New AMD Based NAS

[Tabmowtez]

Hi,

I'm tossing up between an AMD based or Intel based system to replace my current NAS.
For my AMD setup, this is what I am thinking:

Fractal Design Node 804 Black Micro ATX Case

Corsair CV550 550W Bronze Power Supply

Gigabyte B550M DS3H Motherboard

AMD Ryzen 5 3600

Kingston 16GB 2666MHz ECC Unbuffered DDR4 x 2

Seagate IronWolf NAS 8TB HDD, ST8000VN004 x 8

Western Digital WD Green 120GB M.2 SATA SSD x 2

I have a LSI SAS9220-8i HBA which I will flash to IT mode for the 8 disks, the boot disks will be mirrored connected to the onboard controller.
It's mainly for Plex media, a Linux VM or two and some jails. I want something that will last me a while but also don't want to break the brank.
What do people think of this setup? Also there is some uncertainty around ECC and the AMD chipsets/boards but from what I've read this should be supported.
Anyone else have something similar and can comment?

Thanks,
Terry

 

[jayecin]

I just built a similar system for similar reasons. I had a lot of debating between AMD or Intel. The Ryzen series is a great powerhouse for the money, I just upgraded my main rig from a 3700x to a 5800x, so i figured I would just use the 3700x in my NAS build. It ended up coming down to Plex and FreeBSD to make my decision. Intel CPUs support hardware x264 and x265 encoding, AMD doesnt even include an iGPU so you will need to add a discrete GPU to the system and price. I also feel Intel CPUs virtualize better as they have been king for many years in that world. I currently run 3 VMs, a Linux box, Windows 10 and Windows Server 2012 R2, no issues with any of them. I also run about 5-6 jails, one of which is my Plex server. Im happy with the system and dont regret not going AMD.

 

[Tabmowtez]

That's interesting, either way I wouldn't have chosen an iGPU on either AMD or Intel so I don't think I'm really missing out there. I think the extra cores on the AMD CPU might ultimately win out anyway if I'm transcoding on the fly for example. Most of my media will be playing as-is so it's not really a problem anyway for me I don't think.

 

[jayecin]

Yeah should be fine then, my i7 right now cant use hardware transcoding (freeBSD, Plex limitation) but its coming. Ive watched the CPU transcoding a 4k to 1080p and it will use about 60-70% at the start to get a buffer, then it uses around 10-30%.

 

[Tabmowtez]

The more that I think about it now I keep flipping back to the Intel solution. A big reason is IPMI on the server motherboard. Allows me to not have any GPU but gives me console access when needed. Not sure if there is any AMD consumer solution for that...

 

[jayecin]

yeah that what I was saying, the AMD doesnt have an igpu for its desktop processors. The mobile ones have an igpu and its a really good one but good luck finding one, but if you use an AMD cpu, you will need a discrete/dedicated GPU for the setup and anytime you want to access the console for things like upgrades. Plus like i said, Intels virtualize better, one of the main reasons AMD isnt being widely adopted in the server market yet despite having way higher processing power at a way lower wattage is because a lot of virtualization technology just doesnt work on AMD as well as it does Intel.