Plex Server Guidance

[DarkRezo]

Been looking at building a plex server so I can off load it from the NAS drive (Seagate Black Armor 4 bay) which does alright for home use, not so well for streaming remotely. Was out walking last fall and came across a garage sale and found an old server from a bar that closed for $5. Life got turned upside down and I am just getting back to the project. Managed to use MRI to get around the OS password and install CPUID. I think I got a nice little score with this thing.

 

Specs:

CPU: Intel Xeon X3220 @2.40Ghz

Mainboard: Intel Corp S3210SH

RAM: 4x Kingston 2gb DDR2 PC2-6400

8704ELP LSI Logic Raid 4-Port 3Gb/s SAS PCI Express Controller
 

I know I am going to transplant the system out of the mid tower case and into a rack mount case that will allow storage expansion (in the end 12 4tb drives). Raid cards are not something I am familiar with. Should I look at a new SAS card (if so thoughts on brand) that has 2 ports vs this ones single port or should I try and hunt down another one of these cards?  I think I'm going with Unraid for the OS. Not sure if I can toss in a Quadro p700 or p1000 for transcoding.

 

Thoughts? Am I barking up the wrong tree with this hardware?

 

Any guidance or advise would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks 

[AbsoluteFool]

1 minute ago, DarkRezo said:

Been looking at building a plex server so I can off load it from the NAS drive (Seagate Black Armor 4 bay) which does alright for home use, not so well for streaming remotely. Was out walking last fall and came across a garage sale and found an old server from a bar that closed for $5. Life got turned upside down and I am just getting back to the project. Managed to use MRI to get around the OS password and install CPUID. I think I got a nice little score with this thing.

 

Specs:

CPU: Intel Xeon X3220 @2.40Ghz

Mainboard: Intel Corp S3210SH

RAM: 4x Kingston 2gb DDR2 PC2-6400

8704ELP LSI Logic Raid 4-Port 3Gb/s SAS PCI Express Controller
 

I know I am going to transplant the system out of the mid tower case and into a rack mount case that will allow storage expansion (in the end 12 4tb drives). Raid cards are not something I am familiar with. Should I look at a new SAS card (if so thoughts on brand) that has 2 ports vs this ones single port or should I try and hunt down another one of these cards?  I think I'm going with Unraid for the OS. Not sure if I can toss in a Quadro p700 or p1000 for transcoding.

 

Thoughts? Am I barking up the wrong tree with this hardware?

 

Any guidance or advise would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks 

Those CPUs are power hungry and very outdated. if you plan on transcoding they are also very slow.. Also not a very good option for Plex if you want to have serval transcoded streams at once.

[Electronics Wizardy]

For raid card, you want a hba for unraid.

 

That current card probably has a 2TiB limit in terms of drive capacity, so your gonna need a upgrade. The amount of connectors needed depends on the backplane.

 

How much transcoding do you need to do? THat cpu should handle a stream or two, and Id get a faster cpu if you need more, as that is basically a core 2 quad.

 

For drives, why are you getting 4tb drives? There so small, Id get the 8,10, or 12tb external drives, much better value, much more space to upgrade later on, lower power usage.

[DarkRezo]

16 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

How much transcoding do you need to do? THat cpu should handle a stream or two, and Id get a faster cpu if you need more, as that is basically a core 2 quad.

 

For drives, why are you getting 4tb drives? There so small, Id get the 8,10, or 12tb external drives, much better value, much more space to upgrade later on, lower power usage.

Really only need the one stream. Used to needing same size drives for not wasting larger drives when your smallest is 4tb. That wont matter with Unraid will it?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, DarkRezo said:

Really only need the one stream. Used to needing same size drives for not wasting larger drives when your smallest is 4tb. That wont matter with Unraid will it?

Unraid is good for mixing drive capacities. So you can easily just add a bigger drive,

 

with one stream, no extra gpu should be needed.

[Salacious B Crum]

I don't know but that cpu has TDP of 105 watts which you will likely be running at during any playback and the passmark score is lower than the rated single stream that plex recommends, will it work probably will the experience be a good one unlikely. I built my unRAID server from an I7 6700 it is currently at 28TB and the processor still has half a tank to go this is with plex, sonarr, radarr, lidarr, jacket and qbittorrent  all running in the background