Unraid for gaming and NAS, but what are the benefits?

[Wesso]

Hi, I’ve been brought here by LinusTechTips after watching his video on converting his gaming desktop into a gaming desktop + NAS. 

 

This got me all excited because I was considering on getting a NAS and the drawback is really the price for decent specs. 

 

I planned to use the NAS for Plex Media Server so I needed a decent NAS. 

Then after watching LinusTechTips video I realised I could create a NAS using Unraid. 

 

Now, the main reason I considered a NAS to start with was so that my computer (which was mainly used for gaming) doesn’t always have to be on (or in sleep mode until woken up by LAN). I feel for the whole computer to turn on when there’s only one Plex activity going on is a bit overkill. 

 

So my question is, what are the benefits from using Unraid for gaming and NAS (Plex Media server) on the same computer vs just a gaming computer with Plex Media Server running?

 

I am still fairly new to all this so I’m struggling to use the right keywords to find more info on this. So if there’s already articles on this please feel free to just point me there. 

 

Thank you. 

[trurl]

34 minutes ago, Wesso said:

 my question is, what are the benefits from using Unraid for gaming and NAS (Plex Media server) on the same computer vs just a gaming computer with Plex Media Server running?

Do you want a NAS or not? Where will your media be?

[1812]

40 minutes ago, Wesso said:

So my question is, what are the benefits from using Unraid for gaming and NAS (Plex Media server) on the same computer vs just a gaming computer with Plex Media Server running?

 

better storage setup

ability to add more nifty things via docker

ability to run more vm's including a firewall

your coolness factor increases by a factor of 5

virtual 10gbe connection to server from windows vm vs buying 10gbe hardware.

ability to divide resources and not waste them

if someone watches plex while you're gaming on a standalone computer, your game can suffer vs on unraid you can isolate them from each other

did i mention your  coolness factor increases by a factor of 5?

 

[Jerky_san]

13 hours ago, Wesso said:

Hi, I’ve been brought here by LinusTechTips after watching his video on converting his gaming desktop into a gaming desktop + NAS. 

 

This got me all excited because I was considering on getting a NAS and the drawback is really the price for decent specs. 

 

I planned to use the NAS for Plex Media Server so I needed a decent NAS. 

Then after watching LinusTechTips video I realised I could create a NAS using Unraid. 

 

Now, the main reason I considered a NAS to start with was so that my computer (which was mainly used for gaming) doesn’t always have to be on (or in sleep mode until woken up by LAN). I feel for the whole computer to turn on when there’s only one Plex activity going on is a bit overkill. 

 

So my question is, what are the benefits from using Unraid for gaming and NAS (Plex Media server) on the same computer vs just a gaming computer with Plex Media Server running?

 

I am still fairly new to all this so I’m struggling to use the right keywords to find more info on this. So if there’s already articles on this please feel free to just point me there. 

 

Thank you. 

So basically I run a very large nas and a gaming machine on mine. The beauty of having everything in one is a "blessing" and a "curse" so lets go with the blessings first.

 

I have ran a 24x7 server for about 10 years now and it only turns off for maint or upgrades. That power consumption will ALWAYS be there. What isn't always there is my gaming machine(when I had one). Before I built a much larger server for both to happen at the same time my NAS(a lot more than a NAS) consumed from 90 watts - 150 watts. It was a VMWare box running ZFS and it used to be my gaming machine but I broke it out to get more performance for gaming since back in those days multi core(great than 4 cores) procs were super expensive.

 

When AMD Ryzen came out I decided to merge again. This was a two pronged approach. One reason was because I went to 8 TB hd's and now my server was consuming about 150 watts idle(added 4 more drives to) and about 200 watts during "processing" on top of my gaming machine that would be anywhere from 100 watts to 350 watts when the GPU was going full tilt.

 

Merging them eliminated the 350 watts that I would use from 730 am to 10-11 pm. It increased my idle consumption of my NAS to 180 watts and at max tilt it could hit around 450 watts. Craving more power for more transcodes for plex, my gaming machine, my wifes machine, and other VMs for my work and such. I went with a 2990wx threadripper.

 

Anyways its not super expensive. You already have a gaming machine. What are the specs? If its an AMD Ryzen with 8 cores then just slap unraid on there, assign 1 core to unraid and its stuff, assign another core to plex/dockers(maybe more you say 1 stream but that might grow), and assign the rest of the cores to your gaming machine. Bing bam boom. Merged two things together saved the cost of a "NAS" but get the benefits of one. Only draw back now you have to run the machine all the time but most people don't realize that power consumption really isn't that bad especially if you log out of your windows VM. Nice thing is though its always there running.

 

The curses are of course slightly more power consumption(for merged machines and running 24x7). I don't care as much about consumption as I use my server for many things, such as work, personal cloud accessible from anywhere, plex(very nice), website hosting, Ubiquities UMNS and Unifi, home automation, and a bunch of other crap so I can tolerate the extra 13-14$ a month that it cost to run my NAS 24/7.

 

License(unraid does cost money) - There is other software you can use but unraid does make it fairly damn simple.

 

With higher processors like my 2990wx it requires a learning curve. Not nearly as much with normal consumer procs.

 

 

[Wesso]

Thank you for your responses.

On 12/25/2018 at 11:29 PM, trurl said:

Do you want a NAS or not? Where will your media be?

I guess I'm still not sure whether I truly need a NAS or not. I think my 'requirements' don't necessarily point me to a NAS.

 

On 12/25/2018 at 11:32 PM, 1812 said:

better storage setup

ability to add more nifty things via docker

ability to run more vm's including a firewall

your coolness factor increases by a factor of 5

virtual 10gbe connection to server from windows vm vs buying 10gbe hardware.

ability to divide resources and not waste them

if someone watches plex while you're gaming on a standalone computer, your game can suffer vs on unraid you can isolate them from each other

did i mention your  coolness factor increases by a factor of 5?

I'm still not sure what "Docker" is, so I need to look further into this. 
With regards to the other items you've mentioned I think I don't have a real need for it but like you said, coolness factor increases by 5 sure does sound good. Haha. In all seriousness, I like to try different setups and so with this all being new to me, I'm inclined to give it a go.

It's like the Hackintosh community, I gave it a go including buying the hardware. Got it all up and running, everything was working (including iMessage). Though I used it for about 6 months before I got bored of it, sold it and went on to the next mini-project. 

Hopefully this mini-project of Unraid will last a lot longer :)

 

On 12/26/2018 at 12:55 PM, Jerky_san said:

So basically I run a very large nas and a gaming machine on mine. The beauty of having everything in one is a "blessing" and a "curse" so lets go with the blessings first.

 

I have ran a 24x7 server for about 10 years now and it only turns off for maint or upgrades. That power consumption will ALWAYS be there. What isn't always there is my gaming machine(when I had one). Before I built a much larger server for both to happen at the same time my NAS(a lot more than a NAS) consumed from 90 watts - 150 watts. It was a VMWare box running ZFS and it used to be my gaming machine but I broke it out to get more performance for gaming since back in those days multi core(great than 4 cores) procs were super expensive.

...

...

...

You have crazy specs! I wish I could do that. 

I think you also understood perfectly what I was trying to achieve. After reading your post, and others I think I've decided to not worry about power consumption but instead give isolating the NAS and Gaming environments. 

 

I do have some following questions which I hope you can help me out.

 

My specs will be as follows: 

CPU: i7-4770

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD5

Storage: 2 x 500GB SSD, 2 x 4TB HDD, 1 x 2TB HDD

PSU: SilverStone 550W

GPU: GTX 1060 3GB

 

(Question 1) If I were to go with a NAS + Gaming setup with Unraid, with the above specs, what is the most recommended setup?

LinusTechTips video had their SSD's in RAID 1 and then the HDD as NAS. Though they didn't go into full detail so I'm not sure where Unraid is installed, where the virtual OS is installed etc. 

 

(Question 2) With my CPU, since I only have 4 physical cores (8 logical cores) does Unraid only allow me to assign physical cores or does it allow me to assign logical cores too? (i.e. would it be the case where it's NAS = 1 x Core, Gaming = 3 x Cores; or NAS = 3 x Cores, Gaming = 5 Cores)

 

(Question 3) I read that Nvidia cards has a limit of 2 streams for hardware transcoding, can my CPU's onboard graphics (Intel HD 4600) do the transcoding and is there a limit?

 

(Question 4) You mentioned that with your NAS + Gaming setup, the NAS is on 24/7 and the Gaming environment will be turned on and off on demand. How do you turn on your gaming environment since it's a VM? Do I need another computer that has access to the network and I use a web browser to go into Unraid to activate the gaming environment? 

 

Thanks in advance.

[trurl]

Do you need a NAS.

 

If you expect your storage requirements to expand to the point where you will need to be adding drives then you need a NAS.

[Squid]

On 12/28/2018 at 3:11 AM, Wesso said:

(Question 2) With my CPU, since I only have 4 physical cores (8 logical cores) does Unraid only allow me to assign physical cores or does it allow me to assign logical cores too? (i.e. would it be the case where it's NAS = 1 x Core, Gaming = 3 x Cores; or NAS = 3 x Cores, Gaming = 5 Cores)

Yes

[Jerky_san]

On 12/28/2018 at 2:11 AM, Wesso said:

Thank you for your responses.

I guess I'm still not sure whether I truly need a NAS or not. I think my 'requirements' don't necessarily point me to a NAS.

 

I'm still not sure what "Docker" is, so I need to look further into this. 
With regards to the other items you've mentioned I think I don't have a real need for it but like you said, coolness factor increases by 5 sure does sound good. Haha. In all seriousness, I like to try different setups and so with this all being new to me, I'm inclined to give it a go.

It's like the Hackintosh community, I gave it a go including buying the hardware. Got it all up and running, everything was working (including iMessage). Though I used it for about 6 months before I got bored of it, sold it and went on to the next mini-project. 

Hopefully this mini-project of Unraid will last a lot longer

 

You have crazy specs! I wish I could do that. 

I think you also understood perfectly what I was trying to achieve. After reading your post, and others I think I've decided to not worry about power consumption but instead give isolating the NAS and Gaming environments. 

 

I do have some following questions which I hope you can help me out.

 

My specs will be as follows: 

CPU: i7-4770

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD5

Storage: 2 x 500GB SSD, 2 x 4TB HDD, 1 x 2TB HDD

PSU: SilverStone 550W

GPU: GTX 1060 3GB

 

(Question 1) If I were to go with a NAS + Gaming setup with Unraid, with the above specs, what is the most recommended setup?

LinusTechTips video had their SSD's in RAID 1 and then the HDD as NAS. Though they didn't go into full detail so I'm not sure where Unraid is installed, where the virtual OS is installed etc. 

 

(Question 2) With my CPU, since I only have 4 physical cores (8 logical cores) does Unraid only allow me to assign physical cores or does it allow me to assign logical cores too? (i.e. would it be the case where it's NAS = 1 x Core, Gaming = 3 x Cores; or NAS = 3 x Cores, Gaming = 5 Cores)

 

(Question 3) I read that Nvidia cards has a limit of 2 streams for hardware transcoding, can my CPU's onboard graphics (Intel HD 4600) do the transcoding and is there a limit?

 

(Question 4) You mentioned that with your NAS + Gaming setup, the NAS is on 24/7 and the Gaming environment will be turned on and off on demand. How do you turn on your gaming environment since it's a VM? Do I need another computer that has access to the network and I use a web browser to go into Unraid to activate the gaming environment? 

 

Thanks in advance.

Question 1:

I believe when you add multiple cache drives to unraid it will make a software raid 1.

Question 2: 

Yes it's called cpu pinning they recently added a page in settings dedicated to it.

Question 3:

I believe there is a way to pass it to a Plex docker but I've not done it. As I use amd mostly.

Question 4:

I use my cellphone to do it. Very easy but there is also a wake on lan plugin for vms that you could use as well.