Expensive but good?? need help choosing.

[Mozart_W]

Hey fellow data hoarder's, im currently looking at getting a server in Q3 next year or Q1 25 and its gonna look a little this https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Cxq7sh and its gonna run truenas, and im gonna add a 10Gig SFP+ card, Sas controller and expansion (i know its SATA in the list sry) and some fans, but im kinda iffy about the ram since its just a file server delivering media files to my plex server which is a nvidia shield pro since i dont have too many clients and i have forced them ALL to use direct play anyway, and the 2070S is just a left over GPU for being able to monitor it, so should i just use only 32GB of ram instead of 128GB ?

Also im potentially making it 26TB drives instead if they are available at a decent price at that point, and i might go toshiba if there isnt any refurbished exos drives on the market and also i currently just got a TS-873A with 6x 22TB drives (and 2 more soon) for now to just keep up until i get that next server.

Reason's for the choices are that the 5600x, mobo, ram (32gigs), gpu and case is left over stuff that i need to put to use, and is the setup worth it ?

[Electronics Wizardy]

I'd make anouther thread in a year when you plan to buy as parts and prices will likely change a lot by then.

 

Otherwise looks fine, probably can get away with much less ram for just a media server. I'd use your current 32GB of ram.

 

I'd be tempted to go with a 4u 24bay case as the hot swap bays are nice, and have the sas expander built into the backplane.

 

 

[Blue4130]

56 minutes ago, Mozart_W said:

Hey fellow data hoarder's, im currently looking at getting a server in Q3 next year or Q1 25 and its gonna look a little this https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Cxq7sh and its gonna run truenas, and im gonna add a 10Gig SFP+ card, Sas controller and expansion (i know its SATA in the list sry) and some fans, but im kinda iffy about the ram since its just a file server delivering media files to my plex server which is a nvidia shield pro since i dont have too many clients and i have forced them ALL to use direct play anyway, and the 2070S is just a left over GPU for being able to monitor it, so should i just use only 32GB of ram instead of 128GB ?

Also im potentially making it 26TB drives instead if they are available at a decent price at that point, and i might go toshiba if there isnt any refurbished exos drives on the market and also i currently just got a TS-873A with 6x 22TB drives (and 2 more soon) for now to just keep up until i get that next server.

Reason's for the choices are that the 5600x, mobo, ram (32gigs), gpu and case is left over stuff that i need to put to use, and is the setup worth it ?

So the NAS isn't doing the plex server duties? It's litterally just hosting the files? If that is the case, why are you going with a 5600x, 2070 and so much ram?  And why are you letting the shield do the server duties? Put the plex server on the NAS.

 

This build seems odd.

[LIGISTX]

1 hour ago, Blue4130 said:

This build seems odd.

Seems like a “I’m just throwing money at it” build… 400 dollar WiFi mobo………..

 

If it’s just a simple file server, you don’t need a GPU at all, you can use a CPU from 2011, 16 GB of RAM will be plenty, and you definitely don’t need SSD’s in it.  Even if you do the other things, you really don’t need SSD’s. What are you planning to use them for? 
 

Something people get a little lost and confused with is RAM needs for ZFS. Yes. More RAM = more faster, but playing back videos via Plex doesn’t need faster. I literally turned ARC completely off for my media datasets in truenas; this means I have 0 RAM acceleration of this data. I would rather my ARC be dedicated to files that I use that could benefit from some added speed. Media files do not need these - they are huge, rarely accessed, continuous reads, and they are read very slowly. A single harddrive can easily saturate a gigabit network connection (125MB/s), and a full 4k bluray with Dolby vision HDR and Atmos is at most ~80mbps, which is 10MB/s….).

[Blue4130]

31 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

Seems like a “I’m just throwing money at it” build… 400 dollar WiFi mobo………..

 

If it’s just a simple file server, you don’t need a GPU at all, you can use a CPU from 2011, 16 GB of RAM will be plenty, and you definitely don’t need SSD’s in it.  Even if you do the other things, you really don’t need SSD’s. What are you planning to use them for? 
 

Something people get a little lost and confused with is RAM needs for ZFS. Yes. More RAM = more faster, but playing back videos via Plex doesn’t need faster. I literally turned ARC completely off for my media datasets in truenas; this means I have 0 RAM acceleration of this data. I would rather my ARC be dedicated to files that I use that could benefit from some added speed. Media files do not need these - they are huge, rarely accessed, continuous reads, and they are read very slowly. A single harddrive can easily saturate a gigabit network connection (125MB/s), and a full 4k bluray with Dolby vision HDR and Atmos is at most ~80mbps, which is 10MB/s….).

Thats why it seems odd to me. That motherboard choice, fairly beefy gpu, so much ram... Yet doesn't host plex on it. Just file transfers. Not what I would build.

[Mozart_W]

9 hours ago, Blue4130 said:

So the NAS isn't doing the plex server duties? It's litterally just hosting the files? If that is the case, why are you going with a 5600x, 2070 and so much ram?  And why are you letting the shield do the server duties? Put the plex server on the NAS.

 

This build seems odd.

As mentioned above the only reason for the "High" specs is because its left over stuff nothing else, but i have been thinking about just making it do the work but everything is already set up on my nvidia shield and ready to go.

[Mozart_W]

8 hours ago, LIGISTX said:

Seems like a “I’m just throwing money at it” build… 400 dollar WiFi mobo………..

 

If it’s just a simple file server, you don’t need a GPU at all, you can use a CPU from 2011, 16 GB of RAM will be plenty, and you definitely don’t need SSD’s in it.  Even if you do the other things, you really don’t need SSD’s. What are you planning to use them for? 
 

Something people get a little lost and confused with is RAM needs for ZFS. Yes. More RAM = more faster, but playing back videos via Plex doesn’t need faster. I literally turned ARC completely off for my media datasets in truenas; this means I have 0 RAM acceleration of this data. I would rather my ARC be dedicated to files that I use that could benefit from some added speed. Media files do not need these - they are huge, rarely accessed, continuous reads, and they are read very slowly. A single harddrive can easily saturate a gigabit network connection (125MB/s), and a full 4k bluray with Dolby vision HDR and Atmos is at most ~80mbps, which is 10MB/s….).

I know i can get away with less but its left over hardware so i dont need to but other stuff, and if i want to i could use it to do other stuff like all my QBit stuff and also then its future proofed for many years to come, i know its a very expensive motherboard for just this but no reason to use energy on selling it just to buy a new one when i can just save the energy and time and put that mobo in

[Mozart_W]

9 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

I'd make anouther thread in a year when you plan to buy as parts and prices will likely change a lot by then.

 

Otherwise looks fine, probably can get away with much less ram for just a media server. I'd use your current 32GB of ram.

 

I'd be tempted to go with a 4u 24bay case as the hot swap bays are nice, and have the sas expander built into the backplane.

 

 

"I'd be tempted to go with a 4u 24bay case as the hot swap bays are nice, and have the sas expander built into the back-plane." i have been thinking about this, but its mostly so i can save a bit of money on stuff which i know sounds completely stupid when im buying 16+ 22tb HDDs LOL
But yes i have been heavily thinking about getting a 4U to simplify my future builds and make it more convenient to work on.