• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Home Server Build with Plex Transcoding

F

fjawor

n00b
Joined
Aug 4, 2014
Messages
6
1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
Streaming 1080p to four Plex clients on the LAN with transcoding; Streaming through the internet at 720p, transcoding from a ~20GB 1080p Blu-ray rip; Downloading multiple torrents at full speed, Unpacking a ~20GB movie from rars, Email server, openvpn server, vnc server, NAS, media storage, backups
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
$400 best case scenario, but I will go as high as $1000 if I have to. Before taxes and shipping.
3) Which country do you live in? If the U.S, please tell us the state and city if possible.
Detroit, MI USA
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. The word "Everything" is not a valid answer. Please list out all the parts you'll need.
CPU, Mobo, RAM, HDD, SSD (if needed), Case, PSU, Quiet Fans or extra cooling if needed
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
Building from scratch!
6) Will you be overclocking?
No
7) What is the max resolution of your monitor? What size is it?
Headless, no monitor needed. I will use VNC
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
Next few weeks
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? eSATA? Onboard video (as a backup or main GPU)? UEFI? etc.
USB 3.0, SATA 6Gb/s, eSATA, Onboard video, HDMI
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If so, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?
Debian 64 bit


These are the parts I was thinking about:
$110 - ASRock E350M1/USB3 AMD E-350 APU (1.6GHz, Dual-Core) AMD A50M Hudson M1 Mini ITX Motherboard/CPU Combo
$20 - Patriot Gamer 2 Series 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model PG34G1333EL
$60 - Western Digital WD Blue WD10EZEX 1TB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive - OEM
$50 - Rosewill RS-MI-01 BK Mini ITX Tower/ Desktop Computer Case with 250W 20+4Pin & 2SATA Connectors Power Supply

I have seen people use processors as powerful as xenons and as low end as atoms or raspberry pis using xbmc instead of plex. I just want the server to be able to perform all of the required operations in question #1 at the same time without lagging playback for people streaming media.
Any input is appreciated!
Thanks in advance,
fjawor
 
Last edited:
Not sure if it is an option or not, but I run my plex server on my main system. I just have some extra hard drives pooled that have my media. I don't notice any performance issues with playing any games or whatever I am doing on my system while plex is transcoding due to the CPU. Could you run these things on your primary system?
 
No, that would not work because I want to keep the computer on all the time. Plus my current computer is a laptop that I bring to school everyday. Not very useful for an email server, openvpn server, or for me trying to access my media away from home. I am looking for an always-on, headless server build.
Thanks,
fjawor
 
How many of the clients will need video transcoding and not passthrough? It takes a pretty beefy system to transcode 1080p on the fly, nevermind to 4 clients. Audio on the other hand is pretty easy.

At minimum you'll probably need an A8-6500/6600, although I doubt that would handle more than 2 clients at the same time IF all of them need video transcoding.
 
Probably 3 transcoding 1080p at the same time. But this would not be happening all the time. The best scenario would be 4 though. Unfortunately all my media is from bluray rips.
 
Well your planned setup is not good at all for 3.5 reasons:
1) That RAM is out of stock. At $20, that was a major steal considering that 4GB of RAM these days tend to cost around $35 to $45 easily.
2) That case + PSU combo is not good at all since the included PSU is a total piece of shit. In general, outside of fantastic sales/deals, a good quality case and PSUs setup (that includes combos as well) should cost roughly $90 to $100 at minimum. The fact that Rosewill is $50 for both is a major red flag on the quality of that setup.
3) That APU is not powerful enough for your planned needs. If it was just streaming alone, then it would been fine. But since you're having it do a bunch of other things, you're looking at a more expensive setup.
3.5) You listed the wrong model number for the hard drive: THe WD3200AAKX is WD's 320GB drive model number. Yet you linked and partially listed the WD10EZEX drive model.

How long is the drive to Microcenter for you?:
http://www.microcenter.com/site/stores/madison-heights.aspx
 
Thank you. I will edit the hard drive model #. The micro center is approximately 45 minutes away. I have not ever been there and don't plan to because it is so far away. Do you have any suggestions for the RAM, case, PSU, Mobo, and CPU?

Thank you,
fjawor
 
$200 - Core i5 4590 CPU
$79 - AsRock H97M Pro4 Intel H97 mATX MOtherboard
$70 - Kingston HyperX Blu KHX1600C10D3B1/8G 8GB DDR3 1600 RAM
$130 - Samsung 840 Evo Series 250GB SSD
$101 - Seagate Barracuda ST3000DM001 3TB 7200RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s Hard Drive
$75 - Seasonic S12G S12G-550 550W PSU
$50 - NZXT Source 210 Elite Black ATX Case
---
Total: $705 shipped.

Notes:
- I went with an Intel setup mainly due to the lower power use, the inclusion of a more reliable Intel NIC on the motherboard, and the inclusion of onboard video. It also fits Plex's general guideline for transcoding four 1080P content.
- There are no good deals on 4GB of RAM now. Not to mention that DDR3 RAM will only go up in price due to
- I included a SSD to massively speed up the system. Though you might be fine with just the hard drive. Though the SSD will guarantee a higher probability of no lag.
- Since this PC will be on all the time, might as well spend the extra money for a quality and efficient PSU.
- The Source 210 Elite is a solid basic case that's well suited for server duties due to it being able to fit 8 hard drive without issue. With that said, if you want something quieter, you should look at the Fractal Design R4 for $40 more:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811352023
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
If you're near Microcenter, then do a Asrock Z97E-ITX/i5-4690k combo for $280AR + tax. I use the Z77E-ITX/i5-3570k for Plex transcoding.
 
I did a simliar build, although I used the guts from a TS140 lenovo server because it was on sale for $270 but it came with a i3-4130, 4gb of ECC ram, onboard video, I ended up adding another 4gb of ECC ram and 3x3tb Harddrives and installed freebsd.

The setup can be upgraded to a xeon processor, but mainly did this to get a ECC suported micro-atx board/ram/cpu for cheaper if you looking to save but i think there is a xeon server you can gut which im sure will have decent amount of power.

Not sure how many parrallel streams of 1080p transcoding the i3 can handle but I only have one tv and sometimes my buddy might watch some stuff but with a xeon you can probably get way more since it has more cores.

Its just an option.
 
fjawor said:
Probably 3 transcoding 1080p at the same time. But this would not be happening all the time. The best scenario would be 4 though. Unfortunately all my media is from bluray rips.
Click to expand...

if all devices are on the same network, you don't need to transcode anything... just stream it.
 
nekrosoft13 said:
if all devices are on the same network, you don't need to transcode anything... just stream it.
Click to expand...

Was does being on the same network have to do with whether or not the device needs a transcoded stream?
 
If you are streaming to a roku in generally you will need transcoding of some form or another. I have found that an i3 2100 can do about 3-4 simultaneous streams with very little slow down. If cost is an issue you could move down to the i3 4130 and save a little and probably be fine. I went from my synology which has an atom 510 dual core and over one stream the thing would struggle (pretty comparable to the e350. At this point the gpu does little for transcoding so what you are looking for is single thread performance on the cpu. Another alternative would be the AMD quad core APU's like the 5800,6800, or 7700+ chips. You might be able to squeeze by with the celeron haswell chips but in the long run you will probably want to upgrade.

I know you dont really want to drive 1.5 hrs but take a look at microcenter's cpu mobo combos (http://www.microcenter.com/site/products/amd_bundles.aspx) you can get an a8 6600k and 40$ off a motherboard for $100. Might not be worth the gas and effort but not a bad deal. As far as cases if you are looking to go ITX, tigerdirect has the BitFenix Colossus ITX for $50 AR (10) right now which is a pretty slick case imho (here) . You can get a 430 watt ps for $16AR (here)
I hope that helps.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top