Project REFURB - Plex on a Budget

[Fullmental]

Project REFURB – Plex on a Budget

 

 

Welcome to a “new” build log! Our goal? To re-purpose some old hardware to set up a 24/7 Plex server, all while while spending as little as possible in new or used parts to meet my needs. It’s a little different from your typical $5k water-cooled custom builds you usually see here, but I think it’s interesting to take a step back and work with existing hardware. Plus, I’m cheap and don’t do fancy five-thousand-dollar builds. At all.

 

Hardware

 

So, what kind of hardware do I have lying around? Let’s see…First I have an old Dell XPS 8300. Two actually, one was mine and one was my parents. Mine was parted out and all that’s left is the motherboard/cpu and some RAM sticks:

 

 

The second one is fairly complete, save for some missing sata cables I pulled a while back. And there’s no drives, but that’s OK.

 

 

Both of these systems were i7-2600 CPUs (non-K, Dell didn’t believe in overclocking XPS systems back then I guess). They were originally configured with 8GB of RAM, and had cheap 500GB hard drives. These are original and heavily used for 6+ years, so I probably don’t want to take a chance on them for more 24/7 work. The complete one also has a Radeon 6870 in it, but that's pretty much useless to us.

 

These systems also have a pretty annoying case that’s kind of a pain in the ass to work with, and it has very limited cooling potential. I think either way I don’t want to use the case.

 

Let’s see what else we have here…Ah there is this:

 

 

This is an “old” Skylake build with an i3-6100 that I built for my grandmother a few years back. She decided she wanted a laptop shortly after and gave it back to me, which was both extremely frustrating (because I spent so much time pricing and building it to her extremely low budget) and kind of nice at the same time since I essentially got this for free when she returned it. But I never really used it much, so it’s been sitting around basically since it was built.

 

 

Aside from the CPU, there’s a dirt cheap Zalman mATX case that probably cost me something like $25, an Antec EarthWatts EA380D that’s basically never been used, an H110 motherboard, and 4GB of RAM. We’ll want to add another stick if we use this, but I suppose that can wait for now.

 

 

I doubt we’ll be re-using this case, but we will definitely need to clean up this disgusting [non-]cable management job at some point.

 

 

I also have a Dell PowerEdge R610 server that’s sitting on my dining room table right now…but I have other plans for that in a different build log. Here’s the thing though, I’m taking that RAM from the XPS8300 for it, so no matter what system I pick I’ll need to buy some RAM.

 

 

 

Storage

 

Hard drives and SSDs shouldn't actually be a problem. Despite having a ton of old, OLD drives I wouldn't trust anymore, I actually have a fair amount that's been only very lightly used.

 

I have a 64GB SSD in the i3 tower that will be perfectly suitable as a boot drive.

 

 

To house my media files, I have two external USB drives that I plan to extract and use in my Plex server. One is a Seagate Expansion 5TB Desktop drive and the other is a WD MyBook 3TB drive. They've been very sparingly used for the past 2-3 years as a once monthly backup, and should be in good shape. I replaced them in March, so they're free now for other uses:

 

 

We won't be needing these shells anymore though, however we set this up I want these drives in the case so they don't take up extra space!

 

 

There we go, much better!

 

New Hardware

 

As for what else I need…Well, my Channelmaster DVR+ recently died, so I was thinking I could replace that with an addition to my Plex box! The DVR+ is $200, but a TV tuner is only $90, that’s a $110 savings!

 

 

Now, this is a quad tuner card, and realistically I could have gotten away with a $45 dual tuner instead. This will be one of the few places that I’m willing to spend a little extra money for a better end result, because nothing’s worse than having to pick what shows I want to record when every single one of my favorites winds up on the same time slot! And believe me, it happens more often than you'd expect...

 

This of course means moving the plex box next to my TV, right in one of these wonderfully useful Ikea Kallax cube cubbies:

 

 

 

This will be a problem though…I have a MicroATX board already, and no standard mATX cases will fit in a 13.5” x 13.5” x 15.5” opening. I’ll have to do some research to find a case that will fit, or take some more extreme measures, because obviously a typical case layout won’t work…

 

 

I also don’t want to rush out and get a mini-ITX board, because then I’d be spending an extra $60 or so even before I start looking for a case. If I can find a used case to buy or mod for about that price instead, it’d be much cheaper to re-use an existing board.

 

So that’s about it for hardware, time to decide what base system to use!

 

The Decision

 

Between the 6100 and the 2600, I think the i3 kinda sucks in terms of multithreaded performance, but the i7 isn’t exactly a powerful system these days either, and the idea of running an 90w system at idle 24/7 doesn’t appeal to me very well, particularly since I have a fairly low electric bill and I want to keep it that way as much as I can. That means efficiency is king, and an 8-year-old platform is just not efficient.

 

I’m also hesitant to use a motherboard and power supply that have already been daily drivers for 6+ years, versus the Skylake system which saw only a month of use so far. Reliability clearly goes to the Skylake system.

 

The final nail in the coffin for Sandy Bridge though is their horrible support for Intel QuickSync, which makes transcoding much, much easier on the processor.

 

 

Now, you may notice the Sandy Bridge processors support H.264 encoding, which is the format I plan to use with Plex. However, Plex does not recommend processors older than Haswell, and cite drops in quality due to older implementations of QuickSync being less efficient:

 

 

I've talked to a few people and they found the quality was unacceptable for streaming on Sandy Bridge while using QuickSync. For that reason, it’s looking pretty grim.

 

While we're on the subject: In terms of processing power, what exactly is required to transcode video streams? Plex's documentation actually has a rough guideline for us to use here:

 

 

For a 1080p H.264 video, about a 2,000 passmark score is required to transcode a single 1080p stream, and 4000 for a single 4K stream. Well, that’s a problem. The i3-6100 only has a 5500 passmark score, ultimately making it incapable of handling 2 streams of 4K video:

 

 

Since some of my content is in 4K and will require transcoding, and we know Sandy Bridge will struggle with 4K too due to a lack of QuickSync support, *both* options seem bad!

 

However.......if I were to take that 6100 and upgrade it to a 7^th gen i5, I could get a pretty nice performance gain! The H110 motherboard happens to be compatible with the 7^th gen Intel CPUs with a bios update. What do we get if we upgrade to, say, a 7600?

 

 

That’s actually not terrible. 8802 means that, even without QuickSync, we would have room for two 4K transcodes with a little bit of processing power left for other background tasks. The 2600 by comparison would be at its limit.

 

But wait, why do we even need to transcode anyway? Well, there’s a good reason for it…

 

 

Imagine a collection about 20x this size. That’s what I currently have waiting to be ripped and imported. I have all these anime DVDs and Blurays that are going to cause a headache – and yes, you can call me a complete geek, I’m well aware.

 

Anyway, the reason these are a problem is because these shows are typically provided in two formats: The original Japanese audio with English subtitles, and an English dub track with a second, different subtitle track that only includes text translations.

 

Most people get around the transcoding issue by compressing their files and burning in any subtitles they need. Unfortunately, the Japanese audio translation usually doesn’t line up correctly with the English audio, meaning the translated subtitles are at best a distraction when trying to watch the dubbed version. It’s an annoying situation, but sometimes I want to watch the original audio, and sometimes I want to watch the dubbed audio. Furthermore, some of my friends and family members prefer only subs, and some prefer only dubs. Hence, I need both options.

 

I could store two copies of the video, one with each type of subtitle burned in, but then I’m essentially doubling the amount of space I need to hold my library. We’re already going to be struggling to fit everything on 8TB, so that’s out of the question.

 

 

 

Ok fine. Well why not go unlocked and get the 7600K?

 

I considered this, but with an H110 “pro” oriented board, any possibility of overclocking is pretty much out the window, and I don’t want to buy a Z series board just to get an extra few hundred MHz. Not to mention I’d have to go source a quality air cooler and who knows how abused the average 7600K is on ebay, for someone willing to sell it for cheap. The simple fact is the 7600 is much less desirable because most people upgrading their PC are looking for the 7600K or the 7700K to maximize their performance potential at the expense of CPU price. This in turn makes it more desirable for my plex project, because CPUs like the 7600 are what typically get forgotten, or sold off after a more ambitious upgrade is done. While it would have been nice to have, unless the perfect deal comes up I just don’t think it’s in the cards. Similarly, I don't think I'll find an i7 within the price range I'm willing to spend either.

 

Buy Mode

 

Now I have a baseline plan, let’s go see what’s out on ebay so we can get an idea of the price and…Huh. This is actually a pretty good deal, and it's new!:

 

 

Let’s get this! BUY BUY BUY!

 

Well, that takes care of that, i5-7600 it is. That was easy!

 

 

Part 1 Summary

 

 

We've reached the end of the initial build log post! It's been a long one, so for sanity’s sake let’s lay out our starting system and our plans going forward:

 

Our selected system: 

-          Intel i3 6100

-          MSI H110M motherboard

-          4GB DDR4 RAM

-          5TB Seagate drive (5400? 7200? We’ll find out)

-          3TB WD drive (???RPM as well)

-          64GB SSD boot drive

-          Antec 380-D power supply

 

 

Our upgrade path:

-          Upgrade i3-6100 to i5-7600 for better transcoding

-          Upgrade RAM to 8GB for better multi-stream performance

-          Find a new case – the existing one is ugly and won’t fit next to my TV anyway

-          Get some cabling (because spare cables always seem to disappear whenever I start a new project)

-          Add a TV Tuner for that Plex Pass live DVR function

 

 

With any luck, I’ll have the new processor in hand and a lead on a case in the next update! 

 

Total spent so far:

 

   $145 – i5-7600

+ $86.99 – Hauppage TV Tuner

____________________________

   $231.99 Total Spent

 

 

 

See you next time!

[LienusLateTips]

God this is fun to watch *grabs popcorn*

[Fullmental]

WE HAVE A CASE!!!

 

 

It's something I was able to find after about, oh, SIX HOURS OF SEARCHING all over the place online. I'd like to share some of my struggles with you guys before I reveal what case I wound up with:

 

As you might remember from my first post, the biggest problem  with finding a case was the width and height. At 336 mm (13.25"), there's just barely enough room to cram in an mATX motherboard and have space for top fans. Throw in large rad compatibility or room for a PSU on the top or bottom, and the case gets too tall to fit. Of course, nearly every case out there is designed to hold water cooling components these days, so that made finding a truly compact case that is still readily available and met my needs a real chore.

 

I ultimately wound up going to each case manufacturer's website one by one and clicking on any "cube" style case I could find to see what the dimensions were:

 

First I stopped at NZXT. Unfortunately they were a complete bust. I didn't find a single case that wasn't in a traditional tower design.

 

Next was Fractal Design. I honestly thought I had an option when I saw the Node 804:

 

 

It looked great and had decent features, that is until I saw the case was a mere 8mm too wide at 344mm. EIGHT millimeters, and there was just no room to even take a dremel to the sides to make it thinner. The sides just aren't as forgiving as the top or bottom, where there's usually some extra plastic or rubber feet you can shave down to get the spacing you need. So that was it. Eight millimeters...

 

 

Ouch.

 

SilverStone had some options in the Sugo series, but they all seemed to have most of their cooling on the top and sides, which would make controlling airflow difficult. They also had a very inaccessible drive design which involved brackets that seemed flimsy at best. Since I planned on updating the drives periodically as my media storage needs expand, this wasn't exactly ideal.

 

 

Still, it was the only thing I was able to find as of yet, so I made a note of the Sugo SG10 for $135 - which at least had front and rear fan configuration options - and continued on.

 

Caselabs actually had an option as well, the Bullet BH4:

 

 

Only problem is they're pretty heavily backlogged with 11-12 week lead times and weren't taking new orders. Oh and their case started at $220 and didn't really have any premium options over the SilverStone in stock colors and configurations. So yeah....no.

 

Thermaltake had some cases that fit the width and height pretty well, like the Armor A30i:

 

 

The problem was they were 18 inches in depth, and the shelves I have are 15.5. I honestly didn't expect case depth to be a problem here, but Thermaltake sure proved me wrong!

 

 

Thermaltake also had their Core V21 which is actually a pretty good case for just $60. It's not exactly my first choice in terms of visual design, but I could live with it at least. Just one problem: while the height was exactly 336mm (which may or may not include the feet? I couldn't tell), the depth was - you guessed it! - more than 15.5":

 

 

Thermaltake, why do you have to tease me like this?

 

Anyway, on to the next manufactuer...who's even left? Antec didn't have anything, Cooler Master didn't have anything, and Rosewill didn't have enough info on their site for me to even tell if their cases would meet my needs. Lian Li had an option in the PC-V351, but something seemed off about their physical dimensions based on what they were claiming fit inside, and the only one I could find that had returns (just in case) was a used listing on Amazon for $450(!). Yeah, so that was out.

 

Wait, what about Corsair?

 

Yes, it was then - after no less than nine other case manufacturers - that I finally remembered Corsair. I can't believe it took me that long - my main rig is in a 330R Titanium after all!

 

To be honest, I didn't even remember to check their site until I got an email notification on an unrelated RMA ticket I have for my RGB STRAFE keyboard (bad LEDs on some keys). Glad I checked though, because that's when I came across the Carbide Air 240:

 

 

 

This case is PERFECTLY SIZED for what I need! No really, the depth is within 5mm of my shelf's depth: 

 

 

3.3mm of overhang? I'll take that. Let's double check the features list to make sure it ticks all the boxes:

 

✔ The Carbide Air 240 comes in black and doesn't look bad in the living room, if a little bulky.

 

✔ The Carbide Air 240 has three 3.5" drive bays and three 2.5" drive bays. The three 3.5" bays are easily accessible, and all drive bays use the same tool-free trays I love on my 330R. In theory I could jam three 12TB drives in the back and two 5TB drives in the top without even touching the boot drive - that's 46TB of storage potential! (Not that I'm looking to spend $1500 on hard drives any time soon)

 

✔ The Carbide Air 240 has room for no less than 5 120mm fans and 2 80mm fans. There will be no shortage of airflow options for this always-on PC.

 

✔  The Carbide Air 240 is affordable. It was found on Amazon in like new condition, with only packaging damage and with free one day shipping - for $65.

 

✔ I'll say that again: 65 DOLLARS

 

✔ HELL YES

 

 ✔ BOUGHT

 

✔ DELIVERED

 

✔ FITS:

 

 

I think I won big today in terms of value for money, and I'm really glad I didn't jump on that SilverStone option when I first saw it.

 

Granted, now I have to go source two 80mm fans that are as quiet as possible. Those are the only size fans that will fit on the rear of the case, and I don't want the only exhaust fan to be pointing upwards where there's very little room for airflow in that direction. I also don't want the fan blowing hot air out the front when all the other consoles, speakers, and the TV tends to cause heat to pool in the back of the entertainment center. First world problems, I suppose.

 

 

I considered cannibalizing one or both CPU cooling fans from the XPS systems, but those have 6 years of use and aren't particularly quiet, so I just bit the bullet and ordered two Noctua fans instead:

 

 

 

 

 

Also, as seen in the photo we got the i5-7600 in! I was also able to locate a few extra SATA cables so there's no need to buy any more of those. I also have some extra Noctua NT-H1 thermal paste lying around. It's unopened because I bought it when I got their NH-D15 for my main rig, and didn't realize that came with it's own thermal paste. So that's cool, free premium thermal paste means we don't have to use Intel's crappy solution on their stock cooler!

 

Speaking of coolers, I considered buying a low profile cooler to replace the stock one, but since the 7600 can't be overclocked I think I'm going to wait and see what the temps are like first. It might not need anything more, and that'll save me $30 or so.

 

 

So now I'm just waiting on the TV tuner (which should arrive tomorrow) and then I can get started moving everything into the new case! With any luck all I need to buy now is an extra RAM stick at some point, which will probably run me $45 or so. I have to track down the same model I have first, don't want to be mixing those...

 

Until then let's just update the total: 

 

   $145 - i5-7600

+ $87 - Hauppage TV Tuner

+ $65 - Corsair Carbide Air 240

+ $20 - 2 x Noctua 80mm fan

____________________________

$317 Total Spent

 

 

See you next time!

 

 

 

[pentotark]

That corsair case looks cute on that shelf!

[Fullmental]

1 hour ago, pentotark said:

That corsair case looks cute on that shelf!

I think I would have liked the fractal design 804 on pure aesthetics, but out of the options that fit I think the corsair is one of the best looking ones. I'm also really pleased the actual case looks just as good as the product photos. I remember having some regrets over the Carbide SPEC 01 several years back and this case's design is similarly styled, so I wasn't 100% sure until I saw it in person.

 

It's also a huge bonus the the case isn't littered with lights, meaning it won't be a distraction next to the TV

 

[pentotark]

43 minutes ago, Fullmental said:

I think I would have liked the fractal design 804 on pure aesthetics, but out of the options that fit I think the corsair is one of the best looking ones. I'm also really pleased the actual case looks just as good as the product photos. I remember having some regrets over the Carbide SPEC 01 several years back and this case's design is similarly styled, so I wasn't 100% sure until I saw it in person.

 

It's also a huge bonus the the case isn't littered with lights, meaning it won't be a distraction next to the TV

 

About that, the thermaltake looks much better in person too! I am personally not a fan of fractal small cases, the bigger ones have much more personality and style imho. 
looking forward to see more progress!!

[Fullmental]

2 hours ago, pentotark said:

About that, the thermaltake looks much better in person too! I am personally not a fan of fractal small cases, the bigger ones have much more personality and style imho. 
looking forward to see more progress!!

I think the reason I liked the fractal design case is because it has the sleek brushed aluminum look with a simple design aesthetic. I'm a sucker for that sort of stuff, to be honest it's why I have a 330R Titanium on my main system. It looks like a premium no-nonsense product at first glance.

[Fullmental]

I've got an update for this! No case transfer log yet, but we did receive our 80mm fans from Noctua. It turns out they're the gray entry level ones and not the premium models, but eh it's okay. They have the same bearing and warranty so it should be fine, and to be honest they match the black case a little better anyway:

 

 

 

The TV tuner on the other hand...I ordered the quad tuner variant but received a dual tuner instead. Great job, Amazon!

 

So the build is currently delayed while I get that sorted out, with any luck the replacement will be the correct model, and it should be here tomorrow.

 

I'm also going to be doing some baseline testing with the i3 before the new processor is put in. I'm open to suggestions on this! I would like to get a good idea of the relative performance gain I'll be getting with the new CPU, so I'm going to run some Handbrake and Plex workloads to see what the limits of the system are, as well as a 7-Zip compression/decompression workload for good measure. If you have any suggestions for specific tests or methods of testing, please feel free to chime in but keep in mind these systems are running Ubuntu Server - no Windows OS!

 

This will be done tomorrow regardless of the status of the TV tuner, since that's mostly limited by hard drive speed for recording and not CPU performance. Here's the plan so far, and I'll also be comparing the system to my i7-7700K, i7-2600, and my Xeon E5530 that's currently in my PowerEdge server as well (Have some dual xeon X5675s ordered for it, but that'll be a separate build log):

 

HandBrakeCLI encode test (Veryslow encoder preset, 1 animation and 1 film file)

7-Zip archive and extract times

Plex Transcoding - max concurrent streams @ 1080p compressed and uncompressed

Plex Directstream - max concurrent streams @ 1080p compressed and uncompressed

 

I was also considering CineBench but unfortunately it does not run natively in linux, and I can't spend several days installing Windows onto my servers just to do that test, plus it really won't be much different than existing scores online. Regardless, the test results here will tell you what sort of real-world gain we'll get with the processor upgrade and how it compares to some of the other systems I have lying around. In case the CPU change was not worth it for any reason, at least the rest of you will know about it!

 

Finally, I will be doing the case transfer and processor install in video form as well as in a post! So you can look forward to that in addition to the written log later this week.

[pentotark]

2 hours ago, Fullmental said:

It turns out they're the gray entry level ones and not the premium models, but eh it's okay. They have the same bearing and warranty so it should be fine, and to be honest they match the black case a little better anyway:

These grey fans are exactly the same quality as the browns. What you don't pay with these are the split, extension cable and all the other accessories the other comes with. Enjoy your Noctuas! ^^

[Fullmental]

1 hour ago, pentotark said:

These grey fans are exactly the same quality as the browns. What you don't pay with these are the split, extension cable and all the other accessories the other comes with. Enjoy your Noctuas! ^^

That's good to hear! I certainly won't need to get the others then, those extra adapters and cables aren't really necessary.

[2FA]

In my personal experience, making use of QuickSync ruins the visual quality.

[Fred Castellum]

Sorry kinda off topic but, you found Log Horizon S2 good enough to buy the blu-ray? o.0

[Fullmental]

23 minutes ago, 2FA said:

In my personal experience, making use of QuickSync ruins the visual quality.

With what cpu? I found quicksync was awful on sandy bridge, but it seemed fine to me on kaby lake. That said I'm also a little more tolerant of compression than most. I don't need perfection, just "very good" quality.

 

7 minutes ago, MyInnerFred said:

Sorry kinda off topic but, you found Log Horizon S2 good enough to buy the blu-ray? o.0

I was a little disappointed to be honest. I bought it automatically after enjoying S1. But then again I always buy a whole series, I just can't not buy a season or two. If I commit to a franchise, I try to get as much as I can. The only exceptions are OVAs/PVAs and some movie series.

[2FA]

2 minutes ago, Fullmental said:

With what cpu? I found quicksync was awful on sandy bridge, but it seemed fine to me on kaby lake. That said I'm also a little more tolerant of compression than most. I don't need perfection, just "very good" quality.

G3258 so Haswell. The compression is very noticeable in action scenes with lots of movement.

[Fullmental]

3 minutes ago, 2FA said:

G3258 so Haswell. The compression is very noticeable in action scenes with lots of movement.

Noted. I'll have to do some comparison testing and see how it works out. Worst case I wind up limited to just concurrent 1080p streams.

 

Now that I think about it, I have a Haswell cpu in my laptop too (4710HQ). Hmm...may as well add that to the comparison testing.