New build critique, plex and VMs

[egonshield]

This is my current prospective build: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/bqGBwV

 

CPU: Xeon E3-1245 V6

Mobo: ASRock C236 WSI Mini ITX LGA1151

RAM: Crucial 1x16GB DDR4 ECC Unbuffered

Storage: 3x8TB WD Reds, 1 Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD

Case: Fractal Design Node 804 or Lian-Li PC-Q25B

Power Supply: Corsair CSM 450W 80+ Gold Semi-Modular

Cooling: CRYORIG C7 40.5 CFM

 

What is your budget?

$500-1000 without drives.

 

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

I'm planning to start with 3 8TB Reds for 16 TB useable, but I'd like room to grow.

 

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

Yes, I'd like extra drive bays, but I don't expect to add more than 1 or 2 more drives in the next few years.

 

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

I'll run a Plex Media Server and the usual set of dockers for download management, like Deluge, Sonarr, Radarr,  CouchPotato, Plexpy, and probably some type of backup application like rsync.

 

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.

Planning on WD Reds, 5400.

 

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

No.

 

I'm building a machine to act as a Plex server and download manager, and I'd also like to run a linux VM to act as an alternative dev environment to my Windows desktop. For the sake of future proofing, I'd like it to be able to handle transcoding 2-4 streams (nothing higher than 1080p), but I will only have 5 Mb upload speeds for the foreseeable future so most usage will be within network direct play. Since I can't effectively stream with my limited pipe, most of the power of this machine will probably go towards experimenting with docker images, VMs, and databases for work (I'm in data science). I don't need a ton of power here, since I have access to powerful production environments. For VMs, I'll need the ability to use them from remote desktops. I won't be doing any gaming on this machine.

 

These are my main concerns with my planned build:

 

Motherboard: PC Parts Picker warns about compatibility with the Kaby Lake chips. I don't have a spare processor to plug in if I need to update the BIOS, and I'm not sure how difficult that process would be. I've also seen the concerns about ASRock, and since this is my first build, I wonder if a Micro ITX might be easier to assemble on than a Mini. PC Parts Picker offers limited alternatives though, and every Mobo I've tried has given me the warning about required BIOS updates. Any advice here would be greatly appreciated. For instance, these Supermicro boards (one, two) appear to have the same compatibility issues.

 

Power Supply: I don't know anything about these, but I picked one off a similar build on this forum. Is 450W enough for this build?

 

UPS: This is probably necessary for an always-on server, right? Any considerations here?

 

Cooling: I picked a CPU cooler essentially at random, and I'm not sure if I'll need more fans or modifications to cool the drive bays.

 

I expect to hear that I should double the RAM, but I'm hoping to delay that as a future upgrade. I'd consider upgrading the processor as well, but onboard video seems important for easier setup and for Plex transcoding, and this is missing in the E5s and Ryzen builds as far as I can tell. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, especially on the Mobo choice and power requirements for my use case. Thanks!

[SSD]

I had no intention of moving my Windows workstation to being a VM on my unRAID server, but that is exactly my current configuration.  I need to package and sell my old Windows desktop on eBay. I'd suggest that you at least consider a possible move in that direction with your build. The real value is that your entire array is now local to your Windows desktop. No network is involved (although slight overhead of networking layer for file accesses). But I can easily get 200 MB/sec speeds from the array, and even faster access to my SSD cache and UDs.

 

This is definitely the way to go IMO!

[egonshield]

Interesting. It'd be a shame to use an i7 desktop with 16GB RAM as just a workstation, but I could definitely see how that could happen.

 

Does anyone know of Kaby Lake compatible motherboards that don't require a BIOS update? I don't want to buy another processor just to get a working motherboard.

[karldonteljames]

I've just purchased and built a similar system I7-7700k, but the original board bios needed updating.) 

 

The board i purchased supports asus flashback, which enables you to update the bios without having a CPU or RAM installed.

 

I found the correct bios, put it on the pen drive with the correct name, and connected it. Pressed and held the flashback button, waited about 5 minutes (IT SEEMED LIKE FOREVER!)

Once it stopped flashing, i put the CPU and RAM in, and it worked perfectly.

[Misterka]

On 11/24/2017 at 11:49 AM, egonshield said:

Interesting. It'd be a shame to use an i7 desktop with 16GB RAM as just a workstation, but I could definitely see how that could happen.

 

Does anyone know of Kaby Lake compatible motherboards that don't require a BIOS update? I don't want to buy another processor just to get a working motherboard.

If the C236 WSI fits your needs they can send you a new BIOS chip if the mobo you receive isn't already flashed.  I had to reach out to them for this last week and they were very helpful.