Looking for hardware recommendations

[John Cutburth]

I am in the middle of building a homelab with proxmox. It will primarily be used for plex and smb and I am looking for some recommendations. Here are the parts I have but am willing to buy a new CPU/mobo/ram if it is a better fit. 
Parts I already have.

I have 2 2tb m.2 nvme drives. I plan in using one for the boot/containers/iso and the other I am planning on using for L2ARC

I have 4 12tb drives that I pan on running in raidz 

The main requirements I have

• need the Mobo to be a micro atx to fix the case.
• need a pcie for the 10g nic
• if I stay with AMD need a second pcie for a gpu for transcoding.
• 2 m.2 slots
• 5 sata ports (4 for drives, 1 for dvd/bray injestion)

Questions I am trying to figure out.

• should I switch to an intel CPU so I can ditch the gpu?
• if yes what is a good option?
• should I go with ECC memory?

any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Bersella AI]

To clarify first, the L2ARC is designed for performance improvements with lots of concurrent sessions, and its benefits would be vastly diminished in home use (with only one or a few occasional sessions on-line). Further explanations are available here. It's therefore better not wasting one of your precious 2TB SSDs.

Also, how much was your budget? More processor cores and, particularly, RAM would be preferred in virtualization. Customer-grade motherboards with DDR4 slots would have RAM capacity up to 128GB with somewhat low costs, while enterprise-oriented ones may have beefier capacities with even lower costs for Registered ECC RAM.

 

A few combinations available:

• A 12th Gen Core i3/i5 non-F processor with a B660/B760 DDR4 board, GPU not required;
• A Ryzen 5000 series processor with a B550 board, GPU required;
• A Xeon E5 v3/v4 series processor with used rack-mounted server or sketchy X99 boards, GPU required;
• A Xeon D1581-embedded motherboard, GPU required;
• Platforms based on 8th/9th Gen Core processors, such as CC150 (down-clocked variant of i9-9900 w/o iGPU) paired with B365 board, GPU not required when iGPU presents.

Furthermore, any motherboard with at least 4 DIMM slots as well as plenty of PCIe/M.2 slots would be preferred.

Note however that most of modern motherboards may not come with more than 4 SATA ports, and a PCIe/M.2 to SATA riser card would be required for more ports.

 

As for those questions:

1. Yes, an Intel processor with iGPU would be preferred, as Plex does not support AMD GPUs. However, since nVidia GPUs are also supported, you can put one onto an AMD platform to make transcoding, but with extra costs higher than that for Intel iGPUs.
2. Use of ECC is recommended in ZFS or TrueNAS to ensure data integrity. However, it's not a must have, and is not supported by Core i5 or higher processors. My TrueNAS server has been running just fine with non-ECC RAM for months.

[John Cutburth]

Here is a list of parts I already have. I still need to buy a Motherboard if I stick with AMD or Motherboard, cpu, and maybe ram if I switch to Intel but could drop the gpu.
Budget, at this point I am tired and just want to get it working but I am not made of money but have it to spend let say less is good but $500ish if needed.
The case is a very tight fit and hard to build in. 
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory
Storage: Leven JPS800 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive
Storage: Leven JPS800 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive
Storage: Seagate IronWolf Pro 12 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive
Storage: Seagate IronWolf Pro 12 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive
Storage: Seagate IronWolf Pro 12 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive
Storage: Seagate IronWolf Pro 12 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive
Video Card: EVGA SC GAMING GeForce GTX 1060 3GB 3 GB Video Card
Power Supply: EVGA 600 B1 600 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply
Optional if needed: ELUTENG PCIE SATA Expansion Card 2 Port SATA PCIE Card 6GB/s PCI-E X1 SATA 3.0 Controller Plug and Play PCIE to SATA Adapter for Desktop PC Support SSD HDD
Network: 10Gb SFP PCI-e Network Card, Intel 82599(X520-DA1) Controller, GIGAPLUS 10Gbps Ethernet Adapter, 10Gbe SFP Port, 10G NIC Card, Support Windows/Windows Server/VMware
Case: 3U MATX rackmoun Server Chassis Micro ATX/Mini-itx 2x5.25+5x3.5 Bays Support ATX PSU with Side Cooling

[John Cutburth]

11 hours ago, Bersella AI said:

L2ARC is designed for performance improvements with lots of concurrent sessions

I am installing a 10gig fiber to my main pc. I am wanting to move all my data and repos away from my main system but am wanting fast access to the data so that is why I was thinking the L2ARC might be beatifical. Before I started down the L2ARC path I was just going to use the drive as a mirror for the boot.

[John Cutburth]

Just a note:

The Ram, AMD processor, GPU, and PSU are just parts I have from upgrading the kids computers so they are just extras i have.

[Bersella AI]

19 hours ago, John Cutburth said:

I am installing a 10gig fiber to my main pc. I am wanting to move all my data and repos away from my main system but am wanting fast access to the data so that is why I was thinking the L2ARC might be beatifical. Before I started down the L2ARC path I was just going to use the drive as a mirror for the boot.

I might rather consider making a striped pool on this SSD as a hot backup, and making a RAID pool on hard drives as cold backup, with a scheduled replication task copying from the hot side to the cold side. Again, L2ARC benefits a lot of concurrent sessions that fetch the same data on a specific time, but may not help with just one or two users. This article explains more about when L2ARC is needed.

[Bersella AI]

19 hours ago, John Cutburth said:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory
Video Card: EVGA SC GAMING GeForce GTX 1060 3GB 3 GB Video Card

Wow, that would be a pretty decent build for a NAS. The MSI B550M Mortar motherboard would be preferred, as it comes with two PCIe x16 slots, two PCIe x1 slots, two M.2 slots, and 4 SATA ports, leaving plenty of room for expansions; this GPU, however, may block one of PCIe x1 slots when installed onto the first x16 slot. Other options follow (all having two x16 slots):

• Asrock B550M/B450M Pro4
• Asus TUF B550M-PLUS
• MSI B450M Mortar

[John Cutburth]

13 hours ago, Bersella AI said:

• Asrock B550M/B450M Pro4
• Asus TUF B550M-PLUS
• MSI B450M Mortar

So I think I am going to end up getting a new intel CPU and motherboard. My AMD 2600x is a good CPU but not great for plex and the compatible B450 motherboards just don't have enough pcie lanes for 4 sata, 2 m.2, 10 gig nic, Blu-ray drive, and a gpu. What is the best bang per buck intel CPU to use for plex 4 to 6 transcodes at peek times but 1 to 2 on average. I do have 32 gig of ddr4 to put in it if I get a compatible board but was also thinking of going with ECC memory. It will need to fit in my 3u micro atx case. I will be running it in a container on Proxmox and running a few other lightweight container for downloading Linux iso's. The old hardware wont go to waste as I plan to setup a dedicated server for game hosting with it but that would lock me into buying new memory. 

[John Cutburth]

this is the direction I am thinking. let me know if it is over or under kill.
CPU: Intel Core i5-12600K 3.7 GHz 10-Core Processor ($177.20 @ Amazon) <- not sure if this is overkill but I will be running 4 or 5 other containers and probably 1 windows vm from time to time for code testing.
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-L9x65 33.84 CFM CPU Cooler ($59.95 @ Amazon) <- need simi-low profile for case
Motherboard: ASRock B660M Pro RS Micro ATX LGA1700 Motherboard ($94.99 @ Amazon) <- only has 4 sata but I have 2 sata pcie expansion board

I was torn between getting a ddr4 board and using the 32gig I have or going ddr5 but that is extra cost I don't have to spend right now but locks me into ddr4 for the future. At some point in the future I plan on upping it to 64gig or more.

[Bersella AI]

8 hours ago, John Cutburth said:

What is the best bang per buck intel CPU to use for plex 4 to 6 transcodes at peek times but 1 to 2 on average.

That's a lot of workload for GPU, and I doubt integrated GPUs from Intel could even handle it. A discrete GPU would therefore be recommended: to start with, the Arc A380 GPU and Tesla P4 are good candidates, as they would not limit the number of concurrent streams to play, and may fit in lower 2U chassis.

 

8 hours ago, John Cutburth said:

I do have 32 gig of ddr4 to put in it if I get a compatible board but was also thinking of going with ECC memory.

DDR4 ECC is not supported by most of modern Intel consumer-grade processors, but those for enterprise like Xeon. However, there are indeed some sorts of ECC implemented in unbuffered DDR5 kits, making ECC no longer a concern. Motherboards virtually do nothing with ECC though.

And again, ECC is recommended, but not required in a TrueNAS system.

 

5 hours ago, John Cutburth said:

CPU: Intel Core i5-12600K 3.7 GHz 10-Core Processor ($177.20 @ Amazon) <- not sure if this is overkill but I will be running 4 or 5 other containers and probably 1 windows vm from time to time for code testing.
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-L9x65 33.84 CFM CPU Cooler ($59.95 @ Amazon) <- need simi-low profile for case
Motherboard: ASRock B660M Pro RS Micro ATX LGA1700 Motherboard ($94.99 @ Amazon) <- only has 4 sata but I have 2 sata pcie expansion board

The processor may become too hot with this cooler, which was listed in Tier 10 (the lowest) in this performance chart. As alternatives, Ryzen processors run much more efficiently than Intel, and could go further with disabling PBO & lowering voltages, so that its heat can be handled without any hassle. A Ryzen 5700X processor would take the duties of code testing & game hosting pretty well, much more powerful than 2600X.

And yes, it's painful to make all of these stuff altogether with a single, tiny mATX board. I just, though, found the Asrock X570M Pro4 motherboard that doubles on-board SATA ports, with sufficient M.2/PCIe x16 slots also included, and would be better in such scenario.

[John Cutburth]

8 minutes ago, Bersella AI said:

but not required in a TrueNAS system

I thought I had settled on using Proxmox but I am wanting simplicity on this system would I be happier with TrueNAS. I am migrating for running Docker for windows and my Plex is running in a VM both on my main system that is a 3950X 64gig ram and 2080 super. I am building the server so I don't have to worry if someone is streaming if I need to shutdown or reboot or want to do a heavy cpu task.

 

17 minutes ago, Bersella AI said:

Arc A380 GPU

I thought plex only did transcoding with Intel iGPU or NVidia?

[Bersella AI]

2 minutes ago, John Cutburth said:

I thought I had settled on using Proxmox but I am wanting simplicity on this system would I be happier with TrueNAS.

Simpler is always better. My server has been running bare-metal TrueNAS Scale without much hassle, and it does support VM hosting on which I have yet to take a try. The most annoying thing, however, is that it dropped native Docker support in 23.10 release; although it provided k8s-based Charts apps as alternatives, I found it challenging to start with them (due to poor Internet connection). Then I installed Docker manually, and set up all other services. It should have been simpler if installing apps from TrueCharts.

 

10 minutes ago, John Cutburth said:

I thought plex only did transcoding with Intel iGPU or NVidia?

This is the latest discrete GPU series made by Intel, with excellent performance in HEVC & AV1 transcoding, and Plex has full support on this. However, when a Linux-based system is implemented, the Arc GPU series requires Linux 6.2 or later to work properly (see Jellyfin docs). Thankfully, the 24.04.0 release of TrueNAS Scale has the shiny Linux 6.6.20 kernel embedded, and should play with Arc GPUs pretty well.