Feedback for Plex Server Build - Overbuilt

teacherer on 16/04/2023 - 16:26
Last edited 16/04/2023 - 16:33 by 1 other user

Hi all.

After losing 22TB of data recently from an old 2010 PC, I'm looking to build a new rack mount PC from scratch.
I'm hoping I can get some feedback for this build. I'm aware it's way more than needed for plex but wanted it totally fuss free.
I'm looking to do an overpowered build that I can remote into and won't hang or lurch with any maintanence etc. 4-8 1080p streams with transcoding if necessary.
I've been happy to spend a bit more for quality components. E.g. DDR5, since this should be in service for 10 years.

A big challenge has been finding a m-atx motherboard with 6 SATA ports, I would have liked one with overclocking for if i ever try a game on it but there are none I can find.
I know I can use a PCIe SATA expansion card but I don't want to delve into that yet.
I could also use a bigger case with a backplane but they won't fit my network cabinet.

Build is about $1500 not including case, PSU and GPU which I will reuse.

I have plex pass and hardware transcode.
I'd like to learn to do unraid in a VM one day, but will use this for that when the time comes.

Can you guys see any glaring ommissions on my part? My understanding of this stuff is less than passable, at best.

PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/JQZtv3
Case- TGC-32380
CPU: Intel Core i7-13700 2.1 GHz 16-Core Processor
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 82.5 CFM CPU Cooler
GPU: Quadro M2000
Motherboard: MSI MAG B760M MORTAR WIFI Micro ATX LGA1700 Motherboard
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws S5 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL30 Memory
Storage: Kingston KC3000 2.048 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive
Storage: Seagate IronWolf Pro 16 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive
Storage: Seagate IronWolf Pro 16 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive
Storage: Seagate IronWolf Pro 16 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive
Power Supply: Corsair RM550x 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply

Computing Computer Desktop Computer Plex

Comments

  • Axelstrife on 16/04/2023 - 16:29
    +1

    That's US PC parts picker.

    • teacherer on 16/04/2023 - 16:30

      I know

      I couldn't think of a better way to share the components and chekx their compatibility. I'm not using them for purchasing.

      Thanks though

      • Axelstrife on 16/04/2023 - 17:07
        +1

        No worries just making sure weren't going off those prices.

        Anyway yes the 13700 is overkill and the GPU isnt needed for 1080p transcodes.

        https://i.ibb.co/Dz05Ycg/Screenshot-2023-04-16-164527.png
        Here is my Unraid server with it's 12600k's iGPU trancoding 8 1080p x265 movies to 1080p x264 so drop it down to a 13500 or 13600k which has the same iGPU.

        Secondly ditch the DDR5 motherboard and ram, You can still buy a DDR4 motherboard cheaper and DDR4 is also cheap, by the time you will upgrade DDR5 will be even cheaper and you will need a new motherboard anyway as intel's 13th gen is the last for LGA 1700 socket.

        My Unraid/Plex server specs are similar to what you listed.
        12600K
        Gigabyte Z690M Aorus Elite AX
        G-Skill 16GB DDR4 3600mhz
        Noctua NH-D15 CPU Cooler
        LSI 9207-8i SATA/SAS 6G/s
        Corsair RM650
        Samsung 1TB 970 Plus NVME
        100TB worth of storage over 7 Drives
        Fractal Design Define R6 Case

        • teacherer on 16/04/2023 - 17:17
          +1

          I didn't know about the pending socket update.
          Thanks for that.

          We had the gpu running with the old 3rd gen i7, so I we've already got it.
          To be honest my reason for the Ddr5 mobo was that it was the same price as the ddr4 one in m-ATX with 6 sata.
          And then 32gb Ddr5 was the same price as 64gb ddr4.
          I'm leaning towards sticking with Ddr5 just for those reasons.

          Is the LSI 9207-8i SATA/SAS 6G/s your sata expansion card?

          Are your 8 streams remote or all local? We're struggling with our low upload speeds.

          Thanks!

          • Axelstrife on 16/04/2023 - 17:36

            @teacherer: Intel always changes there socket every few generations unfortunately.

            Dont worry about the sata ports amount, get yourself an LSI card which are about $90 for the 8 port one i have but you can get 16 port ones too if you needed that much. Yes i plug the rest of my HDD's into my LSI card.

            Yes those transcodes are local, I was just demostrating the capability of the iGPU and why the 13700 is overkill since the transcoding will utilise the iGPU or Dedicated GPU. If your upload speeds are slow then you would have to pay for faster speeds if you can otherwise your outta luck for that particular problem unless the issue if your router but that's unlikely unless it's ancient.

      • BarneyKB on 27/04/2023 - 15:05

        https://au.pcpartpicker.com

  • ozturtle on 16/04/2023 - 16:43
    +1

    If you're running the server full time, perhaps consider a higher rated power supply like a platinum to keep your bills down.

    • teacherer on 16/04/2023 - 16:45

      Good point thanks. Unfortunately I already own the PSU

  • RowanLucas on 16/04/2023 - 17:01

    Maybe consider ECC ram?

    • teacherer on 16/04/2023 - 17:20

      What are the advantages of that?

      • RowanLucas on 16/04/2023 - 19:19

        Some NAS OS recommend ECC ram, I think it's to do with the long-term stability

        • skillet on 17/04/2023 - 13:15

          ZFS with ECC prevent bit-rot

      • Chandler on 16/04/2023 - 23:18
        +1

        ECC = Error Correction Code

        EMI (Electromagnetic Interference), Cosmic Rays (yes, that legitimately is a thing), etc can cause bits to flip in your RAM. This causes an error which either causes a crash or data corruption. ECC ram has an extra chip to check and correct these errors.

        The downside is that ECC RAM chips are generally clocked slower than standard RAM chips.

    • sareth on 17/04/2023 - 09:21

      It's just a video server, who cares if a stray bit flips

  • jizmo on 16/04/2023 - 17:01

    This is how I want to build my next NAS. https://youtu.be/boKmZKTKXHc

    • teacherer on 16/04/2023 - 18:50

      Unfortunately I really want rack mount and more than 4-5 drives storage.

      Would consider that for family media storage like photos etc

  • te5s3rakt on 16/04/2023 - 17:14
    +1

    Have you considered focusing less on boards with many SATA ports, and instead just get a HBA card?
    I was doing the same about 6 months ago. Life got much easier when I just focused other aspects of the board and bundled it with a HBA.
    Running 8x drives on the HBA for the Unriad array, with my boards ports filled with SSDs for cache, etc

    • teacherer on 16/04/2023 - 17:19

      Is the HBA a component like the LSI 9207-8i SATA/SAS 6G/s mentioned above?

      It seems I am still very limited by the m-atx form factor. There's only 3 or 4 Z boards out there, even without the SATA limitation.
      Do you have a recommendation of boards to suss out?

      • te5s3rakt on 16/04/2023 - 17:36

        Yeah that’s the one (although I went 9300-8i, for no reason other than availability at the time).

        The 9300 was faster with high end SAS drives from memory. Not that it’ll impact you here.

      • te5s3rakt on 16/04/2023 - 17:57

        Figured I’d post my build, inc pricing at the time, here for your reference. Obviously pricing has dropped a bit since.

        CPU: XEON E-2226G - $470.22
        HBA: LSI 9300-8i - $365.49
        Motherboard: SuperMicro X11SCA-F - $741.53
        PSU: Corsair RM850x - $185.00
        Case: Fractal Design Meshify 2 - $239.00
        OS Volume: Samsung BAR Plus 32TB - $16.00
        Write Cache: Samsung 870 EVO 2TB - $305.00/ea
        App Cache: Samsung 970 EVO Plus 2TB - $299.00/ea
        Storage: WD Ultrastar DC HC560 20TB - $936.98/ea
        RAM: CRUCIAL MTA18ASF2G72AZ-2G6E2 16GB DDR4 ECC - $210.59/ea

        Storage is on the HBA.
        SSDs and NVMe on the MB.

        • Neat thing about that MB is there’s an onboard USB A port, so my Unraid OS Boot Drive is tucked away safe and sound inside the case 😄
        • teacherer on 16/04/2023 - 18:01

          That's very helpful thanks

          I'm feeling very under powered now

          I'll research some of those parts soon

          When was your build?

          • te5s3rakt on 16/04/2023 - 18:57
            +1

            @teacherer: Oh no no, I wouldn’t base a sensible build based on mine lol. I tend to overspec more often than not, purely for internal bragging rights. Love doing a bunch of stuff and barely seeing the CPU usage move. Where as sensible people would rather see all the stuff they can achieve at max usage 🤦‍♂️

            My needs were similar to yours, and definitely could’ve gone with half the power 🤷‍♂️ .

            It is nice to have room to grow into though 😄

            I was adamant it was 6 months, but just checked my receipts: purchased July 2022. Oh boy, time flys.

        • snoopydoop on 29/04/2023 - 11:21

          Gotta get me one of those 32TB usb sticks at 50c a TB!

          • te5s3rakt on 29/04/2023 - 12:50

            @snoopydoop: I had to double take then. Thought you just found a unicorn. But nope, I just can’t type for shit lol 🤦‍♂️

  • snickerz on 16/04/2023 - 18:37

    I just recently purchased a Intel NUC 12 - i5 with 16 gb ram (3200 Mhz) and 512 GB NVME. Connected this to a 4-Bay QNAP NAS.

    This thing is capable to run 4K HDR transcodes with 50-60 MBPS without sweat. I have tried 3-4 local streams and forcing transcoding. It all ran flawlessly.

    Oh and i run it on UBUNTU … because HDR Tone Mapping was still having issues on windows 10/11… so i just went with LINUX.

    Your built is way over powered… so you shouldn’t have an issue. Just make sure you pick the right OS

    • teacherer on 16/04/2023 - 18:42

      Thanks. Unfortunately I only know how to use Windows 🤷‍♂️

      • snickerz on 16/04/2023 - 18:43

        So did I … till about a month ago

        • teacherer on 16/04/2023 - 18:45

          Hopefully running unraid or whatever OS will be easy on this system when I'm ready

          Brain still recovering from losing 22tb

          • te5s3rakt on 16/04/2023 - 19:03

            @teacherer: I was similar. Heavy windows user (would consider myself a pro user here), and above average Mac user. Linux… does using PiOS for 30min urea count? Lol

            Unraid, still learning, but overall not that steep a learning curve.

            Opted for that over TrueNAS, as I heard that does in fact have a huge climb.

  • deme on 16/04/2023 - 18:46

    A case?

    • teacherer on 16/04/2023 - 18:46

      Case- TGC-32380

  • rumblytangara on 16/04/2023 - 19:14

    I don't know… I mean you do say you want to overbuild it, but at the same time any 24/7 machine I have is going to be designed for low enough power to minimise cost whilst still having enough power to do what I want.

    The only machines I deal with that flagrantly waste power, someone else foots the bill for AC and electrical.

  • bmerigan on 16/04/2023 - 21:19

    An i7-13700 is way more than you need. I get multiple 1080p streams out of Plex with a 10 year old CPU.
    An i3-13100 may be enough. One thing to check is whether Plex uses multiple cores.

  • Qazxswec on 16/04/2023 - 23:31
    -6

    i am drunk and have no idea what you are talking about, but if you want to watch something, just download the torrent in 5 minutes, watch it on a usb then delete it when you are finished, if you want to re watch it 6 months later, just re download it in 5 minutes, then re watch it, there is no point filling up hard drives with stuff you are never going to re watch

  • mattyman on 17/04/2023 - 09:24

    I found an R710 on Facebook Marketplace with 48 GB of RAM for ~$200. I replaced the HDDcontroller card and added 6 X 8Tb drives and a 500 GB SSD. Installed Proxmox on the SSD, passed through the controller to a VM and installed TrueNAS on that. TrueNAS can install Plex, if that is your goal.

    This setup gives you leeway to reallocate resources to other VMs if you want to try other things later.

    • teacherer on 17/04/2023 - 09:55

      I'd love that but 710mm is wayyy to deep for my server rack
      It can only take 380mm

  • peteru on 17/04/2023 - 17:26

    If you expect your NAS to shuffle non-trivial amount of data and and if you do not want that data corrupted over time, you should consider the following:
    * HBA. Forget mobo-SATA. Even something as simple and cheap as Broadcom / LSI SAS2008 PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS-2 will be a much better option. If you want value for money, go with a second hand OEM model, such as one of the HP cards on eBay. Make sure you get the right cable to connect your SATA drives.
    * Memory. There's more data corrupted by bad memory (or cosmic rays) than most people realise. It often goes undetected and when it is eventually discovered, chances are that the corrupted files have been in your backups for so long that you no longer have a good copy. If you can stretch your budget, go with ECC memory and a decent motherboard.
    * OS/FS. You'll want a reliable operating system and a filesystem that has full checksums for data and metadata, performs regular scrubs and has the appropriate level of redundancy for your data. The main OS contenders are Linux and (Free|Net)BSD and the two file systems to consider are BTRFS and ZFS.
    * HDDs. Don't be cheap. Watch Amazon US HDD prices and when you see a deal, jump on it. I recently purchased 20TB WD Red Pro drives for ~AUD$625 each, delivered within 7 days.

    And don't forget backups for important data. A NAS, even with mirrored drives, is not a substitute for a backup. Since you mention Plex, my guess is that the really important data will only be a small portion of the total capacity of the server. Probably enough to fit on a single drive you probably already have. Use those older drives to keep backups of the important data - like photos.

    • teacherer on 17/04/2023 - 17:32

      Thanks mate. I wish I saw this reply before ordering everything.

      At the moment ecc ram isn't an option due to the motherboard I've now selected- Asus ROG Strix Z690-G WIFI mATX. I've gone this mobo because I found that m-ATX offerings were so slim at the moment for the 13th gen Intel.
      If you have any ecc m-ATX mobo recommendations I'd be keen to hear.

      Most importantly, why are HBA so much better than on board sata? The board I've selected has 6 sata so I won't technically need a HBA till I outgrow the drive capacity of my case.
      Does the HBA just plug into pcie like a SATA expansion card? Or do they use a backplane like some hotswap cases I've seen.

      I'm not too fussed about OS at the moment as I'm keen to learn unraid once things settle down.

      I picked up ironwolf pro 16tb for $394 which I think was a good deal.
      I picked up the new NT models

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