nas Massive Scale Home NAS

[TrueProblematic]

CPU For Home NAS/Plex Server

 

Needs:

• Enough PCIE lanes for 12 HDDs hooked up to SATA (As well as a 1050ti for transcode)
• Support for Windows 11
• Moderately Affordable

 

Any recommendations?

 

Note: Can't run Linux due to other applications, Windows 11 is unfortunately a must. 

 

[BondiBlue]

Running 12 drives isn't a challenge at all on the motherboard side. You won't need many PCIe lanes at all. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

5 minutes ago, TheTrueProblematic said:

• Moderately Affordable

 

Do you have a number here?

 

5 minutes ago, TheTrueProblematic said:

(As well as a 1050ti for transcode)

Why get that gpu? Id use a igpu on intel chps, better encoder and decode, lower power, cheaper, no slower needed

 

 

HOw about a i5 11400, sas hba, 16gb of ram, b560 motherboard, ssd boot drive.

 

What apps do you need windows for? Id probably run a hypervisor on the host like proxmox, and run windows in a vm.

[TrueProblematic]

As far as price I would love something sub $200, but I know that's a bit unrealistic for what I'm asking for. Below $500 though would be ideal. 

 

As far as the lanes I know I could probably get away with all those drives on a normal system with some 20 PCIE lanes or whatever, but having more would allow for much more expansion down the road as well as using this build for other purposes.

 

I was originally looking at a 1900x or a 1920x but neither of those have windows 11 support. Is there anything similar to those with windows 11 support?

[Electronics Wizardy]

8 minutes ago, TrueProblematic said:

As far as price I would love something sub $200, but I know that's a bit unrealistic for what I'm asking for. Below $500 though would be ideal. 

 

As far as the lanes I know I could probably get away with all those drives on a normal system with some 20 PCIE lanes or whatever, but having more would allow for much more expansion down the road as well as using this build for other purposes.

 

I was originally looking at a 1900x or a 1920x but neither of those have windows 11 support. Is there anything similar to those with windows 11 support?

How much do you care about power usage? Cheap + lots of pcie lanes won't be great.

 

Do you need windows 11 on hardware? Id put windows in a vm, and a hypervisor on the host. Then any system will run windows 11 just fine.

 

Id really try to get something like a i5 11400 here. Much faster in most tasks, much better hardware video encoding than a 1050ti, lower power.

[TrueProblematic]

2 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

How much do you care about power usage? Cheap + lots of pcie lanes won't be great.

 

Do you need windows 11 on hardware? Id put windows in a vm, and a hypervisor on the host. Then any system will run windows 11 just fine.

 

Id really try to get something like a i5 11400 here. Much faster in most tasks, much better hardware video encoding than a 1050ti, lower power.

I wholeheartedly appreciate the suggestion! I still think more than 20 pcie lanes would be best for my use case. As far as power usage I am not terribly concerned about this as that I am not responsible for the power costs of this particular machine. I will heavily consider the 11400 for this but would like another option with more lanes if possible. Thanks!

[brob]

I don't really understand this hangup with PCIe lanes. With a sub $500 CPU a SATA / SAS add-on card will be required to handle 12 HDD. Such a controller is not likely to need more than one x8 PCIe slot.

 

While a GTX 1050 Ti needs a x16 slot, it will provide excellent performance using only 8 lanes, 4 lanes if gaming is not involved.

 

Don't forget that chipsets also offer a significant number of PCIe lanes. Motherboard choice is actually of more concern when criteria include available PCIe lanes as they differ significantly in lane offerings.