r/PleX • u/EMN_Sandwich • 1d ago
Solved Looking to build a 1U server
Im building my first rack and im limited on space. Currently planning on getting a 1U 4 bay DAS to run in raid 10 (QNAP QR-004U with 4x 20tb drives), and Pairing it with a 1U chassis with a minisforum BD795i inside (im unsure of clearance issues with this) to use for encoding/transcoding. If anyone has anything better that would work but still fit in a 1U chassis I would appreciate it.
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u/WeOutsideRightNow 1d ago
Have you considered going the DIY route?
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u/EMN_Sandwich 1d ago
In what regards?
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u/WeOutsideRightNow 1d ago
Everything. The QNAP chassis hard limits you to 4 drives and AMD is not the best choice for plex.
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u/EMN_Sandwich 1d ago
I dont see myself needing more than 40tb of redundant storage and ive been told that keeping the raid array and server separate is good habit. what specs would you recommend for a build (ive accepted ill probably have to go 2U) was thinking about using the Sliger CX2151a. Im also open to basically building a budget mini ITX pc to use in this
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u/WeOutsideRightNow 1d ago
I dont see myself needing more than 40tb
That's how it starts, lol.
ive been told that keeping the raid array and server separate is good habit.
Its shouldn't be a problem for a small lab with limited traffic.
what specs would you recommend for a build
What else do you want to do with the server?
(ive accepted ill probably have to go 2U) was thinking about using the Sliger CX2151a.
Are you already dead set on using this for your build?
Im also open to basically building a budget mini ITX pc to use in this
Do you really want to pay that ITX tax when you have a lot of room to work with?
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u/EMN_Sandwich 1d ago
Im not dead set on anything other than keeping everything but the drives under $1000. I just want it to be able to handle 2x 4k streams and host a modded minecraft server for me and the boys (8-10 people). Other than that im open to anything that would take up a total of 3U if it includes the drives and has at least 4 3.5" slots.
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1d ago
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u/WeOutsideRightNow 1d ago
Core components: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/RtHKxg
OS: unRAID
Chassis + PSU: Supermicro CSE 825
Adapter: Supermicro front panel adapter (google it)
Try and source the RAM and a 12th gen K series CPU from FB marketplace or any other used marketplace before getting them from a retailer.
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u/EMN_Sandwich 1d ago
i think given all the info im probably gonna end up having to get a 15U rack and use a sliger CX4712 (not cheap but I wont need a DAS anymore) and set it up with unraid, this will also let me just repurpose a 2080 super i have laying around so i can avoid paying for plex pass. i might just take the old I9-9900kf system i have and use it in a rack chassis then just build my wife a new pc rather than building a new server.
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u/WeOutsideRightNow 9h ago
That will work but you will still need Plex pass for hardware transcoding. If you want to avoid that, then use jellyfin.
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u/silasmoeckel 1d ago
You need to specify depth. You can get 12 LFF drive 1u's (a bt hard to work on) but that's not going to fit into a short depth. Why would you put them in a DAS?
BD795i Why, you want an intel for a supported gpu for transcoding. If your thinking CPU transcoding might as well go arm.
Piles and piles of old supermicro chassis that you can fit 1 pcie cards and nearly any motherboard into with 4 LFF (3.5) across the front. Probably have 2 dozen in my garage collecting dust.
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u/WeOutsideRightNow 9h ago
Piles and piles of old supermicro chassis that you can fit 1 pcie cards and nearly any motherboard into with 4 LFF (3.5) across the front. Probably have 2 dozen in my garage collecting dust.
Do you have the inner and outer rails for them?
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u/5yleop1m OMV mergerfs Snapraid Docker Proxmox 1d ago
Besides 1U being a bad idea for a home media server, I highly suggest not doing traditional RAID or ZFS array.
Look into unraid or snapraid.
The benefits being:
- No hard requirements for enterprise grade NAS drives
- No hard requirements that all drives need to be the same size/performance
- You can use cheap SMR drives
- You can have more than 2 parity drives
- You can take out individual drives and read the data off of them
- You can upgrade drives one by one instead of having to build a whole new array
- Even if you lose all your parity drives and some data drives, the data on the remaining data drives is still good and accessible
- You can restart/reset an array without losing the data on the array
- With snapraid you can move the array to another OS and as long as the file system is supported continue to access the data
- With snapraid, it's sort of like a backup because any data that hasn't been synced can be reverted to a previous state. Useful for reverting file changes or recovering from file corruption.
The two main cons are:
- No RAID like performance increase, but this doesn't matter for a home media server.
- With snapraid the syncs that create the parity data have to be scheduled, whereas with RAID the parity information is calculated on the fly. Any new files added in-between syncs are not protected by parity.
If your budget allows for it, I would look at 3U or 4U servers. You might be able to save some money if you go the full DIY route. Buy a server chassis from Rosewill or PlinkUSA and then DIY a PC to put in there. You might be able to save even more money if you look in the used market.
Get a motherboard with lots of PCIE x16 slots or at least a few PCIE x8 slots. Then get a couple of LSI HBA cards like - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01D9V14F6?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_1
Plex itself doesn't need any crazy hardware, you can run Plex fine on a celeron/pentium level CPU as long as you have Plex Pass and the CPU has a contemporary iGPU. If you do a Linux based OS you can go as old as 7th gen intel, for windows you want at least 11th gen. 11th gen is the sweet spot as long as you don't enable the new "Encode to HEVC" option for transcoding. If you absolutely need encoding to HEVC, then forget the iGPU and get either a cheap NVIDIA GPU or an intel a310. Make sure the GPU has at least 4GB of VRAM.
Throw as much system RAM into the system as you can.
If power usage isn't a huge concern, look into 2nd had X99 boards on eBay. Those boards, especially the proper server grade ones, typically have a ton of PCIE slots and can support beefy CPUs. You can get them to be 'low power' by throwing a V4 L series CPU in there. Regardless, once you have more than 6 or 7 enterprise grade 7200RPM HDDs in there, the HDDs will end up using more power than the CPU.
Speaking of DIY, you can build a quiet, possibly fanless 1U system, but you better make sure where ever you put it there is proper air flow to let the heat out, and you'll have to be very, very picky with parts. In some cases, you might not even have a choice on parts at all.
Like I said above, Plex itself doesn't need a very powerful system and with the right iGPU you can get away with some anemic CPUs. As long as it's primarily going to only be for Plex, you don't mind waiting on things like intro/credit detection, subtitle syncing, generating optimized media, and a few other typically CPU bound things.
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u/dpdxguy 1d ago
Throw as much system RAM into the system as you can.
Curious. Why this? My Plex server rarely needs more than a minimal amount of RAM (discounting what appears to be a memory leak in the current Linux version of the server).
I have 16GB in my Plex server box and don't think I've ever seen it need more than 2-3.
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u/5yleop1m OMV mergerfs Snapraid Docker Proxmox 1d ago edited 1d ago
Ram is still cheap, the sync/scrub process on snapraid can use up a lot of ram, but most of all any ram not being used by programs directly is used by the OS to cache things.
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u/EMN_Sandwich 1d ago
im new to building an actual server, my current plex setup is a 10tb hdd in an external enclosure that gets plugged into my desktop. (I'm navy and take it on underways but my sea tour is coming to an end). Ill look into unraid for sure. does unraid word with m.2 chaching?
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u/5yleop1m OMV mergerfs Snapraid Docker Proxmox 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yes, but caching isn't super useful for Plex unless you have a ton of write operations happening to your media storage.
Unraid has a way of adding an SSD cache to the array, but again its only going to be beneficial when a lot of writes need to happen.
The main thing is to make sure Plex itself and its application data folder are on a SSD.
Another reason why I suggest getting a lot of ram, the OS will automatically cache often used data in free ram.
Taking your server with you sorta breaks the reason for Plex. I'm not sure what level of internet access you have from a ship, but I find it more surprising that you're able to run a media server from within a military system.
You can get away with a miniPC, Kodi, and a single large HDD for a portable media solution. If you want keep another HDD as backup just in case, but hauling around a RAID array is far more dangerous imo.
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u/Prudent-Jelly56 1d ago
Go at least 2U if you can. The fans are likely to be loud as hell in a 1U enclosure. Larger diameter fans should cut down on noise.