Hello folks,

I’ve been sent here by a reddit user and he said that you could help me better when it comes to hardware choices. Beware, I’m a complete beginner and really new to unRAID. I’ll first answer the basic questions and will then briefly let you guys know what I’d like to do with my server and what I already have hardware-wise.

 

• What is your budget?  Is it possible to do something for $700 without the harddrives? I could upgrade the budget if I need to. Just to clarify, I'd prefer to spend more this time, rather than buying twice.
• How many drives do you want your server to be able to support and how much capacity do you need? I need at least 8TB and would like to add new drives before I run out of space.
• Is expandability important to you?  If so, what's your long term goal? Well, yes. This should last for quite some time, but if time comes and I have to upgrade, then so be it.
• Are you interested in running any unRAID Add Ons (see here)?  If so, which ones?  Be specific. I'll talk more about that in just a second. See below.
• Do you want to run green/low power drives or faster 7200 rpm drives?  If you don't have a specific need for 7200 rpm drives, then choose green drives. I'm ok with slower drives, but I thought that I should preferably buy drives that are made for NAS and servers in general. Let me know if this is not true.
• Do you have any spare parts laying around that you would like to apply towards your build?  This includes drives. I have an AMD APU system and 1TB SSD laying around that I could potentially use for the server. I don't really see why I'd need that, but again, please let me know if I'm wrong.
• If you already have parts in mind, please oh pretty please post links to them so that we don't have to look them up. No, not really.

 

 

1. NAS: Main functions is storing my documents, including University stuff, film, TV series and photos on a NAS. I want to have my storage at home and physical access to the server in case I want to throw in some more HDDs. As I need to backup important files, I’ve come across a Docker container that automatically backups my files to a cloud service. This is generally speaking not something I’m a huge fan of, but better that than lost files, I guess.
2. Download server: I’ll be using this server to download stuff from the Usenet. As I’d like my ISP not to know what I download from the Internet, those downloads should be secured using a VPN. There are probably plenty of options to choose from, but I think SABnzbdVPN seems to be a suitable solution for my needs. Important: Is it possible to route all the Usenet-related downloads through a VPN provider and securely access my home server from abroad, i.e. with another VPN connection at the same time?
3. Docker containers: As mentioned above, I need the following things: NZBGet/SABnzbd, Sonarr, Radarr and Plex. Most likely I’ll eventually be using many more programs/dockers and whatnot, but these are mandatory and are a must for me. The server should be capable of transcoding at least 1 stream without any issues, even 4k shouldn’t pose a problem. To be totally honest with you, I can’t really estimate what I could use this server for other than what I mentioned above, but I bet that there are many different Docker containers to choose from.
4.  VMs: I don’t really know if I need them or not, but from what I understand VMs are mostly used for non-Linux applications that cannot be put in a Docker container. Again, bear with me, I don’t have a technical background and I’m basically dependent on your help. There’s a plethora of videos about it online, but I don’t know if I need them or not. From what I’ve understood, this greatly influences hardware choices.

What hardware do I need for my needs? Please let me know two configurations: first option with VM possibility and the second option without VMs, but transcoding a 4k stream should work flawlessly. You could say that I’m a bit overchallenged by those server things, but I hope you guys can help a new user out!

You're gonna need a bigger budget imo

Transcoding at 4K, you'll need a CPU Passmark > 8000.

You'd probably want a KabyLake at that for the access to the DRM microcode for 4K as well

HDD's I always say start big. So with a basic license you could use 3 or 4TB disks and stay under the 6 disk limit.
You'll need 3-4 disks from the above

Then you'll need a decent mobo with enough SATA.

Case and PSU

Use that SSD that you have

CPU - i5-7600 - $220
Mobo - H270 - $150?
Case - depends if you want hotswap drives - $??
PSU - good quality modular - $150
Drives - 3TB/4TB - $400-600
HeatSink - Stock?
SSD - use exisiting
RAM - 16/32GB DDR4 - $300

You're kinda looking around $1000 before Drives.

To answer some of your points:
1)
Easily done

2)
Yep can use privoxy in sabnzbvpn to tunnel the traffic via vpn, with easy config for PIA

3)
4K is going to hurt. As above 2000pass mark per 1080, so make sure the CPU has enough horsepower

4)
Dockers will do most things, VMs are useful too, I use one for a DHCP/DNS/Jumphost on Server 2016

HTH


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks for your reply!

 

So did I understand that correctly: 1080p streams, a PassMark score of 2000 is sufficient, whereas my CPU needs to score around 8000 points for 4k?

 

I still have a 1080p TV and I don't really think I'll upgrade the TV anytime soon, but it'd be nice to have. I guess I could easily upgrade my server hardware if my requirements change.

 

I've had a small little server based on Debian for a while now and I had the idea of using that server as my NAS. It has the following hardware: AMD Athlon 5350 (around 2500 passmark score) on a AM1I-A mainboard (with just 2 SATA ports, unfortunately), 4 GB DDR3 RAM and a 256GB SSD. Do you think this is enough for 1080p and without VMs? If not, I could also use this as a cheap energy-efficient office PC.

 

Other than that, my father has a PC with an i5 4460 on a Gigabyte GA-H97M-D3H mainboard (with 6x SATA), 8GB DDR3 RAM, a Sapphire RADEON R7 380 4GB GDDR5, an SSD and a be quiet! E9 500W PSU. What do you think about that one? This scores around 6.5k in passmark, but is still under the 8k mark, that's for sure. My father says that I could use that PC for myself and do with it whatever I want. I'd just need some drives and could use that as a server? Would that be good enough if I don't use VMs? Does the GPU benefit my server? If not, I'd just remove it and store it away to save energy.

 

To get more specific. What drives to I need? I've heard that I need drives for storage (duh), parity and cache, right? I think I'd like to have around 8-10TB, but should be easily upgradable in the future if I need more space.

 

Thanks again!