Looking for a drive enclosure for DIY Nas?

[Gershy13]

 

So I've got a pretty random request, I'm not really sure what I'm looking for. Essentially what I'm trying to do is build a NAS/Home Server out of old PC parts lying around and old drives (maybe some new ones too). 
Probably going to run unRaid or FreeNAS on it, with Plex and a normal windows SMB share.
I just need to find a enclosure that will support around 8 or more drives and connects to a pc I'll keep running 24/7 running FreeNAS/unRaid. Ideally I would like the drives to be at full speed (150-200mbps of a normal 7200rpm drive) so I'm not sure what host interface the enclosure should use to take full advantage of that.
And I'm assuming I'd need a PCI adapter for whatever interface it uses?

I'm also willing to just rip the pc apart and put it into a server case with hotswap bays, but I'd still need the adapter to support that many drives. And I'd need to find a cheap server case...

Any tips on this?
Even alternate suggestions on how I could complete this project avoiding the old PC or anything?

Thanks
Gershy13

[BobVonBob]

Mediasonic looks to have some 8 bay enclosures that will interface via USB 3.1 over USB-C. You won't get full speed over all drives simultaneously, but you will be able to get full speed on about 3 at the same time if you have USB 3.1 on the computer side as well, probably via an expansion card. I don't believe there are any faster widely available external storage solutions.

[Gershy13]

11 hours ago, BobVonBob said:

Mediasonic looks to have some 8 bay enclosures that will interface via USB 3.1 over USB-C. You won't get full speed over all drives simultaneously, but you will be able to get full speed on about 3 at the same time if you have USB 3.1 on the computer side as well, probably via an expansion card. I don't believe there are any faster widely available external storage solutions.

Thanks... I don't have usb 3.0 on that computer let alone usb 3.1, but I'm sure there'll be a pcie card I can use?

Also I was looking at enterprise/business solutions used on eBay? I was thinking of using something with the sas interface which is around 12gbit? And most of them have 2 controllers with 2 sas ports on each enclosure which should mean 48gbit right?

[BobVonBob]

3 hours ago, Gershy13 said:

Thanks... I don't have usb 3.0 on that computer let alone usb 3.1, but I'm sure there'll be a pcie card I can use?

Also I was looking at enterprise/business solutions used on eBay? I was thinking of using something with the sas interface which is around 12gbit? And most of them have 2 controllers with 2 sas ports on each enclosure which should mean 48gbit right?

Those would work too, do note that you'll probably have to use SAS drives in the enclosure because of that, and you will also need some type of PCIe card to connect to it though I'm not exactly sure which one. Most look like mini-sas?

[Gershy13]

46 minutes ago, BobVonBob said:

Those would work too, do note that you'll probably have to use SAS drives in the enclosure because of that, and you will also need some type of PCIe card to connect to it though I'm not exactly sure which one. Most look like mini-sas?

Yeah most of them seem to have mini sas ports on the back. And yeah I think I'd need a mini sas pcie controller or something... 

I didn't know about the whole sas drives only thing. The ones I've seen so far say I can use either 2.5 or 3.5 sata HDDs

[BobVonBob]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It's ebay, I might not be seeing the same enclosures you are. SATA is a subset of SAS, so if the interface is the same SATA drives will work where SAS drives were.

[Gershy13]

4 minutes ago, BobVonBob said:

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It's ebay, I might not be seeing the same enclosures you are. SATA is a subset of SAS, so if the interface is the same SATA drives will work where SAS drives were.

AHH right okay... Yeah I just need to find a model that suits what I need and isn't too expensive... I was also looking at straight up used servers on eBay.. found a few Dell and HP ones... Considering that as an option too...

[BobVonBob]

1 minute ago, Gershy13 said:

AHH right okay... Yeah I just need to find a model that suits what I need and isn't too expensive... I was also looking at straight up used servers on eBay.. found a few Dell and HP ones... Considering that as an option too...

As somebody who has a few old Dell/HP servers, make sure you have a nice thick closet door, they get loud, especially the 1/2U ones.

[paddy-stone]

Personally speaking I have and would get, an LSI 92ll-8i SAS expansion card, and get a normal PC case with space for 8 drives. eg fractal design node 804, it's an m-ATX board for that though, which suits me as I like box-ish cases to fit into my media cupboard. Anyway, so with the HBA SAS card, it has 2x 8087 ports, that you can use breakout cables that turn each port into supporting upto 4x SATA drives. I personally don't see the point in hotswap bays, as they would rarely get used anyway, unless you have the PC in an inaccessible place that would be problematic to just pull the whole pc out to change drives if and when needed.

The cards go for around £40 or so on ebay for new cards.. and the cables can be had for around £10

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/LSI-Internal-SAS-SATA-9211-8i-6Gbps-8-Ports-HBA-PCI-E-RAID-Controller-Card-/131968906516?hash=item1eb9f5b514

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01HZFUMY6/

[Gershy13]

2 hours ago, BobVonBob said:

As somebody who has a few old Dell/HP servers, make sure you have a nice thick closet door, they get loud, especially the 1/2U ones.

Ahh right ok, then ill probably stay away from getting an old server unless i can mod the cooling to make it quieter.

1 hour ago, paddy-stone said:

Personally speaking I have and would get, an LSI 92ll-8i SAS expansion card, and get a normal PC case with space for 8 drives. eg fractal design node 804, it's an m-ATX board for that though, which suits me as I like box-ish cases to fit into my media cupboard. Anyway, so with the HBA SAS card, it has 2x 8087 ports, that you can use breakout cables that turn each port into supporting upto 4x SATA drives. I personally don't see the point in hotswap bays, as they would rarely get used anyway, unless you have the PC in an inaccessible place that would be problematic to just pull the whole pc out to change drives if and when needed.

The cards go for around £40 or so on ebay for new cards.. and the cables can be had for around £10

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/LSI-Internal-SAS-SATA-9211-8i-6Gbps-8-Ports-HBA-PCI-E-RAID-Controller-Card-/131968906516?hash=item1eb9f5b514

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01HZFUMY6/

Thanks.. i think this is the most likely route ill go down... what if i wanted to expand in the future, is it possible to get something that would allow for more drives over sas? and maybe an external enclosure seperate from the PC that would house a few more drives?

[BobVonBob]

8 minutes ago, Gershy13 said:

Ahh right ok, then ill probably stay away from getting an old server unless i can mod the cooling to make it quieter.

Thanks.. i think this is the most likely route ill go down... what if i wanted to expand in the future, is it possible to get something that would allow for more drives over sas? and maybe an external enclosure seperate from the PC that would house a few more drives?

If you want to expand extensively it might be worth it to look into large server chassis options (often 4u servers will have upwards of 24 drives), then swapping out the fans if they are too loud.

[Gershy13]

5 minutes ago, BobVonBob said:

If you want to expand extensively it might be worth it to look into large server chassis options (often 4u servers will have upwards of 24 drives), then swapping out the fans if they are too loud.

Thing is im not sure about space... I have side storage areas in my converted loft, and i was thinking of placing it in there... i dont think a 4u server would fit in there... maybe could get away with a 1u or 2u, but even them i think they may be too wide, id need something that was a tower form factor... 

[paddy-stone]

21 hours ago, Gershy13 said:

Ahh right ok, then ill probably stay away from getting an old server unless i can mod the cooling to make it quieter.

Thanks.. i think this is the most likely route ill go down... what if i wanted to expand in the future, is it possible to get something that would allow for more drives over sas? and maybe an external enclosure seperate from the PC that would house a few more drives?

Well TBH, if say you started out with 4x8tb, and then added drives as needed... by the time that has filled up all 10 slots in the chassis bigger drives should be available and at a lower cost, so might be worth upgrading the drives rather than the chassis. But for pci-e cards you can add as many as your motherboard would support theoretically.... or you could just go with a bigger capacity card in the first place if you fell like you might do that in the future. IIRC I saw an 8 port card for around £60-ish maybe??  so that would be 8x4 SATA ports. You can bet bigger chassis for storage, but TBH at that point you might be better off going with a 2u or bigger server anyway, I bought a 2u server for around £200, with 8 drive bays, 2x 6 core CPUs, so 24 threads overall, 2 PSUs that are redundant (ie if one fails the other kicks in)... and so on. So cost wise that'd be the way to go, just that they are more power hungry, so newer servers would be better in that case, but cost more.

For home/media use I would doubt that you'd need more than 8x drives TBH, if you're going with a decent size to start with like 8TB each... for example I am using 4TB drives x4, and still have around 6TB free, and this is after I have backed up all my blu-rays, 4k rips and so on... and I keep a decent amount of software, OS backups and so on too. I think it'll be years still before I need to expand it at all, and have 4 drive bays free right now on the node 804...

The best thing I can think of right now is to work out how much data you would be likely to use, and go from there... if you're likely to only want around 16TB to start with, I would suggest the node 804 (if your mobo's an m-ATX?) and just get 2x 8TB unless you're going for redundancy ie RAID 5/6. I don't bother with it personally right now as I have a backup server for my server, that gets booted like once per week and backs up my entire server... and during that week I backup to an external USB any files that aren't currently on the backup server... which usually doesn't amount to much. Yes it would be a PITA if/when my server breaks, and I have to re-upload all the data on it from my backup server, but I also don't have to have 4 drives, plus 1 or 2 for parity drives, so have more expansion options... and TBH the only things not backed up at least twice (personal documents, and very important files), are my media files which are replaceable in the event that both my server + backup server dies simultaneously, which isn't likely.

As long as you have a backup plan and contingency for if the worst happens you should be OK with non-parity backups IMO.... if it's not business/time important of course.

 

I hope that makes sense?

[Gershy13]

1 minute ago, paddy-stone said:

Well TBH, if say you started out with 4x8tb, and then added drives as needed... by the time that has filled up all 10 slots in the chassis bigger drives should be available and at a lower cost, so might be worth upgrading the drives rather than the chassis. But for pci-e cards you can add as many as your motherboard would support theoretically.... or you could just go with a bigger capacity card in the first place if you fell like you might do that in the future. IIRC I saw an 8 port card for around £60-ish maybe??  so that would be 8x4 SATA ports. You can bet bigger chassis for storage, but TBH at that point you might be better off going with a 2u or bigger server anyway, I bought a 2u server for around £200, with 8 drive bays, 2x 6 core CPUs, so 24 threads overall, 2 PSUs that are redundant (ie if one fails the other kicks in)... and so on. So cost wise that'd be the way to go, just that they are more power hungry, so newer servers would be better in that case, but cost more.

For home/media use I would doubt that you'd need more than 8x drives TBH, if you're going with a decent size to start with like 8TB each... for example I am using 4TB drives x4, and still have around 6TB free, and this is after I have backed up all my blu-rays, 4k rips and so on... and I keep a decent amount of software, OS backups and so on too. I think it'll be years still before I need to expand it at all, and have 4 drive bays free right now on the node 804...

The best thing I can think of right now is to work out how much data you would be likely to use, and go from there... if you're likely to only want around 16TB to start with, I would suggest the node 804 (if your mobo's an m-ATX?) and just get 2x 8TB unless you're going for redundancy ie RAID 5/6. I don't bother with it personally right now as I have a backup server for my server, that gets booted like once per week and backs up my entire server... and during that week I backup to an external USB any files that aren't currently on the backup server... which usually doesn't amount to much. Yes it would be a PITA if/when my server breaks, and I have to re-upload all the data on it from my backup server, but I also don't have to have 4 drives, plus 1 or 2 for parity drives, so have more expansion options... and TBH the only things not backed up at least twice (personal documents, and very important files), are my media files which are replaceable in the event that both my server + backup server dies simultaneously, which isn't likely.

As long as you have a backup plan and contingency for if the worst happens you should be OK with non-parity backups IMO.... if it's not business/time important of course.

 

I hope that makes sense?

Thanks... Well I want to keep price as low as possible... That's why I was thinking of multiple bays so I could use smaller drives that I already own... To start off I think I'd only need around 6 or 8tb max (including the redundancy drives) and maybe in the future i might need to expand to a max of 16 or 24tb... Cos all I'm storing on this would be some movies and TV shows (probably around 1tb max) (doesn't need to be redundant), then my camera archive (currently at 1.5tb, growing at roughly 300-400gb per year) so I'd be fine with 2tb on that drive till end of 2019. Maybe start off with 3-4tb on that drive (not including redundancy). And then I'd need another 1tb (+ redundancy would make it 2tb) for miscellaneous documents and stuff. And then I'd need another drive for computers backups (shouldn't be more than 200-300gb per system) so maybe a 2tb backup drive. (4tb after redundancy...)

 

So 16tb should last me quite a few years... 

 

And then I can maybe expand every year or two adding a few more terabytes...

 

I know all of that might have been extremely confusing, I'm just not sure how to explain what I'm thinking. 

 

[paddy-stone]

5 minutes ago, Gershy13 said:

Thanks... Well I want to keep price as low as possible... That's why I was thinking of multiple bays so I could use smaller drives that I already own... To start off I think I'd only need around 6 or 8tb max (including the redundancy drives) and maybe in the future i might need to expand to a max of 16 or 24tb... Cos all I'm storing on this would be some movies and TV shows (probably around 1tb max) (doesn't need to be redundant), then my camera archive (currently at 1.5tb, growing at roughly 300-400gb per year) so I'd be fine with 2tb on that drive till end of 2019. Maybe start off with 3-4tb on that drive (not including redundancy). And then I'd need another 1tb (+ redundancy would make it 2tb) for miscellaneous documents and stuff. And then I'd need another drive for computers backups (shouldn't be more than 200-300gb per system) so maybe a 2tb backup drive. (4tb after redundancy...)

 

So 16tb should last me quite a few years... 

 

And then I can maybe expand every year or two adding a few more terabytes...

 

I know all of that might have been extremely confusing, I'm just not sure how to explain what I'm thinking. 

 

Yeah, I get what you're saying... that's fine, you can IIRC use volumes for having those separated by drives, but not entirely sure as I haven't really had need to do that. But pretty sure.

If you split it into factions as you mentioned, the only problem with that is that the redundancy would be pretty big, so like you'd be (mirroring I assume) camera drive, but not the others... but you'd still be using mirrored redundancy, whereas you might be better off with parity (4 drives + 1 or 2 parity drives) to allow 1 or 2 drives to die without losing your total array. If you go that route, I would still personally have a backup or 2, of the important data, just in case. There's always a chance that something catastophic could happen and take out the whole array.

I think you'd be fine with a node 804 or similar to start with, and even expansion should be fine for at least a few years.... then I would personally upgrade the drives themselves to 8TB drives or something, so that it leaves you space to grow again.

[Gershy13]

16 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

Yeah, I get what you're saying... that's fine, you can IIRC use volumes for having those separated by drives, but not entirely sure as I haven't really had need to do that. But pretty sure.

If you split it into factions as you mentioned, the only problem with that is that the redundancy would be pretty big, so like you'd be (mirroring I assume) camera drive, but not the others... but you'd still be using mirrored redundancy, whereas you might be better off with parity (4 drives + 1 or 2 parity drives) to allow 1 or 2 drives to die without losing your total array. If you go that route, I would still personally have a backup or 2, of the important data, just in case. There's always a chance that something catastophic could happen and take out the whole array.

I think you'd be fine with a node 804 or similar to start with, and even expansion should be fine for at least a few years.... then I would personally upgrade the drives themselves to 8TB drives or something, so that it leaves you space to grow again.

thanks... whats the difference between mirrored and parity? Yeah i think i would probably have a separate external drive that i can plug into the computer and backup the really important things. The node 804 seems really good (10 3.5" drives), but ideally i wouldnt want to just throw away drives in the future and upgrade them, and i couldnt think of a logical way to keep them, unless i sold them or built a new array and had 2 arrays...

[paddy-stone]

6 hours ago, Gershy13 said:

thanks... whats the difference between mirrored and parity? Yeah i think i would probably have a separate external drive that i can plug into the computer and backup the really important things. The node 804 seems really good (10 3.5" drives), but ideally i wouldnt want to just throw away drives in the future and upgrade them, and i couldnt think of a logical way to keep them, unless i sold them or built a new array and had 2 arrays...

Mirrored, means all the data is mirrored, so for example you have 4x 4TB disks, only 8TB usable as the data is stored twice, this is usually so that in the event of a failure you still have the data on the other set of drives that was mirrored. You're usually better off with parity IMO, but it does take some time to rebuild the array.... and you need to start with 5/6 drives or more for raid 5/6, and at least for now, you cannot expand the array without re-doing it, in freenas at least. Don't know about other OS. and freenas is rumoured to be getting the ability to expand raid arrays soon, but don't know when that'll be. So you're limited in that extent, which is why I don't bother at the moment with parity and just make sure I have a couple of backups of my important stuff, just in case. with parity you would for instance have 5/6 drives at minimum, and so if you had 5x 2TB, in raid 5 you would lose one disks capacity because it is the parity drive, so only 8TB usable, then if one of the disks fail, that drive can rebuild the array... if you lost 2 though, then it's irrecoverable. That's why parity/redundancy is NOT considered a backup solution as in some circumstances you can still lose the array.

 

Oh, i'm not saying to throw any drives away if you want to expand, but at a certain point adding more drives seems silly, as you will be constrained more by hardware then, or buying more 2TB disks when it's cheaper per GB to get 8TB disks for instance.

[Gershy13]

1 minute ago, paddy-stone said:

Mirrored, means all the data is mirrored, so for example you have 4x 4TB disks, only 8TB usable as the data is stored twice, this is usually so that in the event of a failure you still have the data on the other set of drives that was mirrored. You're usually better off with parity IMO, but it does take some time to rebuild the array.... and you need to start with 5/6 drives or more for raid 5/6, and at least for now, you cannot expand the array without re-doing it, in freenas at least. Don't know about other OS. and freenas is rumoured to be getting the ability to expand raid arrays soon, but don't know when that'll be. So you're limited in that extent, which is why I don't bother at the moment with parity and just make sure I have a couple of backups of my important stuff, just in case. with parity you would for instance have 5/6 drives at minimum, and so if you had 5x 2TB, in raid 5 you would lose one disks capacity because it is the parity drive, so only 8TB usable, then if one of the disks fail, that drive can rebuild the array... if you lost 2 though, then it's irrecoverable. That's why parity/redundancy is NOT considered a backup solution as in some circumstances you can still lose the array.

thanks... well i wont be using freenas as there is extremely high ram requirements for that, and im going to be running on a fairly low powered/cheap system.

I was considering using either unRaid or OpenMediaVault. I was considering using an old Dell Vostro 220 (pentium e5800 dual core 3.2ghz, 4gb ram) which i had laying around, but i think that might not be powerful enough for Plex. So im considering buying a old system on ebay. Not sure what to look for, what generation, what cpu etc... 

Any suggestions?

[paddy-stone]

16 hours ago, Gershy13 said:

thanks... well i wont be using freenas as there is extremely high ram requirements for that, and im going to be running on a fairly low powered/cheap system.

I was considering using either unRaid or OpenMediaVault. I was considering using an old Dell Vostro 220 (pentium e5800 dual core 3.2ghz, 4gb ram) which i had laying around, but i think that might not be powerful enough for Plex. So im considering buying a old system on ebay. Not sure what to look for, what generation, what cpu etc... 

Any suggestions?

Actually freenas doesn't have high ram requirements, only in certain situations really... it actually uses excess ram as a cache. That "requirement" was debunked by devs of freenas, and they don't know where exactly that came from. For a home media server, you can get away with running like 1GB ram... I have ran freenas in a VM with less than that even.

 

As for what server to look for, the dell 710s are pretty good and affordable usually, there are others that could point you to newer good servers.

Personally though, you might be better off with what we discussed before, simply for power usage... or you could buy a ryzen system like this:

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD - Athlon 200GE 3.2 GHz Dual-Core Processor	$50.79 @ OutletPC
Motherboard	ASRock - B450M PRO4 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard	$83.98 @ Newegg
Memory	G.Skill - Aegis 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory	$92.99 @ Newegg Business
Case	Fractal Design - Node 804 MicroATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply	EVGA - SuperNOVA G2 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply	$59.99 @ B&H
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total (before mail-in rebates)	$307.75
	Mail-in rebates	-$20.00
	Total	$287.75
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-01-23 11:04 EST-0500

 

Looks like the node 804 might be EOL now, so might have to look around for a different chassis. The CPU has integrated GPU, and 2 cores/4 threads and can be easily upgraded if required.

Personally rather than having plex transcode streams, if I find media that has to be transcoded with plex, I use kodi instead to play the stream... so no transcoding. If you'd rather plex transcodes instead, then I'd look at either getting the 2400g, or going with a 6/8 core CPU instead and a low cost GPU, but remember that power usage will be significantly higher if transcoding.

[Gershy13]

3 hours ago, paddy-stone said:

Actually freenas doesn't have high ram requirements, only in certain situations really... it actually uses excess ram as a cache. That "requirement" was debunked by devs of freenas, and they don't know where exactly that came from. For a home media server, you can get away with running like 1GB ram... I have ran freenas in a VM with less than that even.

 

As for what server to look for, the dell 710s are pretty good and affordable usually, there are others that could point you to newer good servers.

Personally though, you might be better off with what we discussed before, simply for power usage... or you could buy a ryzen system like this:

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD - Athlon 200GE 3.2 GHz Dual-Core Processor	$50.79 @ OutletPC
Motherboard	ASRock - B450M PRO4 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard	$83.98 @ Newegg
Memory	G.Skill - Aegis 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory	$92.99 @ Newegg Business
Case	Fractal Design - Node 804 MicroATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply	EVGA - SuperNOVA G2 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply	$59.99 @ B&H
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total (before mail-in rebates)	$307.75
	Mail-in rebates	-$20.00
	Total	$287.75
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-01-23 11:04 EST-0500

 

Looks like the node 804 might be EOL now, so might have to look around for a different chassis. The CPU has integrated GPU, and 2 cores/4 threads and can be easily upgraded if required.

Personally rather than having plex transcode streams, if I find media that has to be transcoded with plex, I use kodi instead to play the stream... so no transcoding. If you'd rather plex transcodes instead, then I'd look at either getting the 2400g, or going with a 6/8 core CPU instead and a low cost GPU, but remember that power usage will be significantly higher if transcoding.

Really? On their website it says that the minimum ram required is 8gb? And it says for each TB of storage i would need 1gb of ram?

 

I think ive given up the server route for now, as i realize it would be pretty hard to get a server for cheap compared to just buying the components used myself and building in something like the node 804.  The node 804 seems to be the only case that would suit my need of drives... And as of now i can find it in stock in quite a few places, not sure how long it will stay in stock tho. Also found it on ebay for about £20 less than brand new. So it looks like ill have to keep looking and try to find a deal on that case...

 

About plex transcoding, the only time i transcode plex files is either when im streaming over the internet (very rarely) or if i am playing to my chromecast which does not like 1080p60 or 4k video (also not too often) usually im streaming 1080p30/4k24 to my Shield TV which will Direct Play basically anything thrown at it. What does kodi do that plex doesnt?

 

I was thinking of hunting on ebay and finding an older generation i5 for hopefully not too much, then id need to find a decent matx motherboard with atleast 6 sata ports, then maybe 8gb of ddr3 (i found lots of server ddr3 for cheap, but im not sure if i can use server memory in a normal desktop).

 

Or the other option would be to find an old xeon with good specs and a compatible mATX motherboard (do they even exist?) and i can easily get server memory for cheap/free. 

 

[paddy-stone]

16 hours ago, Gershy13 said:

Really? On their website it says that the minimum ram required is 8gb? And it says for each TB of storage i would need 1gb of ram?

 

I think ive given up the server route for now, as i realize it would be pretty hard to get a server for cheap compared to just buying the components used myself and building in something like the node 804.  The node 804 seems to be the only case that would suit my need of drives... And as of now i can find it in stock in quite a few places, not sure how long it will stay in stock tho. Also found it on ebay for about £20 less than brand new. So it looks like ill have to keep looking and try to find a deal on that case...

 

About plex transcoding, the only time i transcode plex files is either when im streaming over the internet (very rarely) or if i am playing to my chromecast which does not like 1080p60 or 4k video (also not too often) usually im streaming 1080p30/4k24 to my Shield TV which will Direct Play basically anything thrown at it. What does kodi do that plex doesnt?

 

I was thinking of hunting on ebay and finding an older generation i5 for hopefully not too much, then id need to find a decent matx motherboard with atleast 6 sata ports, then maybe 8gb of ddr3 (i found lots of server ddr3 for cheap, but im not sure if i can use server memory in a normal desktop).

 

Or the other option would be to find an old xeon with good specs and a compatible mATX motherboard (do they even exist?) and i can easily get server memory for cheap/free. 

 

I have a shield TV too, and it has problems with plex playing certain sound codecs mostly, although sometimes it also transcodes for subs. Kodi just has a better way of getting around it, never had a problem with kodi playing stuff... and on the same device.

 

Yes, ram requirement isn't real for freenaas, you can easily use 8GB, I have run my 16TB array with 8GB ram easily... if you check the use, it'll show that it's using all 8GB, but as I said before it uses whatever excess ram it has to cache anyway AFAIK. Try it in a VM, it'll work easily with 2GB or less even.

 

Yes, I love the node 804, you cans till buy them in the UK.. I thought you lived in the US, so that's why I said it may be EOL, as I swapped PCPP over to US and node 804 wouldn't come up as a price at all. I wouldn't pay for older hardware TBH, just get a cheap-ish Ryzen board b450 as in the PCPP list I posted earlier, and that APU like the Athlon 200GE/Ryzen 2200G/2400G, that should be enough for transcoding too I would think. And just get cheaper memory, it has come down considerably lately.

[Gershy13]

1 hour ago, paddy-stone said:

I have a shield TV too, and it has problems with plex playing certain sound codecs mostly, although sometimes it also transcodes for subs. Kodi just has a better way of getting around it, never had a problem with kodi playing stuff... and on the same device.

 

Yes, ram requirement isn't real for freenaas, you can easily use 8GB, I have run my 16TB array with 8GB ram easily... if you check the use, it'll show that it's using all 8GB, but as I said before it uses whatever excess ram it has to cache anyway AFAIK. Try it in a VM, it'll work easily with 2GB or less even.

 

Yes, I love the node 804, you cans till buy them in the UK.. I thought you lived in the US, so that's why I said it may be EOL, as I swapped PCPP over to US and node 804 wouldn't come up as a price at all. I wouldn't pay for older hardware TBH, just get a cheap-ish Ryzen board b450 as in the PCPP list I posted earlier, and that APU like the Athlon 200GE/Ryzen 2200G/2400G, that should be enough for transcoding too I would think. And just get cheaper memory, it has come down considerably lately.

Huh, thats weird, my shield doesnt have any issues playing anything i throw at it... Maybe because i have a Yamaha AVR that accepts most surround formats over hdmi?

 

Ahh right okay, didnt know that, so ill have to add freenas to my list of considerations... its now freenas vs unraid vs openmediavault.

 

Yeah im in the UK lol, the node 804 is what i have to get i think... 

I did find some deals on a ivy bridge i5 3470 for around £40? I assumed that was a pretty decent deal even compared to what AMD can offer? Thats why i was thinking of going used. Also DDR4 is much more expensive than ddr3 right now isnt it?

[paddy-stone]

25 minutes ago, Gershy13 said:

Huh, thats weird, my shield doesnt have any issues playing anything i throw at it... Maybe because i have a Yamaha AVR that accepts most surround formats over hdmi?

 

Ahh right okay, didnt know that, so ill have to add freenas to my list of considerations... its now freenas vs unraid vs openmediavault.

 

Yeah im in the UK lol, the node 804 is what i have to get i think... 

I did find some deals on a ivy bridge i5 3470 for around £40? I assumed that was a pretty decent deal even compared to what AMD can offer? Thats why i was thinking of going used. Also DDR4 is much more expensive than ddr3 right now isnt it?

Yeah, that'll be it.. I just use regular 2.0 sound on a soundbar... it's easy enough to fix, strip the audio out of the streams, and take it down to 2.0 and then remux it, but that's not worth the effort when you can just use kodi instead. I play MOSt things ok through plex, just that odd film or 2 that gets transcoded or won't play (10 bit HDR for example), but they play fine in kodi.

 

Yep 804 is perfect for a NAS system IMO, I won't need another NAS chassis for a long time, and even then unless I want an ATX mobo I should be fine to just upgrade the drives when it gets full... and then move those drives over to my backup NAS, or my other backup drives. Right now I have 16TB in my NAS (actually it's my PC right now as I consolidated everything instead of running my PC + NAS), and 9TB in my backup NAS (freenas). If you want a cheap NAS BTW, look out for deals on the HP proliant g8 or 10, for the g8 microserver  they regularly have cashback offers of like £50-80, so the NAS unit with a celeron dual core + 4GB ram for around £160, and then send a cashback form to HP and get upto £80 back.. ,ime was £55 cash back IIRC, so the NAS unit cost me approx £100 and then add drives and another 4GB ECC ram.

 

I personally wouldn't buy an ivy bridge CPU right now, the AMD APUs are IMO a better buy, mainly for the upgrade path with AM4 mobos, you can sling in upto 16 cores (if the rumours of 16 core CPU ryzen 2 is real), and even a 6 core 12 thread CPU won't break the bank if you need to upgrade in the future... they're approx £120-150 right now IIRC. I personally won't buy into a dead platform, unless I know for sure I will not want to upgrade down the line. TBH I would buy the 2400g for around £140-ish, you definitely shouldn't need to upgrade that any time soon, or wait for the ryzen 2 APUs to come out, they should have a much better core count and clock speed for around the same price.

£40 is OK for a CPU, BUT how much will the mobo and ram cost you also? if it works out to about half the price of the build I linked to, including PSU etc, then it might be worth it, but I personally always think to the future and what my needs might be.

 

[Gershy13]

1 hour ago, paddy-stone said:

Yeah, that'll be it.. I just use regular 2.0 sound on a soundbar... it's easy enough to fix, strip the audio out of the streams, and take it down to 2.0 and then remux it, but that's not worth the effort when you can just use kodi instead. I play MOSt things ok through plex, just that odd film or 2 that gets transcoded or won't play (10 bit HDR for example), but they play fine in kodi.

 

Yep 804 is perfect for a NAS system IMO, I won't need another NAS chassis for a long time, and even then unless I want an ATX mobo I should be fine to just upgrade the drives when it gets full... and then move those drives over to my backup NAS, or my other backup drives. Right now I have 16TB in my NAS (actually it's my PC right now as I consolidated everything instead of running my PC + NAS), and 9TB in my backup NAS (freenas). If you want a cheap NAS BTW, look out for deals on the HP proliant g8 or 10, for the g8 microserver  they regularly have cashback offers of like £50-80, so the NAS unit with a celeron dual core + 4GB ram for around £160, and then send a cashback form to HP and get upto £80 back.. ,ime was £55 cash back IIRC, so the NAS unit cost me approx £100 and then add drives and another 4GB ECC ram.

 

I personally wouldn't buy an ivy bridge CPU right now, the AMD APUs are IMO a better buy, mainly for the upgrade path with AM4 mobos, you can sling in upto 16 cores (if the rumours of 16 core CPU ryzen 2 is real), and even a 6 core 12 thread CPU won't break the bank if you need to upgrade in the future... they're approx £120-150 right now IIRC. I personally won't buy into a dead platform, unless I know for sure I will not want to upgrade down the line. TBH I would buy the 2400g for around £140-ish, you definitely shouldn't need to upgrade that any time soon, or wait for the ryzen 2 APUs to come out, they should have a much better core count and clock speed for around the same price.

£40 is OK for a CPU, BUT how much will the mobo and ram cost you also? if it works out to about half the price of the build I linked to, including PSU etc, then it might be worth it, but I personally always think to the future and what my needs might be.

 

Yeah that probably explains it. I havent had any issues even with 4k 10 bit HDR they play directly!

 

Curious about this hp server, where exactly did you get it for £160? Everywhere i can only find it for £300+ and its an amd dual core.

 

The reason i was considering going old school is just because i dont think id ever need more power than an i5 in a nas, even with plex...  Ive found motherboards for around £40 too, and 8gb ram for £30 (used ddr3). 

 

Also another thing, DDR4 is still really expensive here isnt it? Thats one of the main reasons i havent upgraded my gaming system. 

 

Another option is to just wait until i upgrade my gaming system and use the parts out of that (4670k 16gb ddr3 z87). But i feel like i could get more money out of it if i sold it and bought a different system for a nas... Especially as the new intel processors and ddr4 still are fairly expensive.

[paddy-stone]

5 hours ago, Gershy13 said:

Yeah that probably explains it. I havent had any issues even with 4k 10 bit HDR they play directly!

 

Curious about this hp server, where exactly did you get it for £160? Everywhere i can only find it for £300+ and its an amd dual core.

 

The reason i was considering going old school is just because i dont think id ever need more power than an i5 in a nas, even with plex...  Ive found motherboards for around £40 too, and 8gb ram for £30 (used ddr3). 

 

Also another thing, DDR4 is still really expensive here isnt it? Thats one of the main reasons i havent upgraded my gaming system. 

 

Another option is to just wait until i upgrade my gaming system and use the parts out of that (4670k 16gb ddr3 z87). But i feel like i could get more money out of it if i sold it and bought a different system for a nas... Especially as the new intel processors and ddr4 still are fairly expensive.

They did have offers coming up occasionally for it, may be discontinued now maybe, don't know for sure... I got mine around 2-3 years back IIRC, from ebuyer. Still a great little server that. If I see any deals come up for the micro server I'll tag/pm you and let you know, haven't seen any for a while now though.

If the price is right, get it, as long as you're happy with the price that's the main thing. Is it just yourself that's gonna be streaming from the NAS? if so it might be worth considering doing as I did in the end and just add an LSI 9211-8i card that I said about before, to your gaming rig and just use plex from there. Simple 1 click exit of plex if you want to game and don't want anything making you lag.

 

I'm gonna be re-doing my main server again sometime in the next 2-6 months, as soon as Ryzen 2 comes out most likely... yeah it might be a wait, lol. But soon as those CPUs come out I'll be using my main system Ryzen 1700 etc as my server build most likely, and having a PURE system for my other PC duties again. I may swap out the CPU, depends on whether I end up needing all those cores or not, haven't decided yet whether I'll run VMs on the server, the desktop, or both. I'll have to see.