PMS 4.0...PMS 5.0...PMS 6.0...No PMS 7.0! Plex/Storage server upgrade [PICS]

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Ixian

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Oct 26, 2018
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Awesome! Let us know how it all turns out.

Here's some pics of both of mine for reference:

IMG_2567 - Copy.jpg

This is with the i4 cooler I recommended for you. Also on a 2680v3. That's a x540 Nic and the DC3700 populating the slots, plus a M.2 Evo I use for application cache, etc.

IMG_2544 - Copy.jpg

This is an early pic of my D-1541 based server, showing one of the two extra drive slots on the motherboard side filled. 2 3.5 drives would be a tight fit but work. Dual 2.5 SSDs would fit easily. This of course is in addition to the 2 you can put behind the front panel. If you've got the ports, the 804 can easily hold, and cool, 10 3.5/2.5 drives + 2 2.5 drives. And whatever M2 slots you have of course.

IMG_20181217_101035 - Copy.jpg

Finally, a shot of the 804 next to a Supermicro 745 (essentially a 4u rack mount converted to a freestanding case) and the Silverstone CS380. I returned the latter - even after modding airflow was crap compared to the 804, and it's just a cheap feeling case in general. The 804 is not only cheaper than it but better built. You lose hot-swap but, who cares, the 804 makes replacing drives almost as easy.

The 745 is really nice, I use it as my test bed/homelab server, with dual Xeons. It is built like a tank and pretty large, also not the quietest even with the SQ fans/power supply like I have.
 
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IamSpartacus

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Mar 14, 2016
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I've gone back and forth so many times in terms of looking for a hot swappable case and if I could find a short depth one that could fit 10+ 3.5" drives I'd probably go for it but every time I look for one and fail and stick with the Node I do come to the realization that hot swap is really not necessary at all.

Quick question about your fan configuration. I see you have 2 instakes and one exhaust in the motherboard area, do you have the same two intakes in the HDD area or just one intake and one exhaust there? Trying to maximize my cooling since I'm upping the CPU TDP quite a bit.
 

Laugh|nGMan

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Nov 27, 2012
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Short depth.....maybe you should go with multiple nodes Dell Precision 3930 Rack + Proxmox :) kinda on expensive side such a combo. hehe.
Pitty, but there no room for Mellanox 100GBE+nVIDIA Quadro P600/1000+couple of nVIDIA P4000 in SLI. Not enough slots for all cards :-(



Or lets wait for Ice Lake with Golden Cove larger/wider cache....end of 2020/begining of 2021 with 8ch DDR4 memory 2933MHz, PCIe4.0, if we are lucky, maybe one slot with PCIe5.0 for low latency storage (ST perf, New ISA Sacalability improvment, Cahce redesign, new transistor optimization 10nm, AI perf, Security features)
 
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IamSpartacus

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Mar 14, 2016
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Short depth.....maybe you should go with multiple nodes Dell Precision 3930 Rack + Proxmox :) kinda on expensive side such a combo. hehe.
Pitty, but there no room for Mellanox 100GBE+nVIDIA Quadro P600/1000+couple of nVIDIA P4000 in SLI. Not enough slots for all cards :-(

I guess you missed the need for 10+ 3.5" HDDs :D.
 

Ixian

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Oct 26, 2018
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I do come to the realization that hot swap is really not necessary at all.
It really isn't, not at the smaller end of drive density. Large numbers of drives, sure, for density/serviceability reasons, you'll need it, but in the 4/6/8/12 drive range, not so much. And with current case options in that range there are lots of tradeoffs for hotswap - cost, cooling, and so on - in exchange for...not much. Slightly more convenient to exchange drives. You may not have to take the server offline for a few minutes. Big deal.

Quick question about your fan configuration. I see you have 2 instakes and one exhaust in the motherboard area, do you have the same two intakes in the HDD area or just one intake and one exhaust there? Trying to maximize my cooling since I'm upping the CPU TDP quite a bit.
Just 1:1 on the HDD side, that's all you need. There is room for a lower intake but it'll be blocked by the power supply & cables, and also doesn't really do anything there. The two fans up top in a push/pull are all you need to cool the drive cages.

Motherboard side is a different story - there should be nothing blocking the lower intake, and it has a useful role in blowing cool air over your PCI slots/etc. If you have NVMe + 10GB cards it's a must.
 

IamSpartacus

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Just 1:1 on the HDD side, that's all you need. There is room for a lower intake but it'll be blocked by the power supply & cables, and also doesn't really do anything there. The two fans up top in a push/pull are all you need to cool the drive cages.

Motherboard side is a different story - there should be nothing blocking the lower intake, and it has a useful role in blowing cool air over your PCI slots/etc. If you have NVMe + 10GB cards it's a must.

Yea I have 1:1 on the HDD now so that's good to know that adding a second lower intake isn't necessary. I am definitely going to add a lower intake on the motherboard side though since I'll have the two Optanes, dual SFP+ card, and the dual NVMe slot AOC.
 

IamSpartacus

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Mar 14, 2016
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So yesterday I jumped on a deal to pickup four Samsung 950 Pro 512GB NVMe M.2 SSDs for $350. Being that I was looking at two 860 Evos for $85 each, this seemed like a solid deal.

The plan now is to limit transcoding by using some Optimized versions of the latest TV episodes and Movies added to Plex and store them on a BTRFS RAID10 pool of these drives. Keeping all my most recently added media in direct play compatible formats on fast storage should help take some load of my server and improve the user experience.
 
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IamSpartacus

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Mar 14, 2016
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Ok, completed most of my upgrade yesterday. Still waiting on the quad M.2 card so I can install the four 950 Pros but I can do that this weekend. Here are a few before and after shots. I have to say I really am amazed at how much you can cram into a Node 804. I still have room for two 7.5mm SSD's in the front panel of the case (though I only have a single spare SATA port since the M.2 slot is shared with SATA0).

@Ixian Thanks again for pushing me towards the E5 v3 route. I'm amazed at how cool the Noctua keeps the E5. Idles in the low 30C's and loads in the high 30's low 40's.

BEFORE





AFTER





 
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shanehm2

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Jan 12, 2018
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Unrelated but just to let you know unRAID now has a NVIDIA update where you can take advantage of encoding with NVIDIA cards in PLEX for Hardware acceleration
 
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IamSpartacus

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Unrelated but just to let you know unRAID now has a NVIDIA update where you can take advantage of encoding with NVIDIA cards in PLEX for Hardware acceleration
I'm aware though Plex still doesnt support both encode and decode in Linux. I'm happy with the route I took. With the Optimkzed Versions I'm using on super fast storage I'm seeing very little transcoding being done on my system now.

The only thing I'd be curious about hardware transcoding is how fast it can do background transcodes. That process is single threaded so I'd be curious on that front.
 

workingnonstop

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Feb 24, 2016
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Funny - I saw your post on Reddit but couldn't get it to load ("Loading..."). But recognized your username from [H] and wondered if you'd post here, as well, and here we are... :D

Great build and specs are not too far from what I'm currently rocking. It should treat you well. I've been accumulating parts for my own upgrade; I'm hoping to make some headway this weekend. Just in case any of this information is helpful as you contemplate hardware encoding -
  • I'm also running Unraid right now and had the same debate about switching to Windows to enable HW encoding. I contemplated leaving the Unraid box in place to run my storage and other dockers and building a second box to run Windows and dedicated to Plex. I went so far as to buy a few P2000s and other HW to play with before I saw this reddit post outlining a modified Nvidia driver that enables unlimited streams on consumer cards with nvenc. I quickly sold the P2000s and ordered an RTX3060 - I figured if I had to run Windows anyway, I might as well benefit from the latest nvenc chip
  • Before my RTX3060 arrived, I saw this release - there is now an Unraid Nvidia driver! Hardware encoding within Unraid! So, I abandoned the plans for a dedicated Windows box. The people that wrote the driver are pretty adamant about not discussing the modifications around enabling unlimited streams on consumer cards, so Quadro cards are the best option again here
In terms of my own decision... I already had my heart set on that sweet RTX nvenc chip, and had foolishly just sold my P2000s, so I started looking into the RTX Quadros. The RTX 4000 was allegedly just released and press has reported a $900 MSRP, so decided to bite the bullet and try to buy one new. Nobody has it. Several places say they have the PNY version, but they're really just expecting stock soon. Dell took an "expedited" order from me on 2/17 for delivery 2/21. That order still hasn't shipped and now estimates delivery ~3/8. All the other outlets that list the card gave me approximately the same time frame.

But then! My compulsive ebay shopping paid off, and I found the first (I think?) RTX 4000 listed, and it was only $773 shipped. Pulled the trigger and it got here today. With any luck I'll spend some time installing it this weekend and can answer your question. :)

Edit: I clearly didn't read the last page of this thread very closely, as you are talking about the Nvidia driver. I saw your question in the last post and scrolled thru the earlier pages to look any references to it, but didn't look directly above. Whoops! My solution in the near term will be running both Plex and Emby dockers, as I understand Emby does not have the same shortcoming.
 
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DaddyGrant

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Jul 14, 2016
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Funny - I saw your post on Reddit but couldn't get it to load ("Loading..."). But recognized your username from [H] and wondered if you'd post here, as well, and here we are... :D

Great build and specs are not too far from what I'm currently rocking. It should treat you well. I've been accumulating parts for my own upgrade; I'm hoping to make some headway this weekend. Just in case any of this information is helpful as you contemplate hardware encoding -
  • I'm also running Unraid right now and had the same debate about switching to Windows to enable HW encoding. I contemplated leaving the Unraid box in place to run my storage and other dockers and building a second box to run Windows and dedicated to Plex. I went so far as to buy a few P2000s and other HW to play with before I saw this reddit post outlining a modified Nvidia driver that enables unlimited streams on consumer cards with nvenc. I quickly sold the P2000s and ordered an RTX3060 - I figured if I had to run Windows anyway, I might as well benefit from the latest nvenc chip
  • Before my RTX3060 arrived, I saw this release - there is now an Unraid Nvidia driver! Hardware encoding within Unraid! So, I abandoned the plans for a dedicated Windows box. The people that wrote the driver are pretty adamant about not discussing the modifications around enabling unlimited streams on consumer cards, so Quadro cards are the best option again here
In terms of my own decision... I already had my heart set on that sweet RTX nvenc chip, and had foolishly just sold my P2000s, so I started looking into the RTX Quadros. The RTX 4000 was allegedly just released and press has reported a $900 MSRP, so decided to bite the bullet and try to buy one new. Nobody has it. Several places say they have the PNY version, but they're really just expecting stock soon. Dell took an "expedited" order from me on 2/17 for delivery 2/21. That order still hasn't shipped and now estimates delivery ~3/8. All the other outlets that list the card gave me approximately the same time frame.

But then! My compulsive ebay shopping paid off, and I found the first (I think?) RTX 4000 listed, and it was only $773 shipped. Pulled the trigger and it got here today. With any luck I'll spend some time installing it this weekend and can answer your question. :)

Edit: I clearly didn't read the last page of this thread very closely, as you are talking about the Nvidia driver. I saw your question in the last post and scrolled thru the earlier pages to look any references to it, but didn't look directly above. Whoops! My solution in the near term will be running both Plex and Emby dockers, as I understand Emby does not have the same shortcoming.
I'm not ready to give up my P2000 just yet, but I'm watching closely for your observations.
 

MortenB

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Jul 3, 2017
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GTX 1660 is rumored for March 15th, and GTX 1650 in late april. They should support the same NVENC like the other Turing cards. Might be nice for Plex?
 

IamSpartacus

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Mar 14, 2016
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GTX 1660 is rumored for March 15th, and GTX 1650 in late april. They should support the same NVENC like the other Turing cards. Might be nice for Plex?
Probably will need the driver hacked though to get more than 2 transcodes.
 

BoredSysadmin

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Mar 2, 2019
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I've gone back and forth so many times in terms of looking for a hot swappable case and if I could find a short depth one that could fit 10+ 3.5" drives I'd probably go for it but every time I look for one and fail and stick with the Node I do come to the realization that hot swap is really not necessary at all.

Quick question about your fan configuration. I see you have 2 instakes and one exhaust in the motherboard area, do you have the same two intakes in the HDD area or just one intake and one exhaust there? Trying to maximize my cooling since I'm upping the CPU TDP quite a bit.
Based on this forum member suggestion, I've bought Xyratex JBOD Expansion Array 12 x 3.5" 6Gb/s SAS Hard Drive Bay HB-1235 for a whole whopping 105$+34$ s/h. Highway robbery, I know :)
12x 3.5 hot-swap drives, dual power supply, and dual SAS controllers. Go ahead and try to beat it with DIY :)
Believe me, I tried and very quickly realized I'd be wasting time.
One big con (not for me) is typical noise from this is about 60 dBA. Yes, it does support SATA drives. It won't like it (would need to be reset) but it works.
 

IamSpartacus

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Mar 14, 2016
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650
113
Based on this forum member suggestion, I've bought Xyratex JBOD Expansion Array 12 x 3.5" 6Gb/s SAS Hard Drive Bay HB-1235 for a whole whopping 105$+34$ s/h. Highway robbery, I know :)
12x 3.5 hot-swap drives, dual power supply, and dual SAS controllers. Go ahead and try to beat it with DIY :)
Believe me, I tried and very quickly realized I'd be wasting time.
One big con (not for me) is typical noise from this is about 60 dBA. Yes, it does support SATA drives. It won't like it (would need to be reset) but it works.
Depth?