DIY Family NAS - looking for advice?

[MoVo]

Hey everyone, I'm currently planning a NAS for my family. I researched and decided on a few components, but I also have a few questions. As for software, the NAS is supported to be a backup solution for 3 Notebooks, 3 Desktops and 4 (Android/iOS) Phones, main focus are photos and images. We also want to digitize the entire DVD/BD and CD collection. For this usecase, Plex with Plex Pass seems like the most complete and easy to use solution (especially for photo backups). The only additional service I plan on utilizing is a steam local cache and a PiHole server. 

 

First, these are the components (for price comparisons, I am in Germany, I'll add the cheapest price to the list as well.)

• MSI MAG B460M Mortar 89€: Was the cheapest I could find, has plenty of SATA connectors which seemed to be an issue with most small for factor mainboards

• Intel Core i3-10100 101€: CPU Supports Quick Sync, which I hope should be enough for transcoding in case a Plex client doesn't support direct play. Pre Transcoding all the files isn't really an option since we want too keep all the extras of the disk

• 8GB of RAM (2x4GB) 36€: just want to keep the option of upgrading to 16GB in the future

• Fractal Design Node 804 99€: This seems to be the best case for that usecase with 8 3.5" drive slots. I'd prefer a smaller case, but want at least 6 drive bays, do you have any suggestions for alternative cases?

• be quiet! System Power 9 CM 500W 60€: Seemed like a decent option for the price with the potential to add an entry level GPU in the future in case Intel QuickSync transcoding is not enough

• 2 x 4TB Seagate IronWolf 98€: Just getting two drives for the entry level setup, will add drives down the road. Main goal was to keep the initial price down since we're already at 700€

• Kingston A2000 NVMe PCIe SSD 500GB 50€: I plan on using it as a cache drive, especially for data ingestion.

I plan on using unraid as my operating system, seems like the best option and I like the broad availability of resources on the topic. 

 

Now regarding my questions

• All of these components are new. Is the CPU/Motherboard combination good or should I search for alternatives? Do you have any suggestions?
• Is 8GB of RAM for my usecase sufficient or should I go to the 16 GB from the beginning?
• Our movie collection is mainly made of DVDs, but we also have some FHD and UHD BlueRays with the plan to add more in the future. Will QuickSync transcoding be sufficient to serve a few clients? 

I appreciate your feedback and advice

- MoVo

[Electronics Wizardy]

5 minutes ago, MoVo said:

8GB of RAM (2x4GB) 36€: just want to keep the option of upgrading to 16GB in the future

Id go single 8gb dimm, so 16gb is a easier upgrade, extra ram is cheap and nice to have

 

6 minutes ago, MoVo said:

Intel Core i3-10100 101€: CPU Supports Quick Sync, which I hope should be enough for transcoding in case a Plex client doesn't support direct play. Pre Transcoding all the files isn't really an option since we want too keep all the extras of the disk

just syaing you need plex pass for hardware transcoding, but it should be able to handle this in software.

 

6 minutes ago, MoVo said:

• Kingston A2000 NVMe PCIe SSD 500GB 50€: I plan on using it as a cache drive, especially for data ingestion.

 

Id skip the cache drive for now, your will be network limited for file copy speeds, so the ssd won't help here.

 

 

[MoVo]

5 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id go single 8gb dimm, so 16gb is a easier upgrade, extra ram is cheap and nice to have

 

Looking at the RAM prices for 2x8 GB kits, I might go with 2x8GB from the start, since these are only 15€ cheaper than decent 2x4GB Kits

5 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

just syaing you need plex pass for hardware transcoding, but it should be able to handle this in software.

 

Yeah I know, but the Plex Pass Subscription seems really reasonable. From what I found the subscription is also necessary for the Photo Library sync.

5 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id skip the cache drive for now, your will be network limited for file copy speeds, so the ssd won't help here.

 

Really? I read that calculating the parity heavily impacts the write speed which can be avoided when using the array. Given that I'm going to ingest quite bit of data when adding our movie library, I'm afraid that this will be too much of a bottleneck. Do you think this will be an issue our will write speeds still be sufficiently fast? 

[Electronics Wizardy]

5 minutes ago, MoVo said:

Really? I read that calculating the parity heavily impacts the write speed which can be avoided when using the array. Given that I'm going to ingest quite bit of data when adding our movie library, I'm afraid that this will be too much of a bottleneck. Do you think this will be an issue our will write speeds still be sufficiently fast? 

Your probably going to be network and hdd limited before the parity speeds become a limit.

[Slayer3032]

Ideally with Plex you're going to try to avoid transcoding in the first place, direct streams generally aren't even noticable when I check the usage on my home server using an old Xeon X5660 that doesn't even have AVX or Quicksync. It's not until you start trying to use clients which don't support the codecs which your media is stored in, like desktop web clients trying to watch HEVC content instead of a client like the Plex Windows app. Make sure to educate everyone to not transcode when possible for the best quality and experience.

 

I'd look into something like Nextcloud for photo backup, which also has most of the functionality that something like dropbox or google drive do. Running a something that's accessible on the internet though shouldn't be taken lightly, please do consider what should be accessible to the internet and don't just slap DMZ or anything like that onto it. Figuring out what you want this home server to do, and what you plan it to be able to do needs to be considered before you take it from a basic home NAS to a more proper home server. You don't want to have to reformat everything down the road and start over after figuring out you want it to do one new thing and it won't do it, ect.

 

I'd also second the single 8gb dimm, or the 2x8gb. If you need more VMs in the future 16gb max will be very constraining. You'll easily saturate a gigabit lan long before you saturate your average 3.5" hard drive from the past decade, even my 10+ year old 500gb drives in a ZFS mirror would hit 114MB/s from what I remember.

 

Depending on your board, you might also want to make sure you even have enough pci-e bandwidth for what you want to do. Some boards are going to disable sata ports if you use nvme drives, you'd also likely want to be looking at a SAS HBA if you're looking at 8 drives which will take up 4 lanes. If you plug all of that into slots that are only connected to the chipset, you'll likely have some issues. It looks like a fairly nice board though and you always have the slots connected to the cpu to utilize, which could be used with pci-e x4 slot to m.2 adapter cards if needed. Intel consumer platforms are pretty constrained in this regard when it comes to anything but tossing a m.2 and a gpu into a board despite having like 3-4 16x slots soldered onto them most of the time.

 

Edit: I just now saw the line saying you plan to use Unraid, don't even consider 2x4gb lol.

[MoVo]

12 minutes ago, Slayer3032 said:

Running a something that's accessible on the internet though shouldn't be taken lightly, please do consider what should be accessible to the internet and don't just slap DMZ or anything like that onto it.

I won't put anything directly onto the internet. We have a decently fast home connection with 100mpbs down and 30mbps upload, so I will configure VPN connections for the notebooks and the mobile phones. This was the plan anyways and my router provides a relatively easy service for to securely configure a VPN, including a dynamic dns. But I won't put the home server on the internet.

16 minutes ago, Slayer3032 said:

I'd look into something like Nextcloud for photo backup, which also has most of the functionality that something like dropbox or google drive do.

You're right, that's probably a better option for photo sync and a decent option for document storage as well (my dad wants to move his dropbox to the NAS)

17 minutes ago, Slayer3032 said:

It's not until you start trying to use clients which don't support the codecs which your media is stored in, like desktop web clients trying to watch HEVC content instead of a client like the Plex Windows app. Make sure to educate everyone to not transcode when possible for the best quality and experience.

Most likely we'll just use native clients anyways. Our main TV is a new Samsung Smart TV which supports the native Plex app. My brother and I will use the Windows/Mac client and the phones will use the android clients anyways. The only time where I can see transcoding become necessary is for the Chromecast for the home gym tv, but that single stream shouldn't be the with quick sync.