Help with server rebuild - added new build

Vndii

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Jan 12, 2023
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I'm rebuilding my 10 plus year old home server. Its will be used for Plex and backing up other PC's. I have a Norco 4220 case and plenty of hard drives. I haven't built a server or PC in 10 years so I'm not up on the current hardware. I'd like to replace the motherboard, CPU, OS hard drive, power supply, SATA cards (Need to hook up 20 bays), and memory. Please offer recommendations.

The server should be able to transcode up to 4 videos using plex. I'd like to build it so its capable to do more as I find things I may want to add down the road. Would be nice not to touch the hardware for 5 years.

What your thoughts on hardware?
 
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What is driving you to rebuild it? What are the weak points today? How much are you willing to spend?
Speed costs money, how fast do you want to go?
 
What is driving you to rebuild it? What are the weak points today? How much are you willing to spend?
Speed costs money, how fast do you want to go?

Its been broke and out of service for a few years. I recently took my old Q6600 and got it running again to get the data off it. The Q6600 will transcode maybe 1 stream. Anything more and it chugs. Since the case and drives are all ok I figured Id refresh it. No specific budget.
 
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201774043-what-kind-of-cpu-do-i-need-for-my-server/

I know nothing about Plex but I'd guess an i3 12100 quad core would do 4x 1080p based on the 2000 passmark score per transcode recommendation. You are also getting Quicksync features in that CPU that could be a benefit as well.

If your drives are as old as the CPU you probably will want to consider consolidating to a lower number of larger capacity drives. You may get much lower power consumption and fewer moving parts. I've had good luck with WD Red Pro drives. 16 TB for $280.
 
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201774043-what-kind-of-cpu-do-i-need-for-my-server/

I know nothing about Plex but I'd guess an i3 12100 quad core would do 4x 1080p based on the 2000 passmark score per transcode recommendation. You are also getting Quicksync features in that CPU that could be a benefit as well.

If your drives are as old as the CPU you probably will want to consider consolidating to a lower number of larger capacity drives. You may get much lower power consumption and fewer moving parts. I've had good luck with WD Red Pro drives. 16 TB for $280.

QS will actually do a lot more than that in Plex. . Most intel past gen 8 for the chip are good for plex QS hw decoding. You need plex pass to get harware decoding whether, QS, NVENC etc.

Really boils down to cores, clock speeds, PCI lanes, IPMI etc where you go, either consumer or commercial. Next would be power consumption.

The overall thing is budget and use case. Right now the OP needs a decent NAS, not even a server, to do what he wants.

OP could take a used business SFF and make it a plex box, then make a NAS to serve files. Or an all in one.
 
QS will actually do a lot more than that in Plex. . Most intel past gen 8 for the chip are good for plex QS hw decoding. You need plex pass to get harware decoding whether, QS, NVENC etc.

Really boils down to cores, clock speeds, PCI lanes, IPMI etc where you go, either consumer or commercial. Next would be power consumption.

The overall thing is budget and use case. Right now the OP needs a decent NAS, not even a server, to do what he wants.

OP could take a used business SFF and make it a plex box, then make a NAS to serve files. Or an all in one.

Not opposed to a nas. The Synology I looked up that did cpu transcoding was $800 without drives. My current largest drive is a 8tb. Then I have a bunch of 2tb drives. Seems if I go that route I'd need a few new hd's also. So I'd be well over $1000. Seems I can rebuild this old case for $1000-1500 and it would be pretty stout for a long time?

If I'm way off let me know. I want something that's little to no work to maintain and has the muscle to serve up media.

The old server fed two HTPC's using windows media center. So Plex is new to me. I tested it as is to my smart tv and it pegged the processors for one movie. Most of my movie are full res 1080p blu rays copies.
 
Not opposed to a nas. The Synology I looked up that did cpu transcoding was $800 without drives. My current largest drive is a 8tb. Then I have a bunch of 2tb drives. Seems if I go that route I'd need a few new hd's also. So I'd be well over $1000. Seems I can rebuild this old case for $1000-1500 and it would be pretty stout for a long time?

If I'm way off let me know. I want something that's little to no work to maintain and has the muscle to serve up media.

The old server fed two HTPC's using windows media center. So Plex is new to me. I tested it as is to my smart tv and it pegged the processors for one movie. Most of my movie are full res 1080p blu rays copies.

You can build your own NAS just as you can build your own server. The difference can be wide or even a lot of overlap. I wasn't specifically saying a off the shelf. More that you don't have to have all your services on the server/nas. In fact it can be quite cost effective with QS and old used business equipment to put some services, like Plex on their own box.
 
So I decided to rebuild the server in the Norco 4020 case. Here’s what I used.



I7 -12700

MSI 790A PRO WIFI

128 GB DDR5

Noctru NH-U9S CPU fan

(2) LSI Logic SAS 9207-8i Storage Controller LSI00301

Coolermaster 750 power supply

(4) WD NVME .M2 1TB drives

(6) 12TB Seagate hard drives

(1) 8TB Seagate hard drive

HD Homerrun Flex 4 tuner antenna



I decided to replace all the hard drives due to age. Its running Win 11 using Drivepool and Drive Scanner. Pool size is 64.6TB with 22TB used. It uses the SSD drives to write on then moves the data to a storage drive later as needed. It has duplication turned on for the whole pool and 3x duplication for sensitive things like photos. LOTS of room to spare! I was able to clean up some wiring with the SAS to SATA cables. The servers running a Plex server. Another machine runs Radarr, Sonarr, and Powlarr and dumps files to the server when done. I can watch and record live TV from the antenna tuner on any network TV also.



4k movies look awesome! I can even transcode them and watch them out of my network. Plex is a huge improvement over my old days of Windows Media Center. So much simpler now.
 

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