Check Hardware, and Memory Help

[majerus]

Hey Everyone, I am retiring my old POS FreeNAS box that is from like 2011. The new one I anticipate using for bulk storage, one or two transcoded streams of Plex at a given time, maybe Owncloud, and backing for esxi datastores.

Mobo: SuperMicro MBD-X11SSM-F

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1230 V5 (I think this might be a bit over kill, and honestly wonder if there is a cheaper option. I wish AMD would release officially supported ECC option like Ryzen 3 )

Memory : Having issues sourcing it thinking 1 16gb Dimm.. help here would be awesome . Trying to save a bit so something less then the price of the processor would be great.

Pool -- 1 VDEV 3 4TB ST4000DM005 , and 3 WD 4TB RED WD40EFRX RAIDZ2

Datastore Pool -- 3 VDEV mirror 256 Samsung 850 Pro's OR might just make them all into single vdevs and back it up. I just use them for labs nothing important. (already have the drives sitting doing nothing)

Boot disk -- Have a few cheap V300 SSD nows pretty sure I will use that.

HBA -- Undecided


Powersupply X-650 Seasonic

1 IcyDock 6 in 1 , 2.5"
2 IcyDock 5 x3.5"
1 - 10Gb Chelsio NIC (already own, runs though Quanta LB6M)

 

[Spearfoot]

A Pentium CPU would certainly be cheaper, but wouldn't be able to handle much heavy-duty transcoding. Perhaps a more knowledgeable Plex enthusiast can enlighten us about CPU requirements for no more than two transcoded streams.

Another downside to the Pentiums is that they all come with a built-in graphics processor - something you don't need in a FreeNAS server.

Here is the Intel ARK listing of compatible Pentiums.

You're right about the 16GB RAM being crazy expensive! Crucial lists quite a few compatible memory modules, but they want $780 for 64GB (4x16GB) or $195 for a single 16GB module! Whoa!

 

[Ericloewe]

You're right about the 16GB RAM being crazy expensive! Crucial lists quite a few compatible memory modules, but they want $780 for 64GB (4x16GB) or $195 for a single 16GB module! Whoa!

That's only slightly up from ~1 year ago. There's a DRAM shortage going on and it got even worse in the last month, because Micron (I think it was Micron) had to shut down a fab for repair work, cutting global DRAM output by 5ish percent.

 

[pschatz100]

A Pentium CPU would certainly be cheaper, but wouldn't be able to handle much heavy-duty transcoding. Perhaps a more knowledgeable Plex enthusiast can enlighten us about CPU requirements for no more than two transcoded streams.

For Plex, it really depends upon the material you are transcoding. If your material is DVD quality, encoded with h.264 compression (very common), then you could get away with a Core i3, which would be more capable than a Pentium but still a lot cheaper than the Xeon. If your material is blu-ray quality at h.264, you might get one or two transcoded streams but that would be the max. If you use the latest h.265 compression, then you will need the more powerful processor.
The general rule of thumb for Plex transcoding is that you need a passmark = 2000 or so, per transcoded stream. I found that this is OK for the majority of things, as long as you stay with h.264 compression. For h.265 compression, you would need more like passmark = 5000. I hope this makes sense.

I have a FreeNAS on older Ivy Bridge hardware. I ran just fine with a Core i3 for a couple of years, but recently upgraded the processor to a Xeon E3-1240v2 to handle blu-ray content better.

 

[majerus]

Just bought the dimm.. kinda annoyed but no other choice . Thanks for the help!

 

[Spearfoot]

Just bought the dimm.. kinda annoyed but no other choice . Thanks for the help!

Very good... and, like pork bellies, perhaps the price of RAM will come down in the future and you can upgrade to 64GB without breaking the bank!

 

[wblock]

The Crucial RAM I bought last September for $85 is now $177. And keeps going up.

 

[majerus]

The Crucial RAM I bought last September for $85 is now $177. And keeps going up.

Thats pretty nuts, this stuff should be getting cheaper ;)

 

[Ericloewe]

The Crucial RAM I bought last September for $85 is now $177. And keeps going up.

Wow, that must be the worst case I've heard of so far. DDR3?

 

[wblock]

DDR4, CT16G4WFD8213.

 

[majerus]

Harware should all be here Tuesday, swapped the 1230 v5 for a v6