Noob Unraid Build - Need Input

[SDKTheater]

Hey All,

 

I am new here and looking to build my first Unraid NAS. Here is what I have so far:

 

• SuperMicro X8SIL-F Motherboard
• Intel Xeon X3470 CPU
• HYNIX 16GB (4X4GB) PC3-8500R 1066MHZ ECC REGISTERED CL7 QUAD RANK X8 DDR3 SDRAM

 

Planned

• LSI 9240-8i 6Gbps SAS HBA IT Mode
• ?? Power Supply
• ?? Case (prefer rackmount)

 

Here are the start of my questions:

1. I am planning to use 3tb SAS drives; should I purchase the "new" drives that are supposedly old unused stock, or purchase used SAS drives?
   1. I am planning to start with 6 drives to give me 12tb of pool drives with 2 parity drives.

 

I look forward to all your advice as I learn and work through the design of this build.

[Harro]

If it were me I would purchase new. 

56 minutes ago, SDKTheater said:

Hey All,

Here are the start of my questions:

1. I am planning to use 3tb SAS drives; should I purchase the "new" drives that are supposedly old unused stock, or purchase used SAS drives?
   1. I am planning to start with 6 drives to give me 12tb of pool drives with 2 parity drives.

 

I look forward to all your advice as I learn and work through the design of this build.

If it were me I would purchase new, especially the hard drives. Do not want anyone else's problems. You could always look at shucking new external drives of larger capacity. Larger drives will mean you do not need to use as many for your purpose. Less drives less headaches. I have shucked drives with good results in my Unraid servers. 

[Energen]

Ok so... what are your plans for this server? How do you plan on using it immediately, and what do you think you might want to do with it in the future?

Did you choose this specific hardware based on cost or something else?

 

Here's my thoughts.. take them as you wish.

 

Quad core CPU is fine enough for a lot of tasks (I've only got a dual core).. more cores down the road might prove to be more beneficial to you if you do more stuff (VMs, Dockers with pinned cores, etc).  But the overall benchmark rating is fairly low, and you may end up regretting boxing yourself into a low end configuration.

 

Here's a comparison of your CPU choice, my current Pentium, the Xeon I might end up buying to upgrade, and a recent Core i9 processor.

 

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-Xeon-X3470-vs-Intel-Pentium-G4560-vs-Intel-Xeon-E-2246G-vs-Intel-i9-10900K/1291vs2925vs3523vs3730

 

The only time I currently wish I had a more powerful CPU is if I'm converting media files.  I'm currently running the unmanic docker on a set of files to convert them and it's taking 8+ hours per file to convert. But aside from that I'm sure I would benefit with a better CPU in my dockers/vms. Hence my desire to upgrade.

 

That CPU also does not look like it has integrated graphics, so you might need a graphics card to make sure the system can boot up, but you can use the IPMI for that also and should be fine.  But you will never have any iGPU transcoding ability, if that's ever desire for you to be able to do (mainly with Plex).

 

The motherboard choice is also old.  And you're limited to the 16GB of RAM that you've chosen.  If you ever plan on using dockers / vms 16Gb just will not be enough.  Unraid will run on 16gb just fine and as long as you _never_ do anything else you'll be fine.  But eventually you will want more RAM and you can't add any.  I started with 16GB of ECC and added another 16GB, and my upgrade will have at least 64GB planned, with the option of 128GB (probably overkill).

 

Correction, I see that it can have 32GB of registered ECC, and only 16GB of unbuffered.  So in that case you are spending the money on 4 chips and limiting your option, if you ever wanted to make it 32GB you're getting rid of 2 of your chips (that probably nobody would buy from you) and buying new, larger chips.

 

So ultimately your choice of hardware should be based on what you plan on doing, and what you might do (hard to guess, I know, but plan on wanting to do SOMETHING else with your server.. since there are so many options).  Basically, plan for the future, and don't start off with outdated hardware.

 

That's my 2 cents.

 

 

 

 

 

[SDKTheater]

Thank you for the replies!

My plan is for this to be a file server (mainly MKV files) for the foreseeable future. I am going to be building another system based on an i7 7700 with RTX 2080 that will take the files and feed them through MadVR to do tone mapping and on to the projector in my theater.

My thought was that using the file server I would be able to access it from an Apple TV in another room for playing media files as well as devices in other rooms.

Hopefully the hardware I have chosen will be plenty for that purpose?

[Energen]

1 hour ago, SDKTheater said:

Hopefully the hardware I have chosen will be plenty for that purpose?

Strictly as a file server / media server you should be fine. 

 

But believe me, you start off thinking you only want a file server and it can turn into so much more...  but nothing says you couldn't have 2 Unraid servers down the road.. one lower powered for a specific task and one to play with more.  I just sort of feel you're doing yourself an injustice by using Unraid as only a file/media server.  But that's just me

[SDKTheater]

49 minutes ago, Energen said:

Strictly as a file server / media server you should be fine. 

 

But believe me, you start off thinking you only want a file server and it can turn into so much more...  but nothing says you couldn't have 2 Unraid servers down the road.. one lower powered for a specific task and one to play with more.  I just sort of feel you're doing yourself an injustice by using Unraid as only a file/media server.  But that's just me

Thank you @Energen. I appreciate the input!

 

I am very, very new at this server stuff. My thought process was to keep the file server cost low as I am spending a decent amount on the media PC as that has a specific use for my home theater as far as dynamic frame by frame tone mapping and upscaling. I chose Unraid as it seemed to get a lot of good feedback from the community. I definitely want something with some redundancy in case a drive or two fails I don't want to be out of luck with all my data. Again, I am very new at this and learning every day.

[Harro]

12 hours ago, SDKTheater said:

Thank you for the replies!

My plan is for this to be a file server (mainly MKV files) for the foreseeable future. I am going to be building another system based on an i7 7700 with RTX 2080 that will take the files and feed them through MadVR to do tone mapping and on to the projector in my theater.

My thought was that using the file server I would be able to access it from an Apple TV in another room for playing media files as well as devices in other rooms.

Hopefully the hardware I have chosen will be plenty for that purpose?

i have thoughts on all this and will response with an update to this when i get to my office computer. Too dark in my theater to type.

[Harro]

14 hours ago, SDKTheater said:

Thank you for the replies!

My plan is for this to be a file server (mainly MKV files) for the foreseeable future. I am going to be building another system based on an i7 7700 with RTX 2080 that will take the files and feed them through MadVR to do tone mapping and on to the projector in my theater.

Ok at office.  

I have just recently had the thoughts of MadVR on my Unraid server if I added the GTX 2080 in my build. 

 link------>   htpc for MadVr

After asking the questions on my mind, I came to these conclusions.

1) Spend about 2k for a new comp that would handle madvr and do gaming on with the GTX 2080.

2) Spend 500 dollars a year to have my JVC projector re-calibrated

3) Install a GTX 2080 in my unraid server and hope all the hdmi runs to avr and projector work, along with wireless keyboard and mouse.

4) Build a htpc that would handle madvr and do gaming but with a less expensive graphic card. And then upgrade card when new cards come out.

5) Spend around 4-5k for a used Lumagen for tone mapping

6) Sell my JVC RS540 and buy a new  JVC RS2000 will have better tone mapping and HDR capabilities.

7) Be happy with what I have now. 

 

My server is mainly a file server with dockers and plex running. I have had 4 family members all in different states on plex while I watched on my Kodi without a hiccup.I do not have a plex pass, so all transcoding is done on cpu side. 

 

In my theater I run Odroid N2 ---> AVR---> Projector. This will let me play anything I have including 4k rips. All audio formats are passed onto AVR including ATMOS but not Dolby Vision as of yet.

I have not done anything yet that involves madvr. So do some research on it all and figure what will be important.