Spend the extra $200 for 128gb of ram in my opinion, otherwise it looks like a good option. Option #5
Another option to consider instead of UNraid is Xpenology, it lets you run the Synology operating system on non Synology hardware. I’ve only glanced at it but haven’t run it directly.
Huge overkill for plex and fileserving, and those ancient Xeons don’t support quicksync for Plex transcoding.
I wouldn’t use a hacked OS for my NAS. I want my NAS to just work.
http://www.deltaserverstore.com/hp-p4500-san.html
Older xeon. Option 11 seems good enough for my needs I think.
That Xeon also doesn’t support quicksync, so you’d be transcoding in software. That tradeoff makes sense if you plan to run a ton of VMs or whatever, but not if your primary use-case is Plex. You’ll pay a fortune in electricity. Much better off with a skylake or later intel CPU.
Found the r/JDM_WAAAT sub and tried to configure a system.
Began looking at the guides.
w/ Amazon Prime
158 - Gigabyte 1050
180 - Seasonic Focus Platinum
150 - Rosewill 4U
2x64 - Artic 33
25 - Gelid
~$1258 Plus Duties & Taxes CDN
I don’t know what cables I will need to connect all the drives. Can anyone help decide if it is all going to work for my needs.
GPU for the good encoding/decoding support as shown in Nvidia GPU matrix. I assume 1050 is more than enough but could go for 1060 3GB if needed.
The fans cause they cool, PSU because expecting to run for near 24/7.
Using nvenc to transcode on the fly is doable but only if the os actually supports that in its driver. You could use a 1030 for that.
As some people suggested running a separate Plex machine can actually be cheaper. The shield TV runs PMS and is pretty good if you are running only one or two streams because it uses the GPU. It can also be had for under $200. It can also connect to network storage.
An older Quadro card would work too, anything with a Pascal GPU in it will have the hardware nvenc and nvdec use, and it’s the same hardware regardless of other card features, so you don’t to “waste” a gaming gpu on a server.
Strangely, the GTX 1030 is the only Pascal with the encode feature completely disabled.
Intel quicksync works great. I used a ShieldTV for over a year and that worked fine too. No need to go crazy with discrete GPUs etc unless you plan to serve more than maybe 4 streams simultaneously.
I haven’t found affordable Xeons with iGPU for QuickSync. Don’t know if there are any Xeons with iGPU. This is not an option for the server type build I am going for.
I don’t really need a separate machine to play the stream, TV/Phone apps are enough. Just need something to do the Optimize feature in Plex more efficiently for mobile playback.
1030 does not support the latest encoding features.
I’m not sure on the encoding. I havent tested. I know it decodes just fine. That sucks because it’s got the power to do so. Perhaps a rx550 then.
edit looks like its only supported in windows for the 550, well damn.
No the shield can run Full Plex Server. Thus offloading that work off your NAS.
But I would have my media on the server. Not sure I understand your idea. But it’s about the cost of the GPU, could just do that instead.
There are both power, redundancy and offloading benefits. The PLEX server only needs access to the media files this can be done over samba or NFS.
Not necessarily true, it depends on your pool layout. For example I started with 4x 3TB drives, in a 2x2 set of mirrors, and have added two drives at a time (a mirrored pair each time) over several years so now I have a 6x2 set of mirrors and two hot spares just in case. Some day if I choose I can start replacing these disks with bigger ones 2 at a time.
Furthermore, nothing prevents you from adding one disk at a time even, or starting with a raidz2 with 4 disks then adding 2 disks as a mirrored pair, or 2 disks as a raidz2 missing two parity drives, or whatever weird idea you might have that doesn’t involve changing the layout of an existing vdev. It’s not recommended for production systems because it will lead to unbalanced performance and space usage, but for a home NAS that’s not really a big deal because you don’t have paying customers expecting a service level that has been agreed to.
