New build for nas/plex server

kvnwds43 · 9 Aug 2019 at 12:51

Hi I've been looking at qnap /synology for nas drives but after a bit of thought decided to maybe build my own starting with a midi tower or cube case.!
I haven't decided on what size nas devices to use yet but i would want a case which holds 4 x3.5 nas drives.
On the nas build I'm looking at spending around 700 to 1000 (excluding nas hard drives).
I'm pretty competent at building pc's but not built a nas server before..
Recommendations for case, processor, motherboard, memory and power supply please.... I don't want to go over the top but with enough power to do the job.!

Many thanks

bremen1874 · 9 Aug 2019 at 12:58

What is this NAS going to be doing that justifies spending that sort of money?

You could buy a 4 bay Synology for significantly less.

kvnwds43 · 9 Aug 2019 at 13:01

bremen1874 said:
What is this NAS going to be doing that justifies spending that sort of money?

You could buy a 4 bay Synology for significantly less.

It's going to be used for photographs, music and movies mainly.!

Kei · 9 Aug 2019 at 13:14

Is that just storing/serving them or editing/converting them?

Gimpymoo · 9 Aug 2019 at 14:14

What OS do you plan on using to serve the files?

mikedigitales · 9 Aug 2019 at 14:25

My advice would always be to start with the case and work back from there - it's nice to be able to tuck it away somewhere out of sight and away from where you'll be sitting. Mine lives in the back of the old airing cupboard on a shelf I built - so I picked the biggest case I could to fit in this space (NZXT H440), giving me lots of room for the extra drives I've added over the years. Just remember when picking a case airflow is good, you want to keep your drives reasonably cool for their own longevity.

kvnwds43 · 9 Aug 2019 at 15:23

Kei said:
Is that just storing/serving them or editing/converting them?

Mainly storing movies and music playing them through to my vero box in cinema room and useing plex around the house and outside of the house so some converting will be necessary.!

kvnwds43 · 9 Aug 2019 at 15:24

Gimpymoo said:
What OS do you plan on using to serve the files?

Thinking of either freenas, Ubuntu or windows server.!

Kei · 9 Aug 2019 at 16:36

I built mine around a 9600k on an asus z390 prime-a with 16GB of team group vulcan 3000 ram. I used an old coolermaster CM690-II case as I already had it and I can squeeze 12 disks into it. I chose the 9600k as I use this pc for overnight video conversion work so that I can turn my desktop off. It seems to be able to happily handle one 4k to 1080 transcode in plex. Not sure if it can manage two 4k transcoded streams at the same time though. Mine also houses a 10gig network card along with a RAID controller and expander card. OS wise, I run Fedora 30.

kvnwds43 · 9 Aug 2019 at 18:20

Kei said:
I built mine around a 9600k on an asus z390 prime-a with 16GB of teamskill vulcan 3000 ram. I used an old coolermaster CM690-II case as I already had it and I can squeeze 12 disks into it. I chose the 9600k as I use this pc for overnight video conversion work so that I can turn my desktop off. It seems to be able to happily handle one 4k to 1080 transcode in plex. Not sure if it can manage two 4k transcoded streams at the same time though. Mine also houses a 10gig network card along with a RAID controller and expander card. OS wise, I run Fedora 30.

Your rig sounds pretty good, tell me is it necessary to buy a 10 gb network card to add to the system or would the basic lan network socket be sufficient on the motherboard.? Also is the raid controller necessary too...... Can't the motherboard handle the raid.?

Kei · 9 Aug 2019 at 19:20

Those expansion cards are not necessary for most NAS builds, the on-board devices work fine. I have the 10gbe network card as I want to have greater than 100MB/s transfer speeds capable from multiple clients. The raid/expander combo is necessary in my case for running so many drives in RAID 5. Most people these days don't bother with hardware raid and use a software based solution like ZFS. If I were to go that route over hardware based raid, I'd need an HBA instead. (host bus adaptor card) This is merely a high speed pci-e to SAS/SATA interface card. The expander card is simply a SAS switch which takes 4 or 8 ports and expands it up to 16 or 20. All these cards have been re-purposed from old retired enterprise servers.

kvnwds43 · 9 Aug 2019 at 20:07

Kei said:
Those expansion cards are not necessary for most NAS builds, the on-board devices work fine. I have the 10gbe network card as I want to have greater than 100MB/s transfer speeds capable from multiple clients. The raid/expander combo is necessary in my case for running so many drives in RAID 5. Most people these days don't bother with hardware raid and use a software based solution like ZFS. If I were to go that route over hardware based raid, I'd need an HBA instead. (host bus adaptor card) This is merely a high speed pci-e to SAS/SATA interface card. The expander card is simply a SAS switch which takes 4 or 8 ports and expands it up to 16 or 20. All these cards have been re-purposed from old retired enterprise servers.

Thanks for that, I'll probably just build a normal pc, probably based around a Intel i5 coffee lake with micro atx board, 16 gb ram...... With a suitable case enough to put in 4 x3.5 nas drives !
I'm fine building the Pc it's getting my head around the software such as Ubuntu, freenas etc which maybe be more difficult but nothing what a popular video site can't sort me out..

Skynet5 · 10 Aug 2019 at 13:39

Freenas on supermicro pentium chip and some ecc ram. £450 max.

BeelzebubUK · 10 Aug 2019 at 15:49

This is what I have used for a FreeNAS build. Well under your budget with 2nd hand parts (£400 excluding storage). You could change the case for something smaller if you don't need the expansion room. I don't use Plex so not sure how capable it is for transcoding but streaming 4k remux movies to my Vero 4k+ is perfect.

I get 36TB of storage space running ZFS RAIDZ2 which means the array can have 2 drives fail at any time and not lose any data.

Chassis: Silverstone TJ08-E
CPU: Xeon E3-1220 V2
RAM: 32GB (4x Hynix 8GB DDR 1333 ECC)
Mainboard: Supermicro X9SCM-F
HBA: Dell Perc H310 flashed to LSI 9211-8i in IT mode
PSU: Corsair CX550M
Boot: 2x Intel 320 40Gb SSD mirror
Storage: 9x Western Digital Enterprise 6TB RE WD6001FSYZ

Cooler running · 12 Aug 2019 at 21:32

BeelzebubUK said:
This is what I have used for a FreeNAS build. Well under your budget with 2nd hand parts. You could change the case for something smaller if you don't need the expansion room. I don't use Plex so not sure how capable it is for transcoding but streaming 4k remux movies to my Vero 4k+ is perfect.

I get 36TB of storage space running ZFS RAIDZ2 which means the array can have 2 drives fail at any time and not lose any data.

Chassis: Silverstone TJ08-E

CPU: Xeon E3-1220 V2

RAM: 32GB (4x Hynix 8GB DDR 1333 ECC)

Mainboard: Supermicro X9SCM-F

HBA: Dell Perc H310 flashed to LSI 9211-8i in IT mode

PSU: Corsair CX550M

Boot: 2x Intel 320 40Gb SSD mirror

Storage: 9x Western Digital Enterprise 6TB RE WD6001FSYZ

I currently have a machine similar to this, I spent about £380 on it several years ago. It has a sandy bridge Xeon 1265l and 16 gig of ddr3. Runs Plex and Freenas just fine.

Unless you know that more grunt is needed, I wouldn't bother going for very new of high end stuff, although some or the new low end SOC server parts might work for your budget.

BeelzebubUK · 12 Aug 2019 at 22:46

Cooler running said:
I currently have a machine similar to this, I spent about £380 on it several years ago. It has a sandy bridge Xeon 1265l and 16 gig of ddr3. Runs Plex and Freenas just fine.

Unless you know that more grunt is needed, I wouldn't bother going for very new of high end stuff, although some or the new low end SOC server parts might work for your budget.

I just totted up the total cost for everything (including all cables) and it was £397.59 excluding the 6TB drives. Can't see me needing any more horsepower so probably just upgrade the storage in a few years time when the drives get cheaper.

Cooler running · 14 Aug 2019 at 23:24

BeelzebubUK said:
I just totted up the total cost for everything (including all cables) and it was £397.59 excluding the 6TB drives. Can't see me needing any more horsepower so probably just upgrade the storage in a few years time when the drives get cheaper.

Yer sounds about right, 32GB of Ram is certainly nice if you plan on running some VM's on it. I meant more that OP should at least concider a setup similar to this or my 1265lv2 build. New server parts will likely end costing twice the amount of one of these 2010 - 2015 era builds; the components (excluding drives) can often be picked up for £20 - £100 each, representing excellent "bang for the buck".

BeelzebubUK · 15 Aug 2019 at 23:53

Cooler running said:
Yer sounds about right, 32GB of Ram is certainly nice if you plan on running some VM's on it. I meant more that OP should at least concider a setup similar to this or my 1265lv2 build. New server parts will likely end costing twice the amount of one of these 2010 - 2015 era builds; the components (excluding drives) can often be picked up for £20 - £100 each, representing excellent "bang for the buck".

I was just following the recommendations on the FreeNAS forums. Although I think its probably still overkill for just streaming 4k

But compared to off the shelf NAS' its excellent value for money. I think if I was going to run VMs etc I'd want that 1265l though for the extra threads.