Basically I am looking for some guidance on how to build a NAS Server with Unraid that can also have a Plex server, a torrents downloader and maybe other services with docker.
What i currently have is an old intel i5 4690k and I would like to utilise that since its not being used anywhere.
I will probably have around 4 drives.
Should I build a NAS with this CPU that i already have or build a new system ?
I live in Cyprus(Europe) and my budget is up to 500.
What parts are better suited for this? The cpu socket supported is LGA1150.
It should work fine as a basic setup to get started. For Plex it is recommended that you have a newer Intel cpu to take advantage of Intel’s Quicksync functionality for hw transcoding…however there’s no harm in giving it a go and seeing if it works for you. Alternatively there are GPUs that Plex recommends for this purpose. There will also be a rabbit hole of steps in order to get it setup correctly one way or the next.
You might get more responses if you post what motherboard you intend to use but in general for a very basic Unraid setup all you really need is a functional computer, a cache drive (ssd), a parity drive, and a couple other storage drives for your array, and a usb thumb drive where Unraid lives. Also probably gonna want a newer Intel NIC as many motherboards have Realtek and that will work but can be a bit buggy.
Once you get deeper into it you can move on into Raid controllers such as LSI 9200-8i in IT mode.
There are a number of topics on the board that cover this subject and can be a great help. When I started I thought I knew a lot of stuff and quickly realized how little I knew. Now I’m half way decent with dockers, virtualization, storage arrays, hardware…yada yada yada.