Unraid NAS Plex Server thats 4k capable.

[phil.kinnison]

Hello,

 

I'm looking at getting into a plex server! I currently have a media pc that is just a old dell optiplex 990 with a core i5 vpro and I upgraded to a 128gb SSD and Nvidia GT710 for better video playback and general speed. I have considered just hooking up a separate NAS unit to it and have that PC run as the plex server. I would like to be able to do 4k playback at some point on this media pc once I upgrade my 65" tv to 4k and I don't that current PC can even output 4K with that 710 GPU  I've seen Linus's gaming unraid Nas build and its really cool. That is probably a little overkill for what I'm looking to do. My goals are to have a hot swap 4-6 bay Hard drive array. Have redundancy. Hopefully all in one tower like in the gaming rig video. Be able to support 4-6 trans coded streams at the same time ( not all at 4K at the same time) Still be able to use as a 4K media PC for my main home theater. Has anyone made a build like this for themselves? If so could you share what you used. Or anyone know of where I can something pre built? I could build myself also.  Looking to spend maybe only around 1000 to 1200 for everything with at least 2-3 drives to start of with. Need to also have a blu ray drive to ripping my physical media in to the NAS for plex. Thanks for your guys help in advance!

[jsonschema]

4 minutes ago, phil.kinnison said:

Hello,

 

I'm looking at getting into a plex server! I currently have a media pc that is just a old dell optiplex 990 with a core i5 vpro and I upgraded to a 128gb SSD and Nvidia GT710 for better video playback and general speed. I have considered just hooking up a separate NAS unit to it and have that PC run as the plex server. I would like to be able to do 4k playback at some point on this media pc once I upgrade my 65" tv to 4k and I don't that current PC can even output 4K with that 710 GPU  I've seen Linus's gaming unraid Nas build and its really cool. That is probably a little overkill for what I'm looking to do. My goals are to have a hot swap 4-6 bay Hard drive array. Have redundancy. Hopefully all in one tower like in the gaming rig video. Be able to support 4-6 trans coded streams at the same time ( not all at 4K at the same time) Still be able to use as a 4K media PC for my main home theater. Has anyone made a build like this for themselves? If so could you share what you used. Or anyone know of where I can something pre built? I could build myself also.  Looking to spend maybe only around 1000 to 1200 for everything with at least 2-3 drives to start of with. Need to also have a blu ray drive to ripping my physical media in to the NAS for plex. Thanks for your guys help in advance!

the actual built aside you are gonna need a server case for hdd array,there is no matx or atx case currently that has inbuilt hot swap bay's for 2+ drives,you can get a 5.2 bay hot swap enclosure though from aliexpress. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Do you mind used?

 

How about something like this https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-PowerEdge-R720XD-Server-2x-E5-2620-2-0GHz-12-Cores-16GB-H710-2x-Trays/173601986963?hash=item286b7c1993:g:gL4AAOSwu3dbzdz9:rk:2:pf:0

 

Get faster cpus if you need more power(or add a gpu). You probably don't want unraid here, id get a linux distro like debian and just use the hardware raid.

 

 

[phil.kinnison]

I do not mind used but I am avoiding getting a rack mount server style. I want to be able to have a decent looking tower next to my home theater. I noticed the Linus used a pre made Storage enclosure and put that into the Tower. 

 

I am looking at doing the similar tower and HDD enclosure he did in the video. 

 

Drive array: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA62V5DB1568&ignorebbr=1&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleMKP-PC&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleMKP-PC-_-pla-VirVentures-_-HL+-+Home+Accents-_-9SIA62V5DB1568&gclid=Cj0KCQiA_s7fBRDrARIsAGEvF8QbgXJ-gH5lSZumwemub7ifzxKedV3oXAt8L3_SuG99sOjvRBbh2tUaAlLbEALw_wcB

 

Case: https://www.amazon.com/SilverStone-Computer-Aluminum-Unibody-TJ11-BW/dp/B0078ZZ2FI?th=1

 

This should allow the Hot swap drives Im looking for plus an extra slot for the BluRay drive.

 

So I guess im just more curious at what CPU, Motherboard, and GPU would support Unraid and 4K video playback as a media PC

[phil.kinnison]

Would this build support Unraid? It has the case im wanting with the execption of the HDD hot swap bay that i'm gonna add.  This has the processing i want to do up to about 6 streams at a time with plex server. Also should be able to output 4k pretty well. Just didn't know what requirements im looking for in the mother board to support unraid.

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Type	Item	Price
CPU	Intel - Core i7-6700K 4 GHz Quad-Core Processor	$299.89 @ OutletPC
CPU Cooler	Cooler Master - Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler	$19.99 @ Newegg
Motherboard	ASRock - Z170 Extreme7+ ATX LGA1151 Motherboard	$79.99 @ Newegg
Memory	Team - Vulcan 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-2666 Memory	$97.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Samsung - 860 Evo 500 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive	$72.99 @ Amazon
Video Card	EVGA - GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4 GB ACX 2.0 Video Card	$149.89 @ OutletPC
Case	Silverstone - Temjin SST-TJ04B-E (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case	$161.71 @ Amazon
Power Supply	Corsair - RMx (2018) 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply	$49.99 @ Newegg
Optical Drive	Asus - BW-14D1XT Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer	$119.98 @ OutletPC
Operating System	Microsoft - Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit	$98.89 @ OutletPC
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total (before mail-in rebates)	$1221.31
	Mail-in rebates	-$70.00
	Total	$1151.31
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-11-20 15:13 EST-0500

 

[bcredeur97]

im using a 3960X @ 4.3GHz for mine and it'll do 1 4K h.265 transcoded movie just fine

 

just in case you need something to reference off of. I used to use a 3570K but that wasn't quite enough, the two extra cores help a lot

[phil.kinnison]

3 minutes ago, bcredeur97 said:

im using a 3960X for mine and it'll do 1 4K h.265 transcoded movie just fine

 

just in case you need something to reference off of. I used to use a 3570K but that wasn't quite enough.

That probably would be a bit overkill for my needs. Im sure I'll only be transcode 1 4k stream at a time and it'll outputing from this system. I just need to know if this asrock Mobo supports virtualization

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 hour ago, phil.kinnison said:

Would this build support Unraid? It has the case im wanting with the execption of the HDD hot swap bay that i'm gonna add.  This has the processing i want to do up to about 6 streams at a time with plex server. Also should be able to output 4k pretty well. Just didn't know what requirements im looking for in the mother board to support unraid.

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Type	Item	Price
CPU	Intel - Core i7-6700K 4 GHz Quad-Core Processor	$299.89 @ OutletPC
CPU Cooler	Cooler Master - Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler	$19.99 @ Newegg
Motherboard	ASRock - Z170 Extreme7+ ATX LGA1151 Motherboard	$79.99 @ Newegg
Memory	Team - Vulcan 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-2666 Memory	$97.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Samsung - 860 Evo 500 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive	$72.99 @ Amazon
Video Card	EVGA - GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4 GB ACX 2.0 Video Card	$149.89 @ OutletPC
Case	Silverstone - Temjin SST-TJ04B-E (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case	$161.71 @ Amazon
Power Supply	Corsair - RMx (2018) 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply	$49.99 @ Newegg
Optical Drive	Asus - BW-14D1XT Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer	$119.98 @ OutletPC
Operating System	Microsoft - Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit	$98.89 @ OutletPC
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total (before mail-in rebates)	$1221.31
	Mail-in rebates	-$70.00
	Total	$1151.31
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-11-20 15:13 EST-0500

 

Yea that will work, but its a very werid spec.

 

The 6700k is old and slower, why did you pick it?

 

why the 1050ti? If you want nvenc get the 1050, it will be the same, otherwise, you don't need . a gpu.

 

 

[phil.kinnison]

6 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Yea that will work, but its a very werid spec.

 

The 6700k is old and slower, why did you pick it?

 

why the 1050ti? If you want nvenc get the 1050, it will be the same, otherwise, you don't need . a gpu.

 

 

Trying to keep this around $1200 I was just using what fit in this mobo assuming it would handle Unraid. The 1050ti is for the media pc side of this rig running as vm. Wanting to have 4k at 10bit that GPU should be good. Anything lower than that it may not run 4k playback as well. If you know of a newer mobo that has dual ethernet and virtualization support and a good processor for handling 4-6 streams using plex. I'd love to hear it! 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, phil.kinnison said:

Trying to keep this around $1200 I was just using what fit in this mobo assuming it would handle Unraid. The 1050ti is for the media pc side of this rig running as vm. Wanting to have 4k at 10bit that GPU should be good. Anything lower than that it may not run 4k playback as well. If you know of a newer mobo that has dual ethernet and virtualization support and a good processor for handling 4-6 streams using plex. I'd love to hear it! 

Why run a vm here? Just run windows on the host and run it all in windows, that would be simpler and work better here.

 

For cpu how about a 2700x, much faster and cheaper. a 1030 should work fine for a gpu.

 

Why do you need dual ethernet?

[phil.kinnison]

This is going to be a NAS setup as well. I wanted to use this machine as a NAS Plex server and a 4k media pc for my main home theater. I have 3 other tvs elsewhere in the house plus our mobile devices. I wanted to be able to run the media pc and if someone streaming from somewhere else the NAS plex server wont bog down the media pc. So I wanted to be able deligate more cores to the plex server and use a dedicated GPU for the media PC. This seemed like I would be able to have more streams at once and use this pc for video streaming at the same time. If i was just making it a Plex server with a NAS I wouldn't care about the gpu and using Unraid. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, phil.kinnison said:

This is going to be a NAS setup as well. I wanted to use this machine as a NAS Plex server and a 4k media pc for my main home theater. I have 3 other tvs elsewhere in the house plus our mobile devices. I wanted to be able to run the media pc and if someone streaming from somewhere else the NAS plex server wont bog down the media pc. So I wanted to be able deligate more cores to the plex server and use a dedicated GPU for the media PC. This seemed like I would be able to have more streams at once and use this pc for video streaming at the same time. If i was just making it a Plex server with a NAS I wouldn't care about the gpu and using Unraid. 

You can use windows as a nas and it works well, having vms just seems to make this more complicated than it needs to be.

 

Cores don't really split like that, vms only use how much cpu power they need. 

 

Id just put windows on the box and setup network shares, and use storage spaces to manage disks(it alows mixed drive raid and adding just one disk).

[phil.kinnison]

I read somewhere that Nvidia recommends a 1050 with at least 4gb of  vram to run 4k playback. Unless this is just Nvidia trying to upsell people

 

[phil.kinnison]

Here is a updated list with ryzen build went a little cheaper on CPU to get a nicer mobo.

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD - Ryzen 7 1700X 3.4 GHz 8-Core Processor	$149.99 @ Newegg
CPU Cooler	Cooler Master - Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler	$19.99 @ Newegg
Motherboard	ASRock - Fatal1ty X370 Professional Gaming ATX AM4 Motherboard	$193.88 @ OutletPC
Memory	Team - Vulcan 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-2666 Memory	$97.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Samsung - 860 Evo 500 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive	$72.99 @ Amazon
Video Card	EVGA - GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4 GB ACX 2.0 Video Card	$149.89 @ OutletPC
Case	Silverstone - Temjin SST-TJ04B-E (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case	$161.71 @ Amazon
Power Supply	Corsair - RMx (2018) 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply	$49.99 @ Newegg
Optical Drive	Asus - BW-14D1XT Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer	$119.98 @ OutletPC
Operating System	Microsoft - Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit	$98.89 @ OutletPC
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total (before mail-in rebates)	$1205.30
	Mail-in rebates	-$90.00
	Total	$1115.30
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-11-20 16:53 EST-0500

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 hour ago, phil.kinnison said:

Here is a updated list with ryzen build went a little cheaper on CPU to get a nicer mobo.

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD - Ryzen 7 1700X 3.4 GHz 8-Core Processor	$149.99 @ Newegg
CPU Cooler	Cooler Master - Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler	$19.99 @ Newegg
Motherboard	ASRock - Fatal1ty X370 Professional Gaming ATX AM4 Motherboard	$193.88 @ OutletPC
Memory	Team - Vulcan 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-2666 Memory	$97.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Samsung - 860 Evo 500 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive	$72.99 @ Amazon
Video Card	EVGA - GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4 GB ACX 2.0 Video Card	$149.89 @ OutletPC
Case	Silverstone - Temjin SST-TJ04B-E (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case	$161.71 @ Amazon
Power Supply	Corsair - RMx (2018) 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply	$49.99 @ Newegg
Optical Drive	Asus - BW-14D1XT Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer	$119.98 @ OutletPC
Operating System	Microsoft - Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit	$98.89 @ OutletPC
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total (before mail-in rebates)	$1205.30
	Mail-in rebates	-$90.00
	Total	$1115.30
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-11-20 16:53 EST-0500

 

Boarad seems a bit overkill.

 

Id get high speed ram if you want to best performance.

 

WHy the 1050ti? If you just want to play back video a 1030 is fine.

[phil.kinnison]

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Boarad seems a bit overkill.

 

Id get high speed ram if you want to best performance.

 

WHy the 1050ti? If you just want to play back video a 1030 is fine.

Even 4k video playback?

[AbsoluteFool]

@Electronics Wizardy He mentioned he wanted Bluray player. My knowledge with those and Unraid is none-existant. Maybe you have some information for him here? If he choses to go with UnRaid of course.

 

@phil.kinnison I'm very sure that Plex can't use a GPU for transcoding unless you have a processor that support Intel QuickSync. Something to look into.

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

5 hours ago, phil.kinnison said:

Even 4k video playback?

Yep the 1030 will be plenty fast. The gpu has a dedicated decoder for video, and any modern gpu will be fine. It won't use the normal core for this.

 

4 hours ago, AbsoluteFool said:

He mentioned he wanted Bluray player. My knowledge with those and Unraid is none-existant. Maybe you have some information for him here? If he choses to go with UnRaid of course.

You can passthrough the bluray drive to a vm, or run ripping software on unraid, its just anouther linux distro.

 

4 hours ago, AbsoluteFool said:

I'm very sure that Plex can't use a GPU for transcoding unless you have a processor that support Intel QuickSync. Something to look into.

You can also use nvenc