It’s possible. I’ll look into it.
Thanks. Someone will sell me a D30 with dual E5-2620v2’s and 64gb of ram for $450-500. Is that good? (More ram than I need). Already have a Rosewill 15 bay, but I think I just need 6-8 drives so wouldn’t mind the compactness of the D30 if it can hold 6 without tinkering.
It has 5 bays internal - it also has 3 5.25 bays (one with an optical) - you can use those without too much effort.
It also has a msata slot.
Thanks. So with an SATA card, some power splitters, and 3 mounting brackets, 8 x 3.5” drives should be easy in a D30? Plus an SSD or two?
What should I do with an MSATA slot? Cache drive for UNRAID? I have an M2 but I guess that won’t fit.
Any idea if a D30 with dual E5-2620v2’s and 64gb of ram for $450-500 is worth getting for a 6+ drive NAS/Plex server? Or am I better off just grabbing one of those Chenbro combos from the 4.1 build guide and putting in my 15 bay Rosewill case?
I think the D30 board actually has 2 sata 6gbs and 6 3 gbs, so you might not need any card at all.
yes, the m.sata would make a reasonable cache drive - although I don’t know how many PCIe lanes are on that, so I dunno what speed it runs at.
Unless you want to run some VMs dual 2620 v2 is probably overkill for running NAS/Plex. It would be cheaper to pick up one of the combos for your NAS and run plex on a cheap QS box (like the HP 290) -
I think the price is reasonable for the D30 for a complete system, however the downside is the MB is custom, so it will only fit in that case and the PSU probably is as well.
So a little bit depends if you want the CPU for things other than strictly NAS/plex - that is 12 cores/24 threads and over 13k passmark
Why would I want a separate machine from my NAS as the Plex server? What’s a QS box?
I don’t really transcode or have multiple users, so it’s all overkill for me. My current server is passmark 700. But I’d like to keep my options open to do a lot more. Only VM I may run is a Windows 10 one to run Blue Iris, which I currently run on my desktop. The combo if I don’t go with the D30 is the E3-1230v2. That’s already overkill, but that’s part of the fun. D30 is just tempting because it’s simpler, and I can fit it under a desk instead of in a basement closet.
Scroll down to the QuickSync section
Is it really worth a second box to run Plex? Feel like my 8000-13000 passmark server will have little to do without running Plex. Is there a point of a QuickSync box if I don’t expect to transcode more than a couple streams at once? E3-1230v2 needs hardware deciding support?
If I need QS so badly, should I be going with an i3/i5/i7 on my NAS instead of a Xeon?
I currently run Blue Iris on my i7-7700 desktop because of QuickSync. No idea if it works/helps. If I really need QS, I guess I could run Plex on there, too.
I’ll try to explain it this way.
Historically Plex would want quite good passmark on your CPUs to handle some transcoding, because there is typically some transcoding going on, whether because of the bandwidth, or the clients, or subtitles, something like that. So you would want some CPU with at least some ability to transcode 1 or 2 streams even in minor usage. (A dual Xeon system can transcode alot more than that in SW of course)
With HW Intel quicksync transcoding, what you can do is get a cheaper system to run your NAS, because you don’t need as much CPU and you get a second cheaper system to run Plex with a very cheap 8th gen or so CPU (like a Celeron G4900). So yes, it’s 2 systems but combined they can cost less to buy, own and operate than one larger server.
Also, JDM as a rule likes to keep his systems separate, his NAS only runs unraid and nothing else. So he really likes having separate discrete systems for a defined purpose.
The D30 can handle what you need without problems, so just go for it. It has lots of room for you to play with things if you want. I was just pointing out an alternative to consider.
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Makes sense. I opened up my Rosewill 15 bay case and it’s not as unwieldy out of the box. So leaning towards that over the dual CPU D30.
If I go with the combo with the E3-1230v2, that should be fine for a couple software only transcodes though, right?
Then if I end up needing more CPU, I can offload Plex to either a used QS system or my i7-7700 desktop.
Besides size, I was considering the D30 so I’d have the Option to move Blue Iris (8 cameras) from my desktop to a Windows VM. That’s probably too much for the E3-1230v2 right?
Yes, sure E3-1230 V2 should have plenty enough to SW transcode several streams.
My understanding is that Blue Iris also really benefits from QS, a bunch of people on discord run it though, so you might want to ask there.
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Thanks for your help.
If I get the D30 and later want to move it to my 15 bay rack case for more space, would that work? Or is that D30 motherboard only going to work in the D30 case with that power supply?
I’m pretty sure it does not fit in the rosewill because it is slightly bigger than the EEB size. I believe you can use a standard PSU, but you need something really big to fit it into. There are a few google searches come up of interest
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It’s hard to imagine something being too big to fit in the Rosewill. I feel like I could park my car in it.
Doesn’t sound like it makes sense to switch the D30 out of its case. If eventually I end up needing more than 6-8 3.5" drives, I’ll sell it and start fresh in the rackmount case.
RSV-4100 is only listed to support up to ATX. Has anyone actually tried E-ATX inside?
Also, anyone have experience mounting an x16 GPU in a rack chassis? Most, if not all, show low profile pcie.
I fixed that, it is indeed ATX.
I’m not sure what you mean though as far as a GPU, 3U and 4U chassis are full height PCIe.
Also, why do you need a GPU?
Heavy Plex use. Unless the xeons have Quicksync? Have a 1060 lying around I can use so pretty much zero cost.
And Amazon is showing low profile only for the 4100, even though it’s 4u. Typo on their part? The Rosewill site isn’t clear on bracket height.
A $92 QuickSync box is just about zero cost. That 1060 is probably worth more on the used market!
Keep in mind that starting with 6-8 drives seems like a good idea. And it might very well be fine for you. Though, I can tell you from experience, it is easy to go from 5 drives to 30. Too easy. Lol.
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