Economical NAS/Plex Server

[Nicolai Mortensen]

Hello Everyone.

 

I had the brilliant idea of wanting a NAS server, capable of running plex. I then set out to set myself a few requirements to it's performance, but I fear I've either set them too ambitious (in other words, I've learned I know nothing). I've built several gaming PCs, where none of these things really mattered, as they're not a 24/7 operational machine, but learning about the requirements and needs of a good server, I've come to realize I need help. And probably a lot of it.

 

The requirements I've set for myself is as follows:

• Maximum 250 watt PSU. (WD Red Plus 4TB WD40EFRX takes up 4.8 watt each for a total of 57,6 watt, so in effect 190 watt left over for the rest of the system)
• Silence is king! Passive cooling if and where possible.
• Must be Intel because of Plex compatibility with Intel Quick Sync and Hardware Encoding.
• Must have parity.
• Must be configurable as a shared network drive, preferably with login.
• Low to no maintenance once up and running.

 

The only thing I know I won't need any help with, is the enclosure. It'll probably be living in the furniture in front of my TV, because it has 2 drawers which happens to be roughly the same size as a 3u rack server and since I'm highly capable in both woodworking and metal, I'm confident I can modify the 3u and my furniture for it to fit perfectly on slides. This does however set some limits with cooling and here's my first question: Will X amount of noctura fans keep 12 NAS harddrives cool and provide enough airflow to keep the APU cooled?

 

I don't know how important ECC memory is for a server of this nature, but I've managed to find a couple of Core i3 with ECC support, the Core i3-9100T and the Core i3-9300T, but as pr usual with Intel, their TDP isn't really reflective of the real world and even if it where, it's not really reflective of the power consumption of the APU. Here's the 2nd question: Would these APUs be a good choice for my needs and if so, which would be the least power consuming?

 

For a controller I've been adviced to find a Dell PERC H200 or a Dell PERC H310 and "flash them to IT mode" (not entirely sure what that means, but it should be an easy task to do) for compatibility with unraid, as it apparently doesn't play nice with Marvell controllers, would either of these controllers be enough for 12 hard drives?

 

I know these are probably considered dumb questions, but all of this is outside of my knowledge, so any answers I would very much appreciate an explination as to why the answer is what it is. If there's better recommendations, I'm all ears, I know a lot of you are much more informed than I can ever hope to be.

 

Thank you all for your time in advance. Best regards.

[SupaKomputa]

You can't use ECC on a regular consumer motherboard. Defeat the concept of economical.

Pentium / Celeron gold 4xxx / 5xxx something,very low powered, support ECC, but need C260 (server cmiiw) chipset (expensive).

Or getting a 8 core Atom C3758, many threads, low power, ecc, and usually came with the motherboard (soldered).

I don't know if all above have quicksync, i doubt.

 

Another economical route is getting a X79 / X99 system with Xeon E5-2xxx. Some are low powered (1.8 ghz) with many (6-12) cores.

The memory are cheap (DDR3 ECC REG), 1/4 of the price of current ddr4.

You can get them in bundles (MB/CPU/MEM) for around $100 in Aliexpress.

Bare in mind these are used CPU and RAM, but the motherboards are new.

No quicksync on these old server cpu, the raw horsepower can make it up.

[Nicolai Mortensen]

Thank you for the suggestion, but is ecc even necessary for my needs? It's a file server with low amount of write and higher reads. 

 

If ecc is advice against, then I'll need to rethink it all, apparently I have to anyway, if there's no chipset for i3 with ecc support. 

 

I don't know if aliexpress delivers in EU? 

[Electronics Wizardy]

5 hours ago, Nicolai Mortensen said:

Thank you for the suggestion, but is ecc even necessary for my needs? It's a file server with low amount of write and higher reads. 

 

Probably not needed, restore backups if there is a weird error, and if its mostly movies, those aren't that valuable anyways(your not the only one with a caopy normally_

 

How many plex streams do you need at once and at what res?

How many tb of storage do you need?

[Nicolai Mortensen]

With my current living arrangements at most 2 streams at 4K, but it wouldn't be a bad thing for me to have the opportunity for 3 at 4K.

 

I currently have 3 hard drives at 2 TB each, but I'd like to expand and replace with 4 TB nas rated harddrives as needed, at most 12 harddrives. 

 

I plan on using the nas drive as a "data vault" for raw files for my photography, which is rather important, as it's my second job. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

6 hours ago, Nicolai Mortensen said:

I currently have 3 hard drives at 2 TB each, but I'd like to expand and replace with 4 TB nas rated harddrives as needed, at most 12 harddrives. 

Do you need lots of small drives, Id get something like 4x 16tb drives instead. Lower power, less cost, less nose(the hdds are probably gonna be the loudest part of the build.

 

 

What os do you want to run? 

 

Id probably get something like a 10400, b460 board, 16gb or more of ram.

 

Then get a case like a node 304, and put a few big hdds in it.

[Donut417]

8 hours ago, Nicolai Mortensen said:

3 hard drives at 2 TB

4K movies can take up a lot of space. Id have to agree with the 16TB disks suggested by @Electronics Wizardy. 

[Nicolai Mortensen]

I don't need a lot of drives, but even though it might be cheaper in the end to get 16 tb drives, the individual cost might be so high it'll take too long to save up to them as a student, I'll be expanding as I go. 

 

I'm not looking to run a specific os, although I have been looking in to unraid because of it's parity. I've read somewhere it's the best around.

 

The most important thing from the apu is the Intel quick sync support, as it'll allow me to use hardware acceleration without also having to invest in a gpu. 

[SupaKomputa]

On 8/11/2020 at 6:37 PM, Nicolai Mortensen said:

Thank you for the suggestion, but is ecc even necessary for my needs? It's a file server with low amount of write and higher reads. 

 

If ecc is advice against, then I'll need to rethink it all, apparently I have to anyway, if there's no chipset for i3 with ecc support. 

 

I don't know if aliexpress delivers in EU? 

Depends on the OS you will install. Freenas specifically address ECC requirements.

All other have no such requirements. You can get Openmediavault or Xsynology pretty good alternative to freenas.

Or just install a vanilla OS like ubuntu or centos then run your favorite media software like Plex server or Kodi server.

 

If the source media is already 4K and you want to stream it to 4k enabled devices, you don't need to reencode it.

Takes the precious workload from the cpu.

So if youre sending the file natively you won't need quicksync.

Therefore if you don't need quicksync, you can use AMD cpu like Athlon 200ge, 20w idle, a great internal gpu and good upgrade path (up to  8 cores 3700x on cheap motherboard or 16 cores 3950x on high end mb, if you need to).

 

Does it ship to UE:

 

19 hours ago, Nicolai Mortensen said:

I currently have 3 hard drives at 2 TB each, but I'd like to expand and replace with 4 TB nas rated harddrives as needed, at most 12 harddrives. 

This you will need another Sata card, as most motherboard supports up to 6.

[Nicolai Mortensen]

Not all my movies are 4K, but I suppose I could set up something that'll reencode automatically to a supported format, I'll have to look into how to do that. 

 

I'm considering running unraid on it, and I've been adviced using a Dell PERC H200 or H310. I'm more than happy not running ECC memory, if it's not needed, but with my extremely limited knowledge of servers, I thought it was a must. 

 

I'd prefer having Intel quick sync available, for those few movies that might need it. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 hours ago, SupaKomputa said:

Depends on the OS you will install. Freenas specifically address ECC requirements.

All other have no such requirements. You can get Openmediavault or Xsynology pretty good alternative to freenas.

Freenas doesn't affect the ecc requirement, freenas doesn't benfit from ecc more than any other os.

 

Ecc is always good, but don't avoid freenas because you don't have ecc.

 

But id probably avoid freenas here as its a pain to expand

 

4 hours ago, Nicolai Mortensen said:

I don't need a lot of drives, but even though it might be cheaper in the end to get 16 tb drives, the individual cost might be so high it'll take too long to save up to them as a student, I'll be expanding as I go. 

 

Id really try to get those bigger drives, if you get them from externals they really aren't that expensive(look at the wd and seagate externals)

 

Also you save a lot on case, won't need that hba, will use much less power

 

 

29 minutes ago, Nicolai Mortensen said:

I'd prefer having Intel quick sync available, for those few movies that might need it. 

Its probably not needed, I can transcode from 4k to 1080 on my old l5640's just fine so any modern chip should be able to. You also need plex pass to do this.

But a i3 10100 is probaby a good option here.

 

 

Do you have a total budget in mind?

[Nicolai Mortensen]

My budget is at most 700 usd, but I can exclude a case, I've found a stripped out rack unit with 12 hot swap bays for free. 

 

I'm leaning towards using unraid, because of it's parity functions. I would love to go with larger drives, but with my current budget, it'll take me 5-8 months to save up for just one, as I'm down to my last few tb, I will need one I can afford