 x WD red 2 TB. (already own the WD red drives)

 

I plan to run the computer as a NAS and backup my main computer, terminal,couchpotatoe,crashplan, plex (stream to 3-4 clients and transcode to 2 sometimes), win 10 VM and ubuntu VM.

 

Please give me a reality check if all of this will fit together fine or does something needs changing, also prefer the build to be littlebit future proof.

It is my understanding that you need at least a passmark number of 2000 per stream for Plex transcoding.  Depending on which i3-6100 you are looking at, it may or may not meet that recommendation.  Plus, you will still need some additional computing power to run that VM.  If you are planning on not using the VM while transcoding, some i3's might work...

And if you want to run VMs then check BOTH the CPU and MB support vt-d if you intend to run them outside of a VNC connection.

this is the i3 I am planning to get.

 

http://ark.intel.com/m/products/90729/Intel-Core-i3-6100-Processor-3M-Cache-3_70-GHz

 

The passmark is 5500. Will it do the job or do I need to go quadcore?

 

I have searched msi website for vt-d support for that motherboard but could not find any. Can someone please suggest a mATX h170m board with vt-d support. Thanks

this is the i3 I am planning to get.

 

http://ark.intel.com/m/products/90729/Intel-Core-i3-6100-Processor-3M-Cache-3_70-GHz

 

The passmark is 5500. Will it do the job or do I need to go quadcore?

 

I have searched msi website for vt-d support for that motherboard but could not find any. Can someone please suggest a mATX h170m board with vt-d support. Thanks

 

Well, my 6 year old Windows 7 CPU has a passmark of about 3000 and it is fairly responsive even today.  I had a netbook with an Intel Atom CPU (~ 700) and it was a dog.  It depends a lot on what is going to be active at the same time and what you are using the VM for (checking e-mail and the weather vs editing with Photoshop) and how you feel about slowdowns at times. 

 

If you want it to always be snappy in all situation, you should probably be looking at a CPU with a passmark of around 7000.  You tend to get the performance that you pay for...

 

EDIT:  Have a look at the links for more information:

 

    http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Upgrading_to_UnRAID_v6#Learning_about_Virtual_Machines

 

 

Thanks mate, I have gone through the links you gave me.

 

I intend to run the win10VM to play 4K videos to my TV (hooked up via hdmi). of course I will be putting in a gpu at a later stage. In your opinion will the i3 6100 be able to do that while transcoding to one client at the sametime.

Well, no one else has jumped to offer their opinion.  First, thing, simple playback of video is not CPU intensive.  A Raspberry Pi can play 1080p bluRay content without any issues.  Transcoding is what takes the CPU horsepower.  (I hope you realize that transcoding is changing the video steam from one format to another format in real time.  An example would be to take a 1080p AVC stream and convert it to mpeg2 format at 640X480.  This is often a necessity when you want to play videos on hand-held devices.)

 

Second thing is that your i3 should be able to handle both transcoding one stream and playing another stream.  You will have to depend on your TV to do the conversion of any material with a lower resolution to the native resolution of display panel. 

 

However, there is a another problem.  Does the on-board GPU have the capability to generate a 4K display?  You will probably need that if you want it to work properly.

 

I am no expert when it comes to virtualization.  I have only picked a few bits and pieces while cruising the forum.  But I have noticed that many people seem to be going to high end MB's and CPU's for their increased feature sets when going to virtualization.  There must be some reason that these folks are doing that... 

 

For sure, that i3 will do everything you want until you throw the VM into the mix.  It is power efficient and has reasonable computing horsepower for its cost.  It seems to meet what you are after.  I just question if it truly capable of handling a full blown VM.  So do your homework very carefully before you purchase anything. 

I agree with Frank.  I think your Core i3 build is fine for streaming video, single stream transcoding, and running several Dockers.  Maybe even the Ubuntu VM, those can be lightweight.  But if you plan to do anything serious with the Windows 10 VM then you're light on both CPU and memory.  If this were my build I'd a) upgrade to 16GB, and b) upgrade to a Core i5 or better.  You might be able to squeeze by with your planned build but you'd have to be a bit lucky and I wouldn't call it future proof.

Thank you for the help guys,

 

I plan to upgrade the cpu when the Kabylake comes along and stick with i3 6100 for now (even thought about pentium G4400 but I don't think it has enough horsepower). Meanwhile I will try to run kodi in a linux vm.

 

Also since my library is not too big I plan to put in 2 TB hd for now (maybe 2x500gb hdd in a raid, I have these sitting on the desk doing nothing). Do I still need a cache sdd?

SSD cache disk is recommended. Not only does it improve app response, it will help minimize waking up the array disks for Plex maintenance tasks. If the SSD is large enough it will help with uploading files too (if shares are set to use the cache feature).