Overkill or more powwwwer?


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Hi All

 

First time poster, few month lurker!

 

I've read a lot of posts and watched a lot of YouTube videos from LinusTechTips and spaceinvaderone. Personal thank you to @SpaceInvaderOnefor all those great videos.

 

My old setup before selling off the parts or giving them to family/friends: 1 PC for gaming with; GTX 1060, i7 6700k, 16gb DDR4, 500gb nvme Raid. I ran a 2nd PC/server that was always on for Plex, i5 4460, 32gb DDR3, 5x 4tb HDDs. This was running on an xpenology OS. iMac for work related projects, I also run a pihole off a ras-pi and 2 other synology NAS for backups/work related stuff.

 

Moving to unraid i am hoping for a 1 box all solution, hence the budget (£1500), but I can push it further if needed.

 

Now, to the jammy center; I currently have £1500.00 to build a new unraid project, I have never used unraid before but all the videos, posts and reddit have motivated me to join you guys.

My budget doesn't include the follow as i either have the parts already or in the process of buying:  

5x 4tb Seagate Ironwolf (using about 80% space)

2x 8tb (empty)

3x 250gb NVME

1x 500gb SSD SATA

800W PSU

AMD/ATI 570 GFX

RTX 2080 GFX (just bought) 

A desk PC case custom built

AIO 360mm watercooler

 

My needs are

PLEX 24/7 for my 4 remote users, they are all running Android TV or Xbox one. Transcoding is what was used in the past builds. Should i go VM, docker or other?

 

Windows 10 gaming PC VM that will utilise my new monitor at 1440p around 120hz, the RTX 2080 will pass through from my understanding. I also plan to use the NVME drives to install Win10, steam, etc.

Hackintosh VM for work related stuff that will use the 570 ATI. 1 of the NVME.

Pihole

Maybe 1 VM for testing builds, etc.

 

I was thinking the following for my build 2920X Threadripper OR i9 9900k OR Ryzen 2700X. The budget will be for the CPU, Mobo, RAM and anything else I can think off. I would like to upgrade to 10GbE in the next few years, cards from ASUS are about £100.00. My worries are the gaming side and how many expansion slots I can use with the PCI lanes, I know it wont be a issue with Threadripper.

 

Any advice or help is welcomed, thanks.

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Hi @trl002  welcome and glad that you have deceided to joined the clan and are officially going to be an 'Unraider'

 

For Plex, yes, i would definetely use docker. It will be fine with 4 users I am sure. There is no point putting it in a vm if you want it running 24/7. The only advantage i can think of using a vm is you can transcode with the gpu should you pass it through. But then it ties up the gpu 24/7. Also with the 12 cores in the 2920 I dont see a problem anyway it will easily handle those streams. Also if you use docker with some intel cpus you can also use the igpu to help in the transcoding.

The only time transcoding can become a strain is if you have some movies that are ultra hd 4k videos and each is say 50 gigs a file transcoding them will be harder on the system than transcoding 4 1080 p movies at 4 gigs a piece.

2080 gtx will pass through for your gaming vm fine and the amd 570 should work fine in MacOS and should work with Mojave.

I have a similar server to the one you are planning using a 2950x and I really like it.

Re your nvme drives. I would install win 10 directly on 1 nvme and do that natively as i did in this vid here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnIn6GnA87c&t=298s

Then you can boot baremetal too. For MacOs put the install on another nvme but dont pass it through. Just use a vdisk on the nvme. Performance will be almost the same. Nvme controllers passed to macOS in my experience can be tricky due to MacOS driver issues.

 

Anyway good luck with your build. I am sure whatever you choose it will be awesome :)

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