Recommendations for NAS/Plex Server Build

[Eric Faden]

Hey All,

Just joined. I am looking for some advice with part selection for a NAS/Plex build I want to do. My goal is to build a box to run Plex/Sonarr/SickRage/CouchPotato, etc. Ideally I'd like it to be able to stream to 4 to 5 clients at a time at the same time (2-3 TVs., and 2-3 iPads). My plan thus far is....

I'm planning to use a Fractal Designs Case. I'd like 16 to 32GB of RAM, 500GB OS SSD, and 3-4 TB HDDs.

I'm leaning towards Samsung 850 for the SSD and Western Digital Red for the HDDs.

I'm just not sure what I should use for the Mobo/Proc/RAM.

Ideally I'd like the ability to add another 3-4 HDDs over time to grow the storage. It will be wired so I don't need WIFI or anything.

Any thoughts? Suggestions? Questions?

I have read a bunch of guides and am still stuck (Core i5 vs i7 vs Xeon)....

-Eric

 

[Eric Faden]

For Motherboards... I'm looking at Supermicro, Gigabyte, and ASRock Rack (and normal).

 

[Patrick]

A few thoughts:

• If you are doing CPU compression, get a server motherboard/ CPU. Especially if you are willing to go used these are not really more expensive. The feature that will save you one day is iKVM/ IPMI. The ability to login remotely to a machine is extremely handy. For example, on the STH main site today I setup that entire system and only plugged in power and Ethernet cables.
• SSD - I like enterprise SSDs. Sometimes they are a bit slower but they also have awesome reliability. Something like this? Intel 480GB DC S3500 SSD SATA III 6.0Gbps Enterprise Solid State (Not 512GB ) 735858258487 | eBay may be a decent alternative and is less expensive than a 850 500GB.

If you wanted to go rackmount and a non-standard form factor motherboard, you could get something like this For Sale: Intel R2308GZ 2U Server and have a very powerful NAS/ transcoding machine with 32GB, 16 cores/ 32 threads.

 

[Eric Faden]

I'm not opposed to server. I was actually leaning that way for the iKVM/IPMI. I'd prefer non-rackmount. Any suggestions on a Xeon + Motherboard Combo if I wanted to go new? Ideally I'm looking to stay around $1500 for the Mobo/CPU/SSD/2-3xHDD/Case.

If I do iKVM/IPMI I can do without the keyboard/mouse/screen.

-Eric

 

[TLN]

I will be selling HP server mobo + CPU soon, once I move my data.
HP ML310 motherboard + Intel E3-1230v2 Cpu + 2x8Gb memory (possible to do 32gig).

Board is mATX: fits in Fractal Node and have slots for extra controllers/etc.
Theoretically I can put some drives as well.

 

[NashBrydges]

I know there are a lot of threads out there that tell you Plex is CPU clock sensitive and will recommend the highest clock speed you can buy. But here is my experience running Plex on Ubuntu 16.04.

I'm running it as a virtual machine on Hyper-V Server 2012 R2. The host has dual e5-2640 v2 (so only 2GHz). I've assigned 8 virtual cores (the equivalent of a single quad-core with HT) and 16GB RAM. It is reading my media library off a 56TB RAID6 SMB shared network drive and the VM is running on a single SSD along with a half dozen other VMs.

I have been able to run 7 x 1080P streams + 2 x 4k streams concurrently without a single client stuttering. Sure my VM monitoring is showing the CPU is pegged at nearly 100% for the entire duration of the 2hr test but that's expected. During the test I made sure I would force the CPU to transcode at least half the streams while the rest were running direct and it was a perfect test. I was never able to achieve this on consumer hardware in the past.

 

[John Burns]

My current server is running server 2016 hyperv on a e5-1620v2 (3.7 ghz). The plex VM is assigned 4 cores and 8 Gb of ram. I've done 2 simultaneous transcoding tablets and everything runs smooth. My current performance limitation is my raid5 nas can only do about 11 MB/sec. Good luck with Plex, it has a high WAF in my house.