Plex Server Project

[Konrath]

Hi there,

 

I am setting up a fun little project.  My partner and I own literally 1,000 movies and I had this idea of building a plex server.  These are the parts I've come up with...What are your thoughts?

 

Chassis: Rosewill 4U (RSV-L4412)

Motherboard: EVGA Z170 FTW (140-SS-E177-KR)

CPU: i7 7700K or i7 6700K (BX80677I77700K, BX80662I76700K)

CPU Cooler: Noctua L-Type or a liquid cooler (NH-L9x65)

PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA 550 G2 80+ Gold 550W (220-62-0550-Y1)

SSD: Samsung 840 Pro 256GB (MZ-7PD256)

HDD: WD Red 4TB x4 (WD40EFRX)

RAID: Adaptect 6805E (2270900-R)

RAM: Ballistix Elite 8GB DDR4 3000 (BLE2K4G4D30AEEA)

Blu Ray drives: Pioneer Slim External (BDR-XD05B)

 

Chassis

Pros: 12 hot-swap bays, 4U provides space for 120mm intake fans, vertical space for more CPU cooling options.

Cons: Hot-swap bays don't provide hard drive status via LED lights, AIO requires 6 molex for power.

Do you know of a better chassis with 8-12 hot-swap bays that also have room for 120mm intake fans as well as HDD status via LED lights?  What would you recommend?

 

Motherboard

Pros: Price drop saved me $45, supports 7th gen and 6th gen Intel processors, on board video (instead of purchasing a server MB and then needing to buy a GPU)

Cons: No USB 2.0 header (I will purchase a USB 2.0 to USB 3.0 header so I can use the chassis front two USB 2.0 ports)

I don't think a server MB and ECC RAM are needed for this simple project.

 

CPU

Pros: Overclocking, can support multiple 1080p streams at the same time. (Overclock will be minimal and just for fun.  I was able to push my i5 3570K to 4.2Ghz @1.25v max temp 59c) 

Cons: Cost (Pretty expensive but my partner wants to buy it for my birthday)

 

CPU Cooler

Liquid cooler: This cooler will allow me to keep temperatures lower than an air cooler, however I'm not sure I would be able to fit a 120mm radiator on one of the intake fans.

Air cooler: Lower cost than liquid cooler and guaranteed to fit in the chassis. 

Can I fit a 120mm liquid cooler in this?  Idk, but I hope so!  If not I can easily swap to the air cooler.

 

PSU

Just personal preference for brand, 550w should be plenty for a Plex server.

 

SSD

I'll use my SSD that I pulled from my desktop to use for the OS.

 

HDD

Should work just fine for storing my movie files.

 

RAID

The RAID card I selected will be used for RAID 10, however I'm still unsure if this would be the right way to go.  I plan on expanding and using all 12 HDD slots.  Maybe a RAID 5 or 6 card would be better?

 

RAM

Not really caring which RAM goes in this system so I just picked one.  Do I really need to go about and get a server MB and ECC ram?  I don't think so...

 

Blu Ray Drives

I currently use an internal blu ray drive in my desktop to rip my movies.  Two external blu ray drives should be perfect for ripping two movies at the same time.

 

I think this project is going to be fun and challenging.  Any comments or suggestions will be greatly appreciated!

[EmoChipmonk]

Raid 5 Or 6 Would prob be better as 1 or 2 drive redundancy is enough assuming your doing all new drives. I agree with ram as you would also need a processer that could handle ECC as well which would not have much worth in a casual use project like this. With all the drives I would possable get a 600 or slightly higher if you plan on expanding it to all 12 bays. 

 

[EmoChipmonk]

Im curious on how this goes so please keep us up to date.

[Eniqmatic]

Seems way overkill for NAS duties, assuming that is all you are going to use it for. Which OS are you going to use?

[Konrath]

4 minutes ago, Eniqmatic said:

Seems way overkill for NAS duties, assuming that is all you are going to use it for. Which OS are you going to use?

The purpose of this project is to build a plex server that can store all my movies, host my plex service, rip movies, and transcode the movie files.  I plan on using Ubuntu as it supports Plex Media Server, MakeMKV (movie rip), and HandBrake (transcoding).

[Eniqmatic]

2 minutes ago, Konrath said:

The purpose of this project is to build a plex server that can store all my movies, host my plex service, rip movies, and transcode the movie files.  I plan on using Ubuntu as it supports Plex Media Server, MakeMKV (movie rip), and HandBrake (transcoding).

Why do you want to run plex but also transcode separately from it? It still seems way overkill, unless you have a high number of clients transcoding at the same time. But hey, if you have the money then I suppose why not.

[Konrath]

5 minutes ago, Eniqmatic said:

Why do you want to run plex but also transcode separately from it? It still seems way overkill, unless you have a high number of clients transcoding at the same time. But hey, if you have the money then I suppose why not.

Ripping blu-rays from MakeMKV come out to ~25-40GB each.  I use handbrake to compact them to ~5-10GB files.  Plex server will be taking care of transcoding when a movie is being streamed.

[Dark]

Seems like a costly/heavy compute build just for a PMS box.

 

How many concurrent streams (don't care about the type) do you anticipate at any given time?

 

I serve about 32 people on a single system that sees upwards of 20 transcodes a day (sometimes 6-8 at once) and this is on a mesely 4670k and a single 3.5" 7.2k drive (ssd os).

 

Not sure I'd want to rip/encode movies on the same box, it would likely impact performance of PMS if someone is streaming while another task is encoding.  Shouldn't have a hard time carving up the processes accordingly but it's just not something I'd do.

 

Storage is a big key here.  While I only have a single 3.5 on the guest PMS, my primary PMS is an 8-bay QNAP that keeps all of my media/files and I simply qsync that media to the guest PMS; I only need to send new media to a single location.

 

Also, if you haven't already looked in to it, check out PlexPy.

[Dark]

7 hours ago, Konrath said:

RAID

The RAID card I selected will be used for RAID 10, however I'm still unsure if this would be the right way to go.  I plan on expanding and using all 12 HDD slots.  Maybe a RAID 5 or 6 card would be better?

 

RAM

Not really caring which RAM goes in this system so I just picked one.  Do I really need to go about and get a server MB and ECC ram?  I don't think so...

 

I would not consider RAID10, there's no benefit over RAID5 or 6, especially for streaming.  Also, a large drive count RAID10 array is more volatile and you give up 50% capacity.

 

If you wanted to use ECC memory then you would need-- a cpu and motherboard that support ECC.

[Mikensan]

If you're going to be using handbrake you might as well put it in a format that plex won't have to transcode until it has to change resolutions (playing a 1080 movie in 720 resolution).

 

If you want that processor there's no reason not to get it, but I think it's overkill as well. You could certainly take the extra cash and roll it into something else.The time you save during the ripping will certainly add up over doing 1,000 movies. (Impressive by the way, my whole "collection" is only about 800).

 

Raid 10 is a solid choice if you need IOPS / high performance, but given what you will be doing with it I don't think is needed. I'd shoot for Raid 5 or 6 and have an external hard drive for backups. Since you're going linux, I wouldn't buy a raid card and just use MDADM and maybe consider btrfs.

 

With linux still in mind, also look at setting up containers/docker to stick things like Plex in. Very cool stuff.

 

I have that case, and it does have activity lights.. However in a standard rack there's no space for sliding rails, something that really sucks. The case is just too wide. I ended up putting it on a sliding shelf.

 

You don't really need water cooling for a NAS, and in a rackmount case you don't have anywhere to put the radiator.

 

 

 

 

[ChuckMaurice]

Way overkill for a Plex server : I own one myself, shared with like 40 people, our i3 4310 is sufficient even with weird formats that needs transcoding. We tried it with simultaneus transcoding and it (barely) fails at 8 streams at once, an usecase that didn't happened to us already.
Some remarks though :

- Linux (especially Debian, Ubuntu) is very good with Plex servers.

- We use the same WD Red drives, they are awesomely resistant. RAID card is a plus, but very expensive compared to MDADM/native RAID. We went MDADM RAID5 with 4x4 TB and 2 redundancy drives, 6 drives total.

- SSD for the system is dope

- I'd say 16 GB RAM is useful, but not that much. Go 2x8 to be ready to double it if needed.

- Watercooling is overkill unless the server is in a living room and you really need silence. You better go for a big CPU cooler as you'll have a lot of room in the case.

- Also consider x265 encoding, Plex is sometimes quirky with it (bug when changing subtitles...) but it depends on the clients.

[Phate.exe]

My plex box is capable of 2-3 1080p transcodes.

 

it has an i3-3220, has a stock intel cooler on it, is super quiet, uses very little power, and just lives in a corner being ignored until something goes wrong.

 

An i7-*700k is hilarious overkill, and the monster single-threaded performance really won't help things that much.  You need/want MOAR COARS, so if you're really dedicated to making something overkill I'd look at lower-clocked xeons with more threads.

 

I can absolutely see the fun aspect of building a cool server, but for 95% of plex users, a secondhand tower server is just what the doctor ordered.

[Ramaddil]

I agree with most of the posters here.  I run windows 10 on my Server which has a Plex Server, Crash Plan, Video Security System, FTP and I do trans coding on it as well.  It is a AMD FX 8120 which I plan on upgrading to Zen when it comes out for better trans-coding and being able to handle more tasks.. I understand where you are coming from having a all in one system.  If It were just a plex server running 24/7 with no other tasks then I agree with the rest of those saying that this is WAY overkill for a Plex server.. 

 

My Suggestions along with the other posters would be to not go with liquid cooling, its not worth it and frankly crazy on a 24/7 system.  Get a Noctua or other decent brand cooler that can keep that processor cool and low noise.  I thought about a AIO water cooler then thought what if the pump goes out or a line busts etc.  Even with a decent HS/Fan if both fans die the processor wont overheat immediately.  If your planning on running more than just Plex 16Gb would be recommended in my opinion, but you can start with 8gb. As others stated Raid 5 or 6 is preferable to Raid 10 with that few amount of drives.  You also need to think about backup, raid is not a backup even with Raid 6.  Online Storage such as crashplan is a good way to backup movies in case of a raid failure.  I currently have a 3 prong backup, Online, USB drives, and backup server with a identical copy of my data.  You should look into this for sure.  

 

As for Raid Cards if you want to go that route and not use Freenas, look on ebay for used raid cards.  Generally speaking they last for a long time and you can get one on the cheap.  

 

My current setup: Titan

 

[Konrath]

This won't be solely a PMS box...I will be ripping and transcoding the thousands of movies I own so it needs to be a workhorse.  Of course I will be limiting the transcoding so that PMS functionality remains.  I'm trying to look at a RAID 5 setup instead of RAID 10 but I have not been successful in finding a decent RAID controller for RAID 5 and can handle 8 or 12 drives.  Backup is already taken care of

[MrStraightface]

I run Plex on a Intel core 2 quad with Ubuntu server with zero issues.

 

You can rip discs on another PC and drop them in the server via a share.

 

You don't need 3/4 of that stuff IMO 

[Dark]

On 1/15/2017 at 0:13 AM, Konrath said:

This won't be solely a PMS box...I will be ripping and transcoding the thousands of movies I own so it needs to be a workhorse.  Of course I will be limiting the transcoding so that PMS functionality remains.  I'm trying to look at a RAID 5 setup instead of RAID 10 but I have not been successful in finding a decent RAID controller for RAID 5 and can handle 8 or 12 drives.  Backup is already taken care of

With the requirement for heavy threaded applications along with a suitable RAID capability, have you considered an actual server?

 

To clarify, for the same budget (maybe even less) you could pick up a used server with more threads and better storage capabilities that would better suit your requirements.

[Sprawlie]

On 15/01/2017 at 0:13 AM, Konrath said:

This won't be solely a PMS box...I will be ripping and transcoding the thousands of movies I own so it needs to be a workhorse.  Of course I will be limiting the transcoding so that PMS functionality remains.  I'm trying to look at a RAID 5 setup instead of RAID 10 but I have not been successful in finding a decent RAID controller for RAID 5 and can handle 8 or 12 drives.  Backup is already taken care of

Still one heck of a setup!

 

I'm running a plex media server on an i5-4570 and it handles 4-5 1080p streams with little problem. (2 local LAN and 2 WAN)

 

The bigest issue I have with Plex is that it doesn't support GPU encode. Which means plex is really not ideal for mass conversions of media. It's fine for on the fly transcoding, and scheduled transcodes of specific content, but if you're looking to absolutely beat this box up and make it hurt, you're going to likely want to run another conversion program that can be assisted by GPU (and have a decent GPU).

 

[alex75871]

xeon cpu

supermicro mb

ecc ram

 

freenas os

raidz1 or z2

plex plugin

 

= win

[Eniqmatic]

6 hours ago, alex75871 said:

xeon cpu

supermicro mb

ecc ram

 

freenas os

raidz1 or z2

plex plugin

 

= win

You didn't really read the brief did you? One of the main tasks is to use handbrake and another application in order to convert his existing library, something that isn't going to really be viable on the current version of FreeNAS.

[Dybre]

I have a plex server on a Sinology DS1815+ with an intel adam c2538 and 16 gigs of ram, it runs plex great and have had 5 transcodes at the same time with no issuse all very good on power and i like there hybrid raid, yes the ds1815+ is not cheap but the DS216+II is very good for stand alone plex, cheap and not the power draw a full pc is.

[Eniqmatic]

17 hours ago, Dybre said:

I have a plex server on a Sinology DS1815+ with an intel adam c2538 and 16 gigs of ram, it runs plex great and have had 5 transcodes at the same time with no issuse all very good on power and i like there hybrid raid, yes the ds1815+ is not cheap but the DS216+II is very good for stand alone plex, cheap and not the power draw a full pc is.

I could be wrong, but I would be very doubtful you are doing 5 transcodes simultaneously on that processor. Streaming yes, not transcoding. Or if you are, are they like 360p transcodes?

[Dybre]

On 1/18/2017 at 4:30 AM, Eniqmatic said:

I could be wrong, but I would be very doubtful you are doing 5 transcodes simultaneously on that processor. Streaming yes, not transcoding. Or if you are, are they like 360p transcodes?

I have seen 5 topsbut not all the time, my kids use it a ton and all kids shows I rip are in 480p to 720p 

[Eniqmatic]

23 minutes ago, Dybre said:

I have seen 5 topsbut not all the time, my kids use it a ton and all kids shows I rip are in 480p to 720p 

But actual transcoding and not just streaming?

[alex75871]

On 1/18/2017 at 10:30 PM, Eniqmatic said:

I could be wrong, but I would be very doubtful you are doing 5 transcodes simultaneously on that processor. Streaming yes, not transcoding. Or if you are, are they like 360p transcodes?

You can't convert on another PC? Why does the server have to do that? It's just a one off conversion?

[Dark]

1 hour ago, alex75871 said:

You can't convert on another PC? Why does the server have to do that? It's just a one off conversion?

Why double the hardware if it can be completed on a single host?