NEW Plex / NAS server build

For the HDD size, I meant to say 5 x 3 TB vs. 5 x 4 TB.

What Im leaning to do is have spend a touch more if needed to not out grow this as my media server needs grow.

Right now, Im only watching mostly ripped DVD's from Handbrake managed by PLEX played through ROKU. I would like to watch high quality movies on big TV's as i expand my home theater. So I dont want to be limited.

Feels like we are close to a consensus, I am willing to get a better CPU for the long term. Some of the discussion on i7 vs XEON is past me. I do want ECC for best NAS utilization.

But if I was keeping up, seemed the XEON only does ECC not i7?

Thanks again. At least we have the case picked out!!

Yes, you will want the Xeon for ECC.

Interesting, I was under the impression that it did.

The I3 really isn't that bad, your looking at almost 400 points in cinebench r15 which I feel is a good metric of raw cpu performance. I think it would be fine for a couple 1080p streams, although ofc 4k is a different matter and really does require a xeon level performance cpu as your said. I would still steer away from I7's for FreeNas though, it likes dat ECC memory support.

ALCON,
Do you have any additional CPU's to investigate. the i3 -6100 is cheap at $100 bucks right now and would get the job done. I tried to put the XEON 1231v3 in a build list and no motherboards showed up as being compatible.

Still trying to stay near 1000 including HDD's.

I am leaning to get a CPU that will do 4k video in the future.. dont want to spend money twice on two CPU's.

Okay, I redid some stuff, and I got it to $1060, and you get the more powerful xeon with ECC ram and 9TB of usable hard drive space: http://pcpartpicker.com/list/h3M6RG

Caveman,
thanks for all the work. Rivals the Free NAS mini, but beats it by $500.

Thanks again to everyone's input and help. I think ya''ll came up with a real solid NAS / media server to grow into.

I was comparing the scores of the XEON cpu to the NAS's that say they can media stream, and it blows it away for the money.

The new WD pro series has a Pentium N3710 in their 4 bay model, which will cost the same as this build.

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I was comparing the system that we selected here to the one's Free Nas sells. They offer read and write cache. Can anyone explain that easily?

I recommend the following, due to my personal experience and preferences:
Hardware:
1 used enterprise class server with 2 xeon CPU
16-32 GB ECC RAM
HP 25disk storage array with mini-sas
PCIE sas/raid controller
~300GB SAS drives qty to your liking

Software:
Ubuntu server with virtualbox
run FreeNAS 9.x on the VM
pasthrough PCIE sas/raid controllers
the host server runs Plex.

Software:
You can then expand and "test" your environment as you need.
Plex doesn't need much RAM, but CPU cycles are most important when transcoding.

Source for HW:
ebay - for server, storage array, and RAM
Amazon for SAS HDD.

you can get VERY amazing deals if you look carefully.

depending on the implementation (i.e. ssd vs hdd) the cache is a temporary storage for your data that is being read or written. This speeds up your data "consumption" because typically the cache is faster than the physical speed of your hdd storage disks.

More important than read/write cache is protection from bad write bits due to odd issues. Best prevention is UPS and/or ECC memory.

Rock freak
Thanks for quick and easy explanation. Since read / write time is not something I will be really concerned with and I will be using ECC. Thanks again.

Thanks again to everyone who participated in the build out of this request. I really appreciate it. I had a few questions to solicit some opinions.

From the last build that Caveman spelled out, basically a XEON cpu, 16GB ram, 5 x 3TB HDD's --
http://pcpartpicker.com/list/h3M6RG

Do you feel that build rivals on performance a pre-buid NAS / Server for the price? I am assuming the money you save by building it yourself is substantial. I am trying to balance my decision to build this or buy one against the ability to get the software loaded in it and set up compared to a commercial unit.

Thanks for any feedback or opinions.

Yeah, it isn't bad but transcoding is a whole different beast.
The i3 can handle streaming the 3x1080p streams with Direct Play but transcoding? Unfortunately no.

Plex guidelines say you need

  • 1080p/10Mbps: 2000 PassMark CPU score
  • 720p 4Mbps 1500 PassMark CPU score

My [email protected] does ~11000 PassMark.
2000 per 1080p/10Mbps correlates well with my findings that streaming 1080p content shows about 20% average CPU utilization for the Plex transcoder when using the setting "prefer higher quality".
So theoretically my Plex "server" could handle five concurrent 1080p streams with transcoding. Haven't tested it and don't really have time for that.
The fastest i3 out now, the i3-6320 does ~6100. Just about (barely) enough for three concurrent 1080p streams with transcoding.
Factor in what else the CPU needs to do and I'd only rate it good enough for two, which is what you thought as well.
The i3-6100 would be ~5500 in PassMark, good enough for two transcoded 1080p streams.
But the OP is saying he wouldn't need horsepower for more than three streams so for planning it out, having the ability to easily handle at least the three streams he mentioned would be wise.

@TED A Xeon E3 v5 would be my recommendation if you're going to need/want ECC.
Probably the 1230v5, paying extra for 1240v5/1245v5 (+100Mhz base/turbo) or 1270v5 (+200Mhz base/turbo) or 1280v5 (+300/200 base/turbo) doesn't really make much sense to me.

Regarding the build you linked? Nothing major wrong with it.
If anything, I'd change the OEM/Tray 1230v5 for the boxed 1230v5 and remove the cooler
a) it's cheaper and longer warranty
b) it comes with the stock cooler (yes yes, it's more than adequate), no need to buy an aftermarket cooler

Change the motherboard to something that supports ECC, that Gigabyte model doesn't despite PCPartpicker saying otherwise.

How does that build compare? It's powerful. It's going to run circles around anything premade.
A QNAP Turbostation with a Core i7 starts from 2.2k$.. You'll be paying A LOT more for a commercial off the shelf NAS with a Xeon or i7 without hard drives included. Diskless! You'd have to buy the hard drives as well.
For i3 COTS NAS units you're looking at prices starting from about 1k$, diskless of course.

Lagittaja,

Thanks for the insight in regards to the MB and CPU tray. I will look into a motherboard that supports ECC, Not quite sure about OEM / Tray issue you brought up. Im fine with using a stock cooler. I wont be running this a max effort.

Thanks again.

TED

To all that have been helping here is a revised parts list.

Please review and give any feedback.

http://pcpartpicker.com/list/HLczNN

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Intel sells CPU's either as retail or as tray. It's quite simple.
Retail is for retail and tray mainly for OEM's or system builders. (OEM standing for Original Equipment Manufacturer, e.g. Dell HP etc.)

Retail version, often called "boxed" as the part number has BOX or BX in it, comes in retail packaging, with the stock cooler and has a 3 year warranty.

Tray version means that it is not retail packaged, it will not come with a stock cooler as they're intended for OEM's and only comes with a 1 year warranty. The CPU's are shipped from Intel quite literally in trays.

If you buy a tray CPU, you would receive it inside one of these.

I wouldn't buy tray CPU's as they're often more expensive than their boxed counterparts. If it's significantly cheaper than the boxed version, I might consider it.
However if you
a) don't care about the warranty
and/or
b) don't need or care about the stock cooler
Then feel free to buy the tray version and save the environment a little bit.

However in this case your parts list had
Tray CPU for 259.99$
CPU Cooler for 29.38$
= 289.37$

Retail 1230v5 currently is 252.99$ so you would save 36 bucks and some change.
http://pcpartpicker.com/product/w4dFf7/intel-cpu-bx80662e31230v5

As I already mentioned the stock cooler is more than adequate to handle the job of cooling the CPU and it's easier to install than aftermarket CPU coolers so you'd be saving a decent amount of cash, maybe for installation beers and you'd also save a few minutes of your life.

Nothing wrong with that.
Before you make your final purchasing decision, my usual recommendation is to take a long, hard look at the motherboard and make sure it has all the features or peripheral ports etcetera that you need or want and is of the form factor that you want, for example mATX vs ATX.

As a final note, I'd caution you about using regular hard drives for NAS use.
Yes, Backblaze uses a gazillion consumer drives for their servers but what they're trying to do is to be as cheap about it as humanly possible.
Yes, regular drives will work.
But they are not designed for NAS use. NAS drives for NAS use. Period.
The difference between a regular drive and a NAS drive is just firmware. (Enterprise drives however is different story)
But that makes all the difference.
Where does the regular drive expect to find itself in? In a consumer PC all by itself and with incredible luck maybe another drive as it's company.
What happens when you shove a bunch of regular drives with consumer firmware all next to each other, spinning at 5400-7200rpm speeds?

Do these people like thecaveman know for example how close the read/write head of a hard drive is flying above the disc?
The first commercial HDD, the IBM 305 RAMAC (in 1954) had a distance of 51 microns (51000nm).
For reference, human hair thickness ranges from 17 to 180 microns.
In 1961 the IBM 1301 HDD dropped it down to 6.35 microns (6350nm).
http://www.almaden.ibm.com/timeline/Timeline_SJ_Research.pdf

With modern hard drives the distance we're talking about is in the single digit nanometer range.
The read/write head is flying on a cushion of air and the firmware controls all the aspects of the hard drive.
Now guess what, how well is the regular hard drive going to perform when it's subjected to vibrations from multiple other drives in the system when the firmware inside it isn't equipped to cope with that kind of a situation?

So, the bad thing about having multiple hard drives next to each other are the vibrations.
Here see this classic video from Brendan Gregg who at the time was a kernel and performance engineer at Sun Microsystems (nowadays known as Oracle).
He's got a bunch of drives in a JBOD from which data is being written to/from. He then yells at the drives, see what happens to the average disc I/O latency.

Do you have another motherboard option to look at? The one listed seems pretty good for what I nee it to do, but I dont to be limited in a short period of time.

All,

Here is the latest part build out. I have really appreciated everyone's input and feedback. Please review and let me know what anyone thinks we can modify or substitute keeping it about the 1000 mark that we are at now.

TED

Well the link would help!
http://pcpartpicker.com/list/jzy27h

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My recommendation is this
http://pcpartpicker.com/list/rmHPnn
There is no reason not to go with an i3 with this build. It is compatible with both the motherboard and ecc ram. You can't really go raid z2 with 3 tb drives better go with a solid raid1 with 2x6 tb drives. Also for the case I would choose something more "server like" . The Air 240 has a practical 3,5 inch bay tray which is accessed without opening the case. Although it only takes 3 drives.