Another NAS/Plex Question

[Erik-TechPM]

Hello and good afternoon,

 

I see a ton of recommendations for consumer grade intel motherboards in NAS and Plex builds. When I see actual server hardware, it’s typically either an EPYC AMD build or it’s an older X99 dual cpu intel build.

 

My question is, why? Are there no good options for modern intel server motherboards that aren’t consumer grade? I plan on over-engineering my build (without going too crazy, staying under $2,500) so I can host several containers for things like Plex (with family accessing over the Gb Wan), home assist, adguard, etc… in addition to several game servers that friends will be accessing over the wan as well. I own an invidia p2000, so am I better off going the AsRock Rack RomeD8-2T and 7302P route and leaving the transcoding to the dedicated gpu and freeing up the processor for other tasks or should I still shoot for uhd770 with quicksync… and if so, is there a good intel server motherboard that isn’t from 2014 like the x99?

 

Thank you all in advance!

[Levent]

To be completely none of those things you listed is something that requires $2500 hardware. I got approximately 30 pods, truenas (with jellyfin and many other jails), couple of windows machines, 4-5 Ubuntu VMs all with 128G/R5 3600/GTX1080 on an mid tier consumer motherboard. 
 

Check supermicro hardware too.

[voyager_]

A serious question is why do you think you need a commercial motherboard unless you plan to use IPMI. I've has multiple servers over the years running those same tasks on basic Asus boards without issue. As far as transcoding I would use the quadro since your planning other family members having access to it. The gpu can give you better quality transcoding.

[RandomLegoBrick]

Short answer, no, there are no "modern" server configs that will fit into that budget

 

You can however go with a prosumer platform like xeon w or threadripper to get server level features, however, at a 2500 budget your going to end up with a lot less performance than just buying a high end consumer system. If the workstation features outweigh the performance gap then yes you can get a low end xeon or threadripper and set it up as a server.

 

For my homeserver/workstation I have a 13600k (14 cores, 6+8e) on a 12th gen z690 board running debian, its been rock solid for almost a year running jellyfin (opensource plex alternative), file serving, and a bunch of random development containers.

 

Also regarding transcoding, just use quicksync, much less power consumption

[Levent]

Just now, voyager_ said:

IPMI

Honestly speaking I prefer pikvm over ipmi solutions. It’s not that expensive nowadays either.

[OddOod]

Welcome to the forums!
If you are already planning on adding a GPU there is zero reason to go full server hardware just for plex and NAS. Assuming you're not running high throughput multi user NAS, an old i7-8700 would be perfectly suitable for your processing needs and stuff like TrueNAS really relies more on RAM than threads