Upgrading server, no idea what hardware to get!


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I currently have a 24 bay SATA backplane server with a regular PSU and old internal hardware (10+ years) which I would like to upgrade.

 

Expectations of the server:

 

- Plex (including transcoding up to 3 streams at a time)

- Virtualization (OSX)

- photo, file, and music storage, backup

- basic dockers for media handling, VPN, pfsens

- NOT sure if I need a discreet GPU? wont be doing any gaming, only help would be with Plex transcoding?

- Upgrade the HDDs, but have time to do this and can add drives at this time if needed. I am currently using 33TB and need room for more. 

 

The last time that I put any hardware together was well over 6+ years ago, so I am definitely 'out of it' with that is available.

 

I am looking for recommendations for a motherboard, CPU, RAM and controller cards that would be sufficient. I would like some decent speed out of the server and realize that the old multiple smaller drives are a bit of a bottleneck at this time, so will be slowing moving to 8TB or 12TB drives. 

I would be happy to move the two cache drives that I have over to a set of M.2 drives on the motherboard to reduce a bottleneck (OR would 2 internal 2.5" SSDs be just as good - I dont see much in price difference.

 

Budget right now is not really an issue, but I don't want to spend money on hardware that is going to go to waste (ie a GPU if I don't need one, a ridiculous motherboard if I dont need all the features etc).

 

I am looking for parts mostly in Canada since I cannot get anything picked up in the US at this time with the border closed.

 

Thanks for the help!

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