New AMD Upgrade Build - Does this work?

[Alibaba]

Hi Guys

 

I've been running an Intel Xeon E2-1230 V2/Supermicro X9SCM-IIF 8x HDD with 1 SSD for cache based unraid server for the last 6-7 years now and I am thinking about upgrading. Previously I was thinking I'd stick with an Intel Xeon  but I'm not sure if its a COVID worldwide thing or an Australian thing (where I live) but it seems hard to get a lot of the CPUs locally and wider it seems like Intel is slipping behind AMD (and they've lost favour with Apple which seems like they've just lost a major business) which is why I'm looking at maybe moving to an AMD based system. 

 

My primary uses are storing my media and running dockers such as Plex, Roon server, SABnzbd, Radarr, Sonarr. I am hoping to have the ability to transcode 4K video through Plex (which I understand is an expensive pursuit). While I do direct play while at home, there is increasing amounts of 4K content in my library. 

 

I don't have a good feel what AMD is like (Given I've always had systems with Intel in them) so hoping for some opinions about whether this system is going to fulfil my needs. 

 

I'm currently looking into building a system with:

• SilverStone CS381B (Currently using a Unas 810A but its pretty tight and won't allow for a GPU) 
• ASRock Rack X570D4U-2L2T
• AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
• Leadtek Nvidia Quadro P2200 5GB Workstation Video Card
• Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD
• KSM26ED8/16ME x2 

 

Questions I have are...

 

1.) Is the 3700X over or under kill from a CPU point of view for this system? Given I'm planning to use a GPU can a get away with a cheaper CPU?

 

2.) Is the P2200 capable of 4K transcoding and has anyone had success with does this in an AMD/Unraid system (Seems like a lot of posts are based around the P2000 which I take must be the previous version as I can't find P2000 readily in Australia) 

 

3.) I understand to use Nvidia GPU with AMD one needs to use a special unraid Build.  It is going to be straight forward enough to transfer my current unraid over to this new hardware or does changing to this build mean starting over?

 

4.) Given the board has 8x Sata ports  and 2x M.2 ports am I right in thinking I can forgo the use of my HBA and plug my 8 drives directly in the mother board and use the M.2 as a cache drive. 

 

Thanks for reading and any advice/opinions that you guys can provide

Cheers

 

 

 

 

Edited December 5, 2020 by Alibaba

[SeeGee]

59 minutes ago, Alibaba said:

1.) Is the 3700X over or under kill from a CPU point of view for this system? Given I'm planning to use a GPU can a get away with a cheaper CPU?

Technically it's more than 'necessary', but hey, it'll be d*mn nice to have. 

 

59 minutes ago, Alibaba said:

2.) Is the P2200 capable of 4K transcoding and has anyone had success with does this in an AMD/Unraid system (Seems like a lot of posts are based around the P2000 which I take must be the previous version as I can't find P2000 readily in Australia) 

Check out https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-and-decode-gpu-support-matrix-new . That says the Quadro P-2200 has everything you need for 4k transcode.

 

59 minutes ago, Alibaba said:

3.) I understand to use Nvidia GPU with AMD one needs to use a special unraid Build.  It is going to be straight forward enough to transfer my current unraid over to this new hardware or does changing to this build mean starting over?

Yes, if you're using the same drives, you should be able to simply boot the usb from another machine with the same drives connected, and it *should* boot fine. There might be some little tweak you need/want to make on the new system, but unraid is a pretty portable OS.

 

Nvidia drivers and unraid have changed a bit recently. See here: 

I would recommend updating to 6.9.0-beta35, and installing the plugin. I have done this myself, and it's pretty painless.

 

59 minutes ago, Alibaba said:

4.) Given the board has 8x Sata ports  and 2x M.2 ports am I right in thinking I can forgo the use of my HBA and plug my 8 drives directly in the mother board and use the M.2 as a cache drive. 

This is what I would do. Adding the HBA uses pcie lanes, meanwhile the onboard sata ports already have pcie lanes assigned. The HBA would also add to power usage, and heat. You're never going to be hammering the io bus on that motherboard (PCIe Gen4 remember!) beyond it's capability with 8 hdd and a pcie Gen3 nvme. These cpus and the x570 chipset can handle ridiculous amount of bandwidth. Look at adding the HBA once you need more sata ports.

 

Overall, that'd be a really nice unraid server. There are many people who use the AMD Cpus now. I have a 3700 in my main rig, and frankly it's very capable.

Edited December 5, 2020 by SeeGee
Improved detail of response

[Alibaba]

Thanks for the Feedback SeeGee.

 

Very tempted to pull the trigger on this build. 

 

Do you know if going from an HBA to Sata on a mother board does it matter which drives get plugged it where (i.e do I need to try and match them up to the same order as they currently exist) or will unraid work out that all the drives are plugged into a new system and off we go?

[SeeGee]

Unraid recognizes drives by uuid, so it will remember the disk order in the array regardless of any changes to the /dev/sdX assignments. You shouldn't have any problems as long as all the same drives are connected.