Wow, this is a lot longer than I wanted it to be, but I want to be detailed with my usage, and current ideas. And I'm new to all this, so I'm out of my element.
I have a desire to replace an aging media "server" (built in January 2011) with something that mainly has more storage capacity, but more power is nice too. I am looking for something that won't be insanely loud, as it will have to be in my office next to my mini-tower PC, and I do work from home -- usually just once a week, but currently all the time (thanks coronavirus). With that in mind, I came across Mr. Slumber's $1000 build which was designed to be fairly quiet.
The box I want to replace is almost exclusively used as a Plex server, so there would be one jail for that. The media I currently have are just DVD rips, so nothing beyond 480p, and it is encoded with either h.264 or h.265. The good news is that internal playback is all been direct play/stream (no transcoding, even the h.265 stuff). Currently, I only have 1 internal stream, on rare occasions it is 2, but I may open up remote access to a friend or two, so I could be looking at 2 internal and 1-2 external streams. I also can't rule out 1080p or 4k content in the future. With the potential for external streams or higher quality content, I think I would rather have Plex create optimized versions of files instead of having to transcode on the fly, especially since storage capacity is going to be increased dramatically over my current capacity of just 2TB.
EDIT - I've decided to build a system similar to @Mr. Slumber, and I've purchasedgot the following components in mind. Does anyone have any thoughts, concerns, or other input?
I'm sure I'll have many more questions, but I don't want to make this even longer. Thank you all in advance!
2nd edit - updated the hardware with what has been purchased. I think my original plans definitely suffered from a foolish "go big" mentality, and while the chassis definitely has more drive bays than I'll need for awhile, I tried to scale things back. HDDs were selected a bit more for noise/power levels rather than capacity or speed, given my current needs & uses.
3rd edit - removed some questions about buying a used server since I decided to build one. Updated the HBA again.
I have a desire to replace an aging media "server" (built in January 2011) with something that mainly has more storage capacity, but more power is nice too. I am looking for something that won't be insanely loud, as it will have to be in my office next to my mini-tower PC, and I do work from home -- usually just once a week, but currently all the time (thanks coronavirus). With that in mind, I came across Mr. Slumber's $1000 build which was designed to be fairly quiet.
The box I want to replace is almost exclusively used as a Plex server, so there would be one jail for that. The media I currently have are just DVD rips, so nothing beyond 480p, and it is encoded with either h.264 or h.265. The good news is that internal playback is all been direct play/stream (no transcoding, even the h.265 stuff). Currently, I only have 1 internal stream, on rare occasions it is 2, but I may open up remote access to a friend or two, so I could be looking at 2 internal and 1-2 external streams. I also can't rule out 1080p or 4k content in the future. With the potential for external streams or higher quality content, I think I would rather have Plex create optimized versions of files instead of having to transcode on the fly, especially since storage capacity is going to be increased dramatically over my current capacity of just 2TB.
EDIT - I've decided to build a system similar to @Mr. Slumber, and I've purchased
- Case: Supermicro CSE-836BE16-R920B via eBay - 3U, 16 front 3.5" hot swap bays, 2 rear 2.5" hot swap bays, dual 920W Super Quiet PSUs, SAS2 expander backplane, and the SFF cable too. For $300, seemed like a fair price. The $92 shipping sucked though.
Norco RPC-470- 4U, 10 internal 3.5" bays, 3 external 5.25" bays, 2 front & 4 middle fans. I'm not sure I need hot-swap bays at this time. At least I'm hoping I won't need to swap drives any time soon. - Motherboard: Supermicro X11SCL-F (from Newegg)- not much to say here.
- CPU: Intel Core i3-9100F from Amazon - Yes, I'm well aware of the fact that it does not have an iGPU, and I'm fine with that. 99% of my movies will not need transcoding. Anything I add in the future that won't stream natively, I will have Plex create an optimized version.
Intel Core i3-9100 or i3-9300 (Newegg again) - I don't care about transcoding right now, so I acknowledge the integrated GPU won't be available for that. - RAM: Hynix 32GB ECC DDR4 x2 from Supermicro directly. Decided to just hit the i3's RAM limit now while it is readily available.
Supermicro 16GB ECC DDR4 (x2)- I'll probably get it from Newegg when ordering the mobo & CPU. - PSU: Redundant Supermicro 920W super quiets, came with the chassis.
Corsair HX1200- 80+ Platinum, should be fairly quiet, and I've had good luck with the Corsair in my old box. - HBA: Supermicro AOC-S2308-L8i. Needs flashed to IT mode though.
LSI SAS 9207-8ifrom eBay.I know I'm just using spinning platters, but I hoped that in the future if I expand the drive pool it might be beneficial to have a PCI 3.0 card.Dell H310from eBay - supposedly pre-flashed to IT mode, seems like a popular choice. - Boot drive: 2 Innodisk SATADOM-ML 3SE Series 64GB from eBay - yes, much larger than I'll need, but it is only $25.
- Storage drives: Seagate Ironwolf 4TB x6 from Amazon. They were about $25/TB, and I'm moving up from having only 2TB (before formatting even!) so for now that will be more than adequete, even giving up 1/3 of the capacity by using RAIDZ2.
- There may be some fan replacements in the case and on the CPU. I'll evaluate things once assembled, and go from there - Noctua seems to be a popular option for low-noise fans.
I'm sure I'll have many more questions, but I don't want to make this even longer. Thank you all in advance!
2nd edit - updated the hardware with what has been purchased. I think my original plans definitely suffered from a foolish "go big" mentality, and while the chassis definitely has more drive bays than I'll need for awhile, I tried to scale things back. HDDs were selected a bit more for noise/power levels rather than capacity or speed, given my current needs & uses.
3rd edit - removed some questions about buying a used server since I decided to build one. Updated the HBA again.
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