Advice: First Unraid Build


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I would like to use it a central NAS that can support at least two virtual machines. I want to use it to run KODI/Plex on at least 3 computers at the same time, store my stuff(mostly media) and have the docker apps to automate my downloading of torrents and stuff and play civilization 6 and ROMS on a virtual machine. Here is my 'current' build.

CPU- Intel BX80677I57500 7th Gen Core Desktop Processors (i5 7500)

Cooler- Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO - CPU Cooler with 120mm PWM Fan

Power Supply- SeaSonic 450W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply

Motherboard- Gigabyte GA-H270N-WIFI LGA1151 Intel Mini ITX DDR4 Motherboard/10/17098955

HDD (Parity)- WD Red 8TB NAS Hard Disk Drive - 5400 RPM Class SATA 6 Gb/s 128MB Cache 3.5 Inch - WD80EFZX

HDD- x3 WD 3TB Red WD30EFRX (SATA3/5400/64M)

EXTERNAL HDD- Seagate 4TB

SSD Cache- Samsung Evo 850 (256GB)

RAM- Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-2133 Memory

GPU- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 (from old computer)

Case- Fractal Design Node 804 No Power Supply MicroATX Cube Case FD-CA-NODE-804-BL Black

Is there anything I am missing or better pieces? Any advice would be appreciated especially regarding the hardware since that is the stage I am at.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/N3jdf8

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Hi, welcome and a few comments:

 

- A 450w power supply would be fine for unRAID and several disks, but might be underpowered depending on how much power the GPU needs.

- An 8TB parity drive is expensive unless you plan to add 8TB data drives in the future.  And if you plan to - then why not start now?

- I'm not sure what role the external HDD will play...

- You're putting a mini-ITX motherboard in a case that can support a micro-ATX board, and it only has 6 SATA ports, and you plan to put in a GPU for gaming which will occupy the only PCIex slot.  The Node 804 can support 8+ disks, so the motherboard choice is going to limit you.  Why not move up to a board with more SATA ports or more PCIex slots?  Make sure it supports VT-d.

- I don't think the Core i5 7500 is a great choice for a build with VMs.  It's 4 cores, non-hyperthreaded.  People have generally found that pinning cores to the VM works best under unRAID/KVM.  2 cores for unRAID, 2 for a VM, and you're done.  Moving up to a Core i7 gives you 4 cores, hyperthreaded or 8 VCPUs.  That's a lot more flexible.

- You mention Kodi so I'm guessing you don't have Plex transcoding requirements but if you do, that should factor into the CPU choice.

- It's always worth thinking about ECC RAM and a Xeon, but it does cost a little more.

 

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2 hours ago, tdallen said:

- An 8TB parity drive is expensive unless you plan to add 8TB data drives in the future.  And if you plan to - then why not start now?

 

 

I agree, forget 3x3TB, get another 8TB for a data drive and increase later.

 

Also agree w/ the upgrade to an i7 for VM's.

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I would upgrade the power supply in light of the GPU to at least 550 or 600w that will give you some headroom if you want to upgrade it in the future. Also I agree with upgrading the CPU to an i7, the more cores the better if you want to build a VM or two. You may also want to consider only 16GB of ram instead of your planned 32GB, if your motherboard supports only one DIMM at a time, start with one 16GB DIMM and if you need to add a second one later on. I personally haven't seen too many cases where even 16GB is needed on an unRAID server unless you have many VM's you need to allocate memory to, I think in your case one 16GB DIMM would allow you to allocate 8GB to your VM and leave 8GB for unRAID. Just my 2 cents.

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I recently upgraded my main server from an i5 to a Xeon and repurposed the "old" parts as a backup server..  I agree with the other comments that an i5 is underpowered for your stated use case.  I was able to run 1 light VM max (multiple installed, but, just one running with light use) with the i5 while also doing normal NAS functions and one Plex stream.  Anything beyond that is too much for the 4-core non-threaded i5.  The Xeon/i7 is a different story.. Much more flexibility, horsepower and overhead for simultaneous VM/Plex tasks.

 

See my sig for both system specs.

Edited by Hoopster
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