I want so badly to build my 1st nas but i am dumb and lost!
Things i want to do:
Have a file server that can be accessed through vpn tunnel
Plex
Pihole
I have been looking through the forums for i swear months but the more i look the more confused i get. Some people say intel is the way to go and others say amd because it does more than intel. I am looking for a recommendation for cpu and motherboard and i think i can get it from there. There are way too many options now a days! I would like it to be as efficient as possible since it will be on 24/7. I already have 4 wd red 8tb drives i am going to run in a mirrir configuration if i could keep the motherboard and cpu cost to around $500 i will be happy!
Thanks for reading and i look forward to your suggestions!
If you want to do transcoding with Plex (although I would recommend Jellyfin instead, since you won’t have to pay), Intel is the way to go. Otherwise you will need a discrete GPU to handle it instead. Intel’s QuickSync is just unbeatable.
My personal route was a second hand 12600K and a new MSI Z790 Gaming Plus WiFi for £276 total (I also went for 32GB of RAM).
Think about everything you could possibly see yourself using the NAS for, and work from there. Are you going to be running dozens of drives? Probably want a lot of PCIe lanes and slots for running HBAs, for example. Tons of VMs? Maybe you would want a server mobo, with a server CPU with tons of cores (Xeon or Threadripper/EPYC).
Based on just a homelab-scale deployment with a media server, I’d literally just do what I did and get a cheap Intel CPU (I went with 12th gen since it is the oldest gen with the latest iGPU architecture) and a suitably cheap motherboard. Hell, mine is probably overkill really, but I really wanted to get a DDR5 board.
For context, I run a Jellyfin server, backup important photos and documents to the NAS, and am playing around with running a modded Minecraft server for my brother, nephew (his son), and I since the CPU is basically sat there doing fuck all anyway (as mentioned, the QuickSync in the iGPU does all the transcoding).
Ah fair one wrt Plex. When I saw I’d have to pay for the mobile app I noped out and found Jellyfin. If that’s not a concern for you, and you are already quite familiar with Plex, not really much point in swapping except out of interest or for the sake of going open source.
I’d say just stick with Plex if you already have the lifetime pass. It’s a bit more polished. As you probably know, the mobile apps are free for lifetime pass users.
I used an e3 Xeon 1275v6 (from 2017) for my old build. It had an igpu with hevc decode/encode. It was ‘overkill’ for what I was doing, and would be further overkill for what you’re planning. As long as you choose a CPU with an integrated GPU, you should be good to go. A lot of people (including myself) seem to overestimate how much CPU they’ll need.
I know AMD has CPUs with integrated graphics now, I’m just not familiar with them.
If you can, it never hurts to go for server hardware. You get ECC RAM and IPMI for adminsitration: No need to ever plug a monitor and keyboard to the NAS.
Note that “server” doesn’t have to be a frightening big box that eats over 100 W at idle… It can be a Xeon E, which is just the same thing as a Core desktop CPU but with ECC. It can be a little mini-ITX board with a power-sippping, highly efficient, Xeon D-1500 or Atom C3000.
Second-hand/refurbished makes server hardware affordable, subject to your local market. USA?
The questions are:
How much storage do you need?
How many drives do you ever expect? (4*8 TB for a start, but what future growth do you expect?)
What computing requirements? (You already answered: Not much, except for hardware transcoding. Which codecs?)
Transcoding is a pointer towards Intel Core/Xeon E, for QuickSync with the iGPU… except that if you want AV1 or other last gen codecs it may be more effective to pair an Arc A310 dGPU with an older CPU than to get a last-gen Intel CPU.
I am a bit confused…
I have a free Plex licence, but I never seen any sign of Plex forcing me to buy any licence to use it on a mobile phone.
I was really tricked first time, that it SEEMED that you cannot do anything without paying, but actually, you just have to close the window that tells you to pay and then you can use Plex without paying.
And since I recognised it, I use it without any problem.
I can access my library from anywhere in the world from any platform.
Huh, honestly couldn’t tell you. Plex is meant to require a one off payment to allow for mobile app access (unless you are a sub, in which case I imagine it is included).
