provoking Posted October 4, 2020 Share Posted October 4, 2020 Hello All. I have been planning a build and have started the following parts: Ryzen 3700x Aorus Master x570 (I know it is overkill, but I got it for free) 64 GB DDR4 2400 (already had it laying around) Quadro P2200 Radeon R7 240 (older but thermals are perfect for what I needed) WD White Labels - (4x) 8TB, (2x) 10TB, (2x) 12TB (3x) 1TB Samsung 970 NVMEs Rosewill 4U Server Chassis EVGA 850 G3 PSU LSI SAS Controller (IT Mode) w/ 2 ports - so I will be running all mechanical HDDs off of it So here is what I am wanting with the setup. Unraid NAS for all of my storage - Plex, Video Editing, Other Files, etc. Plex Media Server (use Quadro for transcoding) Windows 10 VM So a few questions. What is recommendation for Plex - to run via Unraid or through my Windows VM? If via unraid, is that a separate VM for plex? And then another for Windows for two total VMs? How will that effect the number of video cards needed to be the heads for my setup? How do I ensure I get the Quadro setup right for Plex? What would you recommend I do with the NVMEs? I was thinking of one for Windows and the other for Plex.... should the third be used for cache or something? Anyone do any water cooling in the Rosewill case? I have an old server running it now with air cool, but curious about water cooling and if anyone has done anything custom for it. Tight space for sure. I appreciate your help, these are probably dumb questions, but I just want to prepare for everything before the build begins. Quote Link to comment
trurl Posted October 4, 2020 Share Posted October 4, 2020 Plex and many other apps run as dockers 1 Quote Link to comment
Decto Posted October 4, 2020 Share Posted October 4, 2020 8 hours ago, provoking said: What is recommendation for Plex - to run via Unraid or through my Windows VM? If via unraid, is that a separate VM for plex? And then another for Windows for two total VMs? How will that effect the number of video cards needed to be the heads for my setup? How do I ensure I get the Quadro setup right for Plex? What would you recommend I do with the NVMEs? I was thinking of one for Windows and the other for Plex.... should the third be used for cache or something? Anyone do any water cooling in the Rosewill case? I have an old server running it now with air cool, but curious about water cooling and if anyone has done anything custom for it. Tight space for sure. See Unraid Nvida config here. 1 GPU should be fine to boot unraid and service transcoding in Plex. Separate GPU for VM. For USB passthrough you may need to get a PCI-E card based on the Fresco Logic FL1100 chipset depending on how the intergrated USB is configured on the board. My Plex just sits on my cache drive, a standard SSD. I haven't noticed any performance issues. You should be able to pass through a NVME drive to Windows for best performance. Water cooling seems like an unusual choice, none of the parts require significant cooling and you will need good airflow through the case to keep the hard drives cool anyway so there will be plenty of air to support an air cooler on the CPU and GPU's. 1 Quote Link to comment
provoking Posted October 4, 2020 Author Share Posted October 4, 2020 Many many thanks for taking the time to give me some tips. Looking it all over now!! Quote Link to comment
JonathanM Posted October 4, 2020 Share Posted October 4, 2020 13 hours ago, provoking said: curious about water cooling Water cooling is great for the novelty and cool factor on a gaming desktop, but it has no place in a server. The pumps are not very reliable for long term use, and the last thing you want is for your system to have a meltdown when you aren't around. At least with air cooling there is a significant mass of metal in the heat sink that can shed heat to the ambient air even if the fans fail. 1 Quote Link to comment
provoking Posted October 4, 2020 Author Share Posted October 4, 2020 1 minute ago, jonathanm said: Water cooling is great for the novelty and cool factor on a gaming desktop, but it has no place in a server. The pumps are not very reliable for long term use, and the last thing you want is for your system to have a meltdown when you aren't around. At least with air cooling there is a significant mass of metal in the heat sink that can shed heat to the ambient air even if the fans fail. Really good point! I was just concerned about the number of hard drives I am using in the front of the case blocking air flow. Quote Link to comment
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