Hello from PA: biulding my first NAS/PLEX server

rcnut14

Cadet
Joined
May 1, 2023
Messages
1
Hello! I am an enthusiast from Lancaster PA. My goal started out to simply get rid of things like Icloud, and after a discussion with a colleague in IT about TrueNAS and all the other things you can do with it, am now planning on running PLEX as well as a VM or two. would like to be able to transcode 4k video if needed

If ya'll don't mind, I would appreciate it if you could sanity-check my current build list I'd appreciate it!

Case: I have a home studio with plenty of rack space, so I'd really like to go rackmount. However, my goal is to not be too loud, and I also don't want to be paying 150$ in additional electric lol. So for that reason I was planning on building my own server VS. just buying a refurb'd Dell or something. I'm thinking something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Rosewill-Chassis-Support-Rackmount-RSV-L4412U/dp/B097Y25FGK?th=1

MOBO: I'm thinking X11SSM-F
CPU: this is where I could use some input: do I go Pentium 4400/4600/5500, or do I go i3 6300/8300?
Ram: ECC, of course,prolly gonna start with 16GB and if I need more I'll still have plenty of room
Power supply: haven't done the numbers, but a seasonic 80+ gold most likely.
drives: prolly WD red+, will prolly start with 6 drives running raid1, maybe 2tb or 4tb haven't decided yet.

Will this system be good enough for my use case? Will I need a GPU for transcoding? approximately what will power draw look like?

thanks in advance! this forum has already been so helpful.
 

awakewere

Cadet
Joined
May 13, 2023
Messages
2
Hello! I am an enthusiast from Lancaster PA. My goal started out to simply get rid of things like Icloud, and after a discussion with a colleague in IT about TrueNAS and all the other things you can do with it, am now planning on running PLEX as well as a VM or two. would like to be able to transcode 4k video if needed

If ya'll don't mind, I would appreciate it if you could sanity-check my current build list I'd appreciate it!

Case: I have a home studio with plenty of rack space, so I'd really like to go rackmount. However, my goal is to not be too loud, and I also don't want to be paying 150$ in additional electric lol. So for that reason I was planning on building my own server VS. just buying a refurb'd Dell or something. I'm thinking something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Rosewill-Chassis-Support-Rackmount-RSV-L4412U/dp/B097Y25FGK?th=1

MOBO: I'm thinking X11SSM-F
CPU: this is where I could use some input: do I go Pentium 4400/4600/5500, or do I go i3 6300/8300?
Ram: ECC, of course,prolly gonna start with 16GB and if I need more I'll still have plenty of room
Power supply: haven't done the numbers, but a seasonic 80+ gold most likely.
drives: prolly WD red+, will prolly start with 6 drives running raid1, maybe 2tb or 4tb haven't decided yet.

Will this system be good enough for my use case? Will I need a GPU coreball for transcoding? approximately what will power draw look like?

thanks in advance! this forum has already been so helpful.
Here's a good idea for a start, rcnut14. I'd love to learn more about building a NAS/PLEX server before I can actually get to work. So it would be great if you could update more on the progress here.
 

jgreco

Resident Grinch
Joined
May 29, 2011
Messages
18,681
However, my goal is to not be too loud, and I also don't want to be paying 150$ in additional electric lol.

You seem to have some weird ideas. Rackmount doesn't mean loud or space heater. Sure, you can GET loud or space heater, but doesn't have to be.

The main problem with modern rack mount servers is they are designed to pack ten pounds of crap into a five pound bag, err, chassis. When you have these chassis that have 4-wide-by-3-high LFF HDD's, the airflow for the server must be forced through the teeny spaces in between the drives. That takes energy, creates turbulence and noise in the process. You can get a 4U 24-drive chassis and just put 12 drives in with a checkerboard pattern, which allows you to remove the very high static pressure bulkhead fans and replace them with something quiet. Power supplies are a different problem; you might not want a Supermicro chassis but rather some off brand, because the SM PSU's are relatively tightly integrated and hard to replace.

If you want low electric bills, go for a lower power system. There's lots of interesting X10S, X11S, and Atom stuff out there. Dual sockets and big heavy RDIMM's are a power drag. Just because you've maybe never seen a low power server doesn't mean they don't exist. I have some really nice X10SDV-7TP4F systems in 24-bay SFF chassis that run maybe 100W-125W last I checked.
 

danb35

Hall of Famer
Joined
Aug 16, 2011
Messages
15,466
will prolly start with 6 drives running raid1, maybe 2tb or 4tb haven't decided yet.
Why? Particularly if you're concerned about power consumption, why would you use so many, and so small, disks? Put in a pair of 16-20 TB spinners (the budget way to go is shucking USB external drives) and call it a day. Costs less per TB too. That then reduces your requirements for drive bays, which in turn opens the door to a smaller, quieter, and lower-power-consumption server--I tend to be a fan of the HPE Microservers in this regard.
 

jgreco

Resident Grinch
Joined
May 29, 2011
Messages
18,681
 

artlessknave

Wizard
Joined
Oct 29, 2016
Messages
1,506
on the rosewill, avoid the rosewill rails. scrap metal waste.

I switched to these instead; very similar, but the rosewil rails feel like they will fall apart and dont rackmount into their U, they sag by a centimetre or so, and you cant pull the chassis out for maintaince on the rail, they are too short.

source: I have 3 of the different 4u Rosewills.
 
Top