boomhower

Your setup is perfect for Orbi. You can use your cat5 as a wired backhaul greatly improving overall performance. Eero is the only other option IMHO, everything else on the market is inferior to those two. Orbi has a janky app but better performance with all options available in the direct browser login. Eero has a much more refined app but not quite as good of performance.

All that enterprise gear with a QNAP sitting there makes me chuckle, no particular reason just out of place I guess.

Unless you are renting run a cable. It isn't that hard in most cases. For wifi I am a fan of mesh and currenly use Orbi but for anything important I hardwire and the backhaul of the mesh is also wired.

Either is fine, they are essentially the same thing outside of NVME. Don't overspend for a data drive as you won't see the difference in real world usage.

Thanks guys Arctic 34 it is.

Looking at the arctic freezer 34. Cheap, reviews say quiet and comes with the thermal paste I had planned on buying anyways. DUO seems overkill. Thoughts?

Looking through all the suggestions. Price wise I'd like to be in the $30US range. For a 65W chip I don't think I need one designed to soak up 230W. I'm in the USA.

For the case I went with a Fractal Design R5.

The 550W version is $109 as the 450W is out of stock at $170. Not a bad price at all and doable, as always cheaper is better for equal quality if something else is available but this one looks good. I have been looking real hard at the Fractal Design Ion+ 560W as well.

Putting together a server that will live in my bedroom or living room and needs to be nearly silent. CPU is going to be an i3-9100 that will not be overclocked and run stock. Would rather not put a lot of money here as I imagine a cheap cooler with a 120mm fan will do the trick but if a AIO water cooler is needed I’ll go that route as silence is king. Thanks guys/gals.

I'm building a server that is going to live in either my living room or bedroom so essential silence is a must. Power isn't a huge concern; i3-9100, 4 spinning hard drives, one m.2 SSD, two sticks of ram. I want capacity to expand to 8 HDs and a PCI raid card down the road. I don't want any loud fans or odd electrical noises. Price is what it takes but south of $100US would be a bonus as would be fully modular.

Both actually. I’ll be encoding my content into .265. Current library Is being changed to 265 for space savings and that’s where tech is going and transcoding that on playback. Now transcoding will be at most one steam at a time. Most will be direct play.

I will be using the iGPU. Quicksync is the reason I am going with Intel over Ryzen, don't need a GPU to do 4k.

I am replacing an older Synology unit and was to go custom this time around. Usage is going to be a Plex server for my family. Mostly direct play but 1-2 4K transcodes may happen as well. It will also be encoding various formats into h265 with handbrake. The balance will be your typical Sonar/Radar/etc. I do not have any plans for VMs at this time. I have been out of the build game for a decade or so since I moved to Apple. CPU: i3-9100 Quicksync should handle Plex just fine and speed good enough for encodes as they aren't time sensitive. Dont see where spending more here would be of benefit. Do I need to replace the stock cooler? I will not be overclocking it however noise is a concern. Motherboard: No idea. Full size ATX but outside of that no idea. Looks like around four difference chipsets available. It's a server and not a gaming PC so I don't want to spend $200 on a motherboard. I do want NVME for a cache drive and seems some offer better cooling than others for those drives. RAM: Looking at 16GB but how fast do I need? Again not overclocking as stability is key. Case: Fractal Desing R5 but open to suggestions. Focus is quiet above all else without going to water cooling. Size isn't an issue. Hard drives: Already purchased. 2x12TB shucked WD and two 3TB Reds from my current NAS. Cache NVME: No idea on size or speed needed. PSU: Thinking in the 650W area and modular would be nice. Open to any and all suggestions! Thanks folks.