Media/Plex Server

[bbbilly05]

Hi All,

 

Just starting out on my unRAID journey - have been trawling these forums to get a good idea of what i require - now to sanity check.  Not sure if I've over or under spec'd this machine...  Would appreciate advice as to whether I'm in or near the right spec for a Plex/Media server.  Minimal requirement to transcode.

 

What is your budget?

Looking to spend around $1,500 Aussie but no more than $2k.

 

How many drives do you want your server to be able to support and how much capacity do you need?

I think up to six drives, and I'm starting out with 10G of storage - but want to be able to increase that easily (hence looking to unRAID).

Is expandability important to you?  If so, what's your long term goal?

Yes - if I have to cut back on storage to buy the right gear, I want it to be easy to add additional storage as budget allows.

Are you interested in running any unRAID Add Ons (see here)?  If so, which ones?

Only Plex.  This machine will be a PMS and host recorded tv files watched on our Windows Media Centre.  

 

Do you want to run green/low power drives or faster 7200 rpm drives?  If you don't have a specific need for 7200 rpm drives, then choose green drives.

I've selected Red as they are NAS drives, but welcome advice as to whether Green as better.

Do you have any spare parts laying around that you would like to apply towards your build? 

Yep - included in my proposed build.

If you already have parts in mind, please oh pretty please post links to them so that we don't have to look them up.

Here is the link to my pcpartpicker build: https://au.pcpartpicker.com/list/sjVKjc

 

Thanks in advance for your advice.

 

Cheers,

Billy

 

Edited September 2, 2017 by bbbilly05

[bbbilly05]

Thought I'd grab the parts list to save having to click through...

 

[tdallen]

Hello and welcome.

 

Looks like a good build to transcode 1 or 2 streams (or serve more without transcoding).  I'd put in 16GB as well, but you could get away with 8GB.  Also, unless your Plex library is very large or you plan to use the cache drive quite a bit for write-caching, you could get away with a smaller one - 250GB is common.  Also, I'm not sure I understand the references to 4, 6, and 8TB disks - what do you plan to use?  Red drives are great for unRAID.

[trurl]

2 minutes ago, tdallen said:

Also, I'm not sure I understand the references to 4, 6, and 8TB disks - what do you plan to use?  Red drives are great for unRAID.

The way I interpret it is he already has the 6, since it's cost is listed as zero. The 8 would be for parity to allow future expansion.

 

I would reconsider the 4. If you really already need 10 total, then you will need more later so might as well start with more. If, on the other hand, you could get by with just the 6 you already have for now, then you could just go with that and add something larger than 4 later.

 

I tend to favor fewer larger drives over more smaller drives. Fewer disks take fewer ports, fewer slots, and have fewer opportunities for problems.

[HellDiverUK]

The cooler chosen is severe overkill.  Your cooler should not cost nearly as much as your CPU.  An i3-7100 could be cooled by a Hyper 212 Evo without the fan...  Or just use the cooler in the box.

 

Also worth looking for a MLC SSD - my experience of TLC drives like the 960 EVO is the big writes and rewrites soon burn though the flash.  As you don't need any more than 120MB/s writes across the network, even the slowest SSD will be fine.  I use a SanDisk Z400s 128GB in one of my unRAID boxes, it's super low power, it's MLC, and it was free (taken out of my laptop when I upgraded it).  It's only good for 150MB/s write, but fine for unRAID cache.

[mrbilky]

Ditch the nvme drive and get two sata ssd's for the cache

[bbbilly05]

Hi All,

 

Thanks @tdallen, @trurl, @HellDiverUK and @mrbilky for your feedback - I appreciate it.

 

Will ditch the cooler and go back to stock.

Will drop the nvme and go for stock SSD (looking into MLC/TLC - although seems a bit tricky to source).

Yes the 6G drive is existing, I'll drop the four and get a HGST 8G as parity drive with the money saved from the cooler and SSD.  So have 8 + 6 storage which should last me quite a while.

 

Thanks again, will report back once I've got the gear and started the build.

 

More than a little excited about this new project.

 

Cheers,

Billy

 

[bbbilly05]

Hi All,

 

Just wanted to say thanks again for the advice and guidance.  I've now built my unRAID box using the revised list and it is working a treat - nine hours into preclear.

 

Looking forward to that finishing so I can start using it in anger.

 

Cheers,

Billy