kazands Posted February 22, 2018 Posted February 22, 2018 Hi Everyone, Long time lurker, first time poster. The time has finally come for me to build my first server and from what I've read on unRAID, it might just fit the bill. I don't have a linux background, so I know there's going to be quite the learning curve, however, I'm up for the challenge and know this community is great at helping others. The big thing for me right now is deciding what kind of hardware to use. My primary use will be to run an Emby server, setup some dockers for sonarr, radarr, and headphones, and to have a Win10 VM do use as my daily driver. As of now, all of my media is 1080p, however, as more 4k content becomes available, I want to have the ability to transcode for any of my clients that might need it. That's about it. I look forward in hearing your suggestions and getting this project started! Thanks, kazands
HellDiverUK Posted February 22, 2018 Posted February 22, 2018 Hi. You don't need much of a machine to do what you want, really. Emby should be able to use a GPU for transcoding, which means you don't need a very fast CPU. Certainly Plex is easy to get working in unRAID with hardware transcoding - I've never done it with Emby though. It depends on how many drives you're likely to want, but my little rig does everything I want and more, and would fit your needs pretty well. I've put my basic system in the link below, though I have the now-discontinued Define Mini (the microATX version of the R5, which has 6 HDD bays). I also run an old Samsung NVMe drive for my cache, I've included a more modern one in that list. https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/Fx3t6s
SSD Posted February 22, 2018 Posted February 22, 2018 It really depends. If the windows VM your primary Windows box? If so and you are running pretty intensive Windows apps, like big spreadsheets, video transcoding, VR, etc. You need more power that social media apps). What type of devices do you watch video on? (If mostly higher end players / computers, you need LESS power, if mostly.phones and tablets, you need more). Generally people upgrading are getting more powerful not same or less powerful upgrades. I think a 4 core with passmark of 7500 should be the min you look at, 4 core with 10K is n better, hex core at 12k+ even better, and 8 core+ for someone looking to run multiple VMs or simultaneous transcodes. If transcoding is a priority, look at a modern Intel that had a GPU ahs can do quicksync.
kazands Posted February 28, 2018 Author Posted February 28, 2018 Thanks so much for your help guys. It means a lot. My current system is an old Core2Extreme, so well over 10 years old, so I'd like to get some modern day hardware as I don't update too often. I'd rather have over powered system right now as my needs can change in the future, and I don't want to have to upgrade earlier than I need to. From what I've read, the Kaby Lake and Coffee Lake CPUs are capable of hardware transcoding 4k 10Bit HEVC files. Is there much difference between the 2 lines? If I can save some money with Kaby lake, then that might be a good choice for me. I've already purchased 3 6TB HGST drives, one of which I'll use for parity, and I'm thinking of picking my a 512GB M.2 drive for cache. Was thinking that 32GB of DDR4 would be enough for now, but i'm still not sure on what motherboard and cpu combo to use. Am I on the right track with this build? Keep your suggestions coming please!
kazands Posted March 9, 2018 Author Posted March 9, 2018 Any other suggestions on CPU and Mobo combo? Also, If I'm going to be using a win10 VM as my daily driver, do I need to have another gpu to passthrough or will the one with the CPU work for both unRaid and the VM?
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