Unraid/NAS Server Build Suggestions

[impalaguy1230]

I currently have a Supermicro SuperServer 6027AX-TRF-HFT (link) with dual E5-2680v2's running my Unraid setup.  It's primary duty is Emby (along with all of the other "media management software") which my family/close friends log into on a normal basis.  So on a semi normal basis I'm running 2-4 transcoded streams.  I have zero performance issues with the current setup.  My reason to upgrade is more for a power and efficiency standpoint.  I usually idle between 5-10% CPU load which according to my UPS is 200 watts of power being used along with the associated heat being pumped into my storage closet were my rack lives.  Once I get 2-4 people on that figure is closer to 350-450 depending on what is being transcoded.

 

So I've been thinking of using my existing case and upgrading the board/cpu with something new.  Here's what I've picked so far on PCPartPicker:

 

PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/p4m8Dx

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor  ($154.99 @ Amazon) 
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-L9x65 33.84 CFM CPU Cooler  ($49.95 @ Amazon) 
Motherboard: Asus PRIME B550-PLUS ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($149.99 @ B&H) 
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory  ($119.99 @ Amazon) 
Storage: Samsung 970 Evo 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  ($89.95 @ Amazon) 
Case Fan: Noctua NF-A8 PWM 32.66 CFM 80 mm Fan  ($15.49 @ Amazon) 
Case Fan: Noctua NF-A8 PWM 32.66 CFM 80 mm Fan  ($15.49 @ Amazon) 
Case Fan: Noctua NF-A8 PWM 32.66 CFM 80 mm Fan  ($15.49 @ Amazon) 
Case Fan: Noctua NF-A8 PWM 32.66 CFM 80 mm Fan  ($15.49 @ Amazon) 
Custom: LSI 9201-8i (Purchased)
Total: $626.83
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-07-27 17:25 EDT-0400

 

My plans were to only reuse the case, redundant PSU's, and SATA backplane.  I would be replacing the existing server fans that scream bloody murder with the Noctua's.  Does anyone else have a similar spec'ed setup?  I'm just curious what I could expect in real world power consumption compared to what I'm using now.  I figure under full tilt above part list with 10 HD's would still consume 300ish watts (PCPP is showing 204), however I would hope I could idle somewhere south of 100 especially when unraid spins down unused drives.

 

Finally last question has to do with the Supermicro case itself.  I see the SATA backplane has 10 SATA cables running to the MB along with 3 of serial connections.  Would I be able to use the supermicro backplane without these serial connections?  I'm hoping the are just there for hard drive monitoring or something of that nature?  They are listed in the manual as:

 

SCU-SGPIO 1 Serial-Link General_Purpose IO -Header for S-SATA Connections 0~3

T-SGPIO 1/2 Serial-Link General_Purpose IO Headers for I-SATA Connections 0~2, 3~5

[Electronics Wizardy]

your gonna want a gpu for setup, and many boards need it to post.

 

15 minutes ago, impalaguy1230 said:

My plans were to only reuse the case, redundant PSU's, and SATA backplane.  I would be replacing the existing server fans that scream bloody murder with the Noctua's.  Does anyone else have a similar spec'ed setup?  I'm just curious what I could expect in real world power consumption compared to what I'm using now.

I tried swapping from dual e5 2680 v2s to ryzen. Got about 10

 

0w under normal use with a few drives attached with a 1700. returned it due to some issues, but otherwise great plactorm

 

16 minutes ago, impalaguy1230 said:

Would I be able to use the supermicro backplane without these serial connections?  I'm hoping the are just there for hard drive monitoring or something of that nature?  They are listed in the manual as:

 

SCU-SGPIO 1 Serial-Link General_Purpose IO -Header for S-SATA Connections 0~3

T-SGPIO 1/2 Serial-Link General_Purpose IO Headers for I-SATA Connections 0~2, 3~5

yup, just use power and sas and your good, don't need these to use it

 

16 minutes ago, impalaguy1230 said:

Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory  ($119.99 @ Amazon) 

id go ecc here, might as well

 

17 minutes ago, impalaguy1230 said:

CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-L9x65 33.84 CFM CPU Cooler  ($49.95 @ Amazon) 

Stock cooler should work fine, and cool about the same, those low profile coolers aren't that great at cooling.

[impalaguy1230]

Thanks for reminding me about the GPU. Since I’m working in a 2u chassis looks like I’m limited to the gtx 1650 low profile cards. I’d have to look again, but I don’t think the rear panel has a way to mount a riser card for a full height card?  Plus I’ll have the LSI controller in a PCI slot as well. 
 

For the time being this machine will pull NAS and Emby duties, however I am also putting together a new Ryzen desktop so I will have my i7-4770k/mobo for a dedicated Emby server if needed. I’d have the room for a 1650ti or used p2000 in the spare istarusa rackmount case I have laying around to take care of my transcoding/Emby duties that way.  However I’m thinking I might give it a shot with just the igpu on the 4770k first. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

12 hours ago, impalaguy1230 said:

Thanks for reminding me about the GPU. Since I’m working in a 2u chassis looks like I’m limited to the gtx 1650 low profile cards. I’d have to look again, but I don’t think the rear panel has a way to mount a riser card for a full height card?  Plus I’ll have the LSI controller in a PCI slot as well. 
 

For the time being this machine will pull NAS and Emby duties, however I am also putting together a new Ryzen desktop so I will have my i7-4770k/mobo for a dedicated Emby server if needed. I’d have the room for a 1650ti or used p2000 in the spare istarusa rackmount case I have laying around to take care of my transcoding/Emby duties that way.  However I’m thinking I might give it a shot with just the igpu on the 4770k first. 

Id just get a gt 710 unless you need a gpu for something. I don't think you will need more compe power for transcoding, pu should be fine for these uses.

 

If you want to save money, just make the 4770k the server, and get yourself a new desktop

[Dravinian]

6 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id just get a gt 710 unless you need a gpu for something. I don't think you will need more compe power for transcoding, pu should be fine for these uses.

 

If you want to save money, just make the 4770k the server, and get yourself a new desktop

The 4770k isn't going to handle 4 transcodes at once very well, if at all, and there are issues with transcoding certain qualities on that old of a CPU as the Intel sync tech on that age CPU is probably good for 1080p to 720p transcodes at best.

 

I say that, maybe emby is better at handling this than Plex, but my i7 4790k was using about 40% for a transcode so was limited to 2 at best.

[impalaguy1230]

7 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id just get a gt 710 unless you need a gpu for something. I don't think you will need more compe power for transcoding, pu should be fine for these uses.

 

If you want to save money, just make the 4770k the server, and get yourself a new desktop

I might be complicating things, but my thoughts were to have two seperate systems in my rack.  The build here would be pulling only NAS/downloading duties and a seperate box that only runs Emby.  That way I would be able more taylor the hardware to what I'm trying to do on that server.  If I put a GPU in the NAS I would most likely start to incorporate try to incorporate an H.265 conversion before the file is sent to my library to save on disk space, as well as start the process of converting what I already have stored on it to free up some space. 

 

There has been a couple of situations where someone has requested a series to be downloaded.  With my internet speeds (gig fiber) they get downloaded faster than Emby can process them or unraid can move/unpack them (not really sure where the bottleneck is).  Once all of them start hitting the Emby library that fast one after the other, and 2-4 people are logged in watching I have some pretty annoying buffering issues, especially on the transcoded streams.  At the moment I've just throttled my downloader.  My guess is that I have a combination of disk I/O and CPU, especially since unraid is always going to be a little slow on write speeds.

 

I've been doing some reading and it does look like the 4770k is not really the best thing for transcoding compared to the newer Intel stuff.  However my Z97 mobo and 4770k on the used market would pretty much buy a new 10th gen i3/mobo combo.

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 hours ago, impalaguy1230 said:

I might be complicating things, but my thoughts were to have two seperate systems in my rack.  The build here would be pulling only NAS/downloading duties and a seperate box that only runs Emby.  That way I would be able more taylor the hardware to what I'm trying to do on that server.  If I put a GPU in the NAS I would most likely start to incorporate try to incorporate an H.265 conversion before the file is sent to my library to save on disk space, as well as start the process of converting what I already have stored on it to free up some space. 

 

There has been a couple of situations where someone has requested a series to be downloaded.  With my internet speeds (gig fiber) they get downloaded faster than Emby can process them or unraid can move/unpack them (not really sure where the bottleneck is).  Once all of them start hitting the Emby library that fast one after the other, and 2-4 people are logged in watching I have some pretty annoying buffering issues, especially on the transcoded streams.  At the moment I've just throttled my downloader.  My guess is that I have a combination of disk I/O and CPU, especially since unraid is always going to be a little slow on write speeds.

 

I've been doing some reading and it does look like the 4770k is not really the best thing for transcoding compared to the newer Intel stuff.  However my Z97 mobo and 4770k on the used market would pretty much buy a new 10th gen i3/mobo combo.

I think a single faster system would be a much better bet here. Just run vms for different tasks .2 systems really ups the power usage aswell.

 

What does the current usage look like? What does something like atop look like on the current system?

 

3 hours ago, Dravinian said:

The 4770k isn't going to handle 4 transcodes at once very well, if at all, and there are issues with transcoding certain qualities on that old of a CPU as the Intel sync tech on that age CPU is probably good for 1080p to 720p transcodes at best.

 

I say that, maybe emby is better at handling this than Plex, but my i7 4790k was using about 40% for a transcode so was limited to 2 at best.

quicksync and the cpu can probably do 2 transcodes, but depends on the media, always can add a gpu later.

[Dravinian]

25 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

I think a single faster system would be a much better bet here. Just run vms for different tasks .2 systems really ups the power usage aswell.

 

What does the current usage look like? What does something like atop look like on the current system?

 

quicksync and the cpu can probably do 2 transcodes, but depends on the media, always can add a gpu later.

That is what I was saying, Quick Sync on that old a CPU can't do, for instance, 4k....at all, it isn't that it does it badly, it just can't do it. so yes depends on the media, just something to bear in mind that if you swap to a 4th Gen thinking the iGPU can pick up some of the slack, it may be the case that it just can't.

 

Adding GPU's can also be problematic, FreeNAS has taken a beating, so let me beat that dead horse a little more...plex doesn't support GPU transcoding on FreeNAS.  In fact, Plex supports very few GPU transcoding options, perhaps....again, Emby is better than Plex in this regard, but something worth thinking about and considering that depending on the choices you make, a GPU may not be an option.

[Jarsky]

1 hour ago, Dravinian said:

That is what I was saying, Quick Sync on that old a CPU can't do, for instance, 4k....at all, it isn't that it does it badly, it just can't do it. so yes depends on the media, just something to bear in mind that if you swap to a 4th Gen thinking the iGPU can pick up some of the slack, it may be the case that it just can't.

 

Just to qualify this more, despite not supporting 4k/hevc, the old QuickSync engine on Sandy/Ivy Bridge and Haswell CPU's has a noticable quality drop in transcoding compared to Software as well.

 

 

If you're looking for something economical though, i3-10100 for price and feature cannot be beaten for a dedicated home Plex Server. 

Low Power CPU, Supports easily over a dozen 1080p transcodes with hardware transcoding under Windows or Linux (including UnRAID), very low power consumption and doesnt require a dedicated GPU.  It also supports all the latest encoding/decoding for HEVC/HEVC-10bit/VP9/VP9-10bit so supports 4K HDR (HDR10 / 4:2:2 and 4:4:4) with practically no quality loss in transcodes using the new QuickSync Engine (v7). 

 

Tiger Lake (11th Gen) is also due to be released in the coming months. It's QuickSync (v8) also brings with it HEVC-12bit/VP9-12bit and AVC-1 support, so it might be worth holding off for these if you want to go this route. 

[impalaguy1230]

19 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What does the current usage look like? What does something like atop look like on the current system?

60-70% of the time I might have my wife, myself, and my son watching Emby on the LAN, plus 1-2 remote users that would require a transcode. I have two Shield TV's and one FireTV.  CPU usage stays in the 40-60% range during this.  But of course I have the downloading speeds throttled so I don't overload everything until the middle of the night when it goes to full speed for about 4 hours.  I haven't really dug much deeper into it since unraid is my first experience with Linux.  One thing I noticed when I was putting together my server years ago was the fact that out of the 10 drives on the server only four are SATA3.

 

Also, I am planning on throwing a couple extra SSD's inside the case and keep them as unassigned disks.  I was hoping planning on making those drives my target for the download/unpacking/transcoding work and only move the files to the array once they are ready to be stored for good.  Maybe that would help the speed of the array?  I already have my metadata, cache, and transcoding working directories on my cache drive.

[Electronics Wizardy]

4 hours ago, impalaguy1230 said:

60-70% of the time I might have my wife, myself, and my son watching Emby on the LAN, plus 1-2 remote users that would require a transcode. I have two Shield TV's and one FireTV.  CPU usage stays in the 40-60% range during this.  But of course I have the downloading speeds throttled so I don't overload everything until the middle of the night when it goes to full speed for about 4 hours.  I haven't really dug much deeper into it since unraid is my first experience with Linux.  One thing I noticed when I was putting together my server years ago was the fact that out of the 10 drives on the server only four are SATA3.

 

Also, I am planning on throwing a couple extra SSD's inside the case and keep them as unassigned disks.  I was hoping planning on making those drives my target for the download/unpacking/transcoding work and only move the files to the array once they are ready to be stored for good.  Maybe that would help the speed of the array?  I already have my metadata, cache, and transcoding working directories on my cache drive.

You might want to move away form unraid if disk io is a issue. Id just make one raid array of multiple ssds for all tasks as its easier to manager, and you probalby don't need that much io for those uses.

 

With this usage you probably want that ryzen 3600 or faster, or get a good gpu for transcoding.

 

Sata3 shouldn't matter, hdd can't fit it anyways

[Jarsky]

On 7/30/2020 at 9:08 AM, impalaguy1230 said:

Also, I am planning on throwing a couple extra SSD's inside the case and keep them as unassigned disks.  I was hoping planning on making those drives my target for the download/unpacking/transcoding work and only move the files to the array once they are ready to be stored for good.  Maybe that would help the speed of the array?  I already have my metadata, cache, and transcoding working directories on my cache drive.

 

 

UnRAID 6.9.0 supports multiple pools, so you can put the SSD's into their own RAID if you want. I use 2 x NVMe's in RAID0 for my VM's and Docker.