LanceK

This will be my first unraid build and I wanted to get everyone's thoughts on component selection. I intend it to be used primarily a NAS for the household (backing up other household computers and phones, important documents, pictures, movies, etc, also running something like ownCloud), while also serving as the HTPC in the living room and gaming PC for the wife. We have been using a PS4 attached to a 1080p TV running PLEX to stream content from our old mac mini. It's time for an upgrade and I'd like the system to be able to virtualize Windows 10 to run Kodi as our HTPC and Steam for gaming. I'd like to also being able to serve 2-3 PLEX transcodes (1080p) while the windows VM is running to other clients around the house. I'd prefer to dedicate 4 cores to the Windows VM, which will always be running. So I am thinking a 6 core processor at a minimum, which also need to be relatively high clock to support gaming. I would also like to use ECC RAM so that's pushing me to the Xeon line (Ryzen is also appealing and it sounds like compatibility is getting better, but I'm still worried about the growing pains). I am looking to future-proof this system as best as possible, so I'm comfortable spending money up front to ensure that capability. I would like to be able to add a second video card for my son in a number of years so he can play light games (thinking Mincecraft) on a thin-client. So, at a minimum, I'm looking for the following capability: 9-10 hard drives for future expandability. Two video cards for separate gaming virtual machines (probably light gaming, so 2-3 cores per VM is acceptable - will start with one Windows 10 VM for now) Enough PCIe lanes to eventually add in a 10Gb Ethernet card Motherboard with IPMI (this build will be in the living room and I will be disabling the power/reset switches - the toddler loves buttons!) Fast cache drive to run VMs and docker containers, running at least the following: PLEX, sabnzbd, sonarr, radarr, mineOS, Pi-hole, OwnCloud, and at least one Windows VM for Kodi and Steam gaming, with two Windows VMs in the future. Here's what I have picked out so far: CPU: E5-1650 V4 (6 core, 12 thread, 3.6 GHz) Motherboard: X10SRA-F (10 SATA ports with IPMI and plenty of expansion capability) RAM: 4x 8GB DDR4-2400 ECC Registered RAM CASE: Silverstone GD08 (one of the few cases that fits our living room entertainment center while holding 9-10 drives) Power Supply: Seasonic Flagship Prime Titanium 1000W (needed for eventually powering two video cards and 10+ drives) Graphics Card: EVGA GTX 1060 (already purchased) Add-On Card: Supermicro AOC-SLG3-2M2 PCIe card for two NVMe M.2 drives (this card should hopefully allow me to use two NVMe drives in unraid as a cache pool. The X10SRA-F motherboard support bifurcation of the 8x PCIe slot into 4x/4x, so hopefully this will work?) CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U9S Fans: 3x Noctua NF-P12 PWM (higher static pressure for under the hard drives) 2x Noctua NF-S12A PWM (side intake) 2x Noctua NF-A8 PWM (back exhaust) Parity Drive: 8TB WD Red Data Drive: 1x 8TB WD Red (more to be added as needed) Cache Drive: Samsung 960 Pro 512GB (M.2 NVMe drive - used as cache, docker, and VM drive - driven from the PCIe add-on card listed above. One drive to start, will add another soon to create cache pool). I think my biggest concern is about the support and compatibility of the NVMe drive in unRAID. I haven't found a clear example of anyone using a card like the Supermicro AOC-SLG3-2M2 with two NVMe drives successfully. I plan on splitting the cache drive to also host the windows VM and dockers, so I'm wondering if I'll get any speed advantage running the NVMe drive over a standard (and much less expensive) SATA SSD. The other benefit I see is freeing up 1-2 SATA ports by using the PCIe lanes. I've also heard that Intel will be updating the E5 and E7 line sometime soon, so I'm not sure if this is even the best time to buy into the outgoing 2011-3 platform. Any suggestions or advice would be appreciated!