Yet Another Fantastic Guide from JDM & Serverbuilds!!!
I took a long pull from the HP290 Kool-Aid ( I have 2 @ $104 price point ), this guide makes it really easy to roll your own custom transcoder / NAS / Whatever Box with off the shelf modern hardware. Sure it may be difficult to reach the $100 mark but still a very awesome write up. I like it!
Hello All,
Recently i built a new server w/ amd 3950x in hopes to use unraid to replace my old gaming pc that died and add NAS storage since all my storage was within Windows. Ive come to realize that AMD 400 and 500 series MB are very buggy and unstable still within unraid VMs, so i have decided to sell off my 2nd GPU and use the money from selling it to build a 2nd machine to act as my NAS/Plex/Dockers use. I have been also converting my h264 files to h265 to cut down on space with the monster 3950x i have now.
My question is for NAS/Plex/Dockers and NO VMs, do i really need the 6 core listed above or would the 4 core work for me?
My Corsair 1000D has an area for 2nd system mini-ITX setup w/SFX 2nd PSU, so i was thinking of going that route and move all my NAS to the intel 2nd system.
I was looking at the following…
Intel Core i3-10100
ASRock B460M-ITX/ac Mini ITX LGA1200
Reason for 10th gen, because the Mini-ITX mbs for 1151 are over $50 more than the 1200 socket boards, so its a wash between the mb difference and cpu difference, only reason i was looking at them.
Silly question: is there a reason why some models in a family are not mentioned?
For example the i3 9300T, is that just a “yes sure as long as they have QSV they’re fine, I can’t possibly list them all” or some of these have been left out for a reason?
Thanks!
I gave an overview over the commonly available models. The i3-9300T is really hard to come by, but will perform on par with the rest of the series. Couldn’t include them all!
That’s what I thought, just wanted to make sure. Thanks for the clarification!
JDM, I just used this guide as a start place for my dedicated Plex system. Ended up with an i5-10400. Then for the fun of it I stuck a 1660 into it. Running Unraid / Nvidia add on / linux.io Plex docker. So far everything is working great… To include (hw) on decode and encode.
I also got a homerun box for the over the air broadcasting… That is next on the list to figure out.
Thanks for all the great info!
But why would you put a 1660 in it if you have a perfectly good processor? That’s a waste of a good 1660!
yea… honestly its been nagging me. Mainly because its just sitting around and I “feel” like it should be put to work.
Put it to work with this!
Or, use it for Plex transcoding, and use your iGPU for your NVR with BlueIris.
I have a nearly identical set up for unraid (-plex). It only gets a 1070 for the gpu. I plan on testing out Parsec on it, and following your guide to make it happen. 
I bought a similar one off eBay and it’s worked well. I think these are a little better-designed than the HP’s and work great as long as you don’t need a PCI card.
Anyone using one of these setups as Blue Iris machine or NVR in general? Curious since the quick sync methodology should apply. Looking at something to support 6-8 cameras 1080p/1440p cameras and was debating reusing my old i7-4790k( (88 TDP) setup or selling that and either setting up a quick sync box or getting a similar SFF box to save on power usage and get h265 encoding/decoding…
Check out this link for helping pick hardware for Blue Iris:
Has anyone seen this before? https://www.seeedstudio.com/ODYSSEY-X86J4105864-p-4447.html
Not sure how far the Celeron J4105 would go. Its Quad-Core 1.5-2.5GHZ UGH 600.
For that price, there are cheaper/just as good options.
Agreed with @Geran_Brown, it’s expensive. It also has the same Gemini Lake QSV issues that other similar boards have.
I finally starting looking at building a Plex media server a few days ago, I have zero server experience. But this seems like it would be a fun hobby, I love home theater and computers.
I have what I think would be a good relatively cheap build from scratch. But I want to make sure I’m not misunderstanding or missing anything. Would love any input on components I’ve picked if there are better options out there. I cant find many case options, are their any other suggestions?
This is an awesome post and I learned a lot. I’m still very new and was wondering if this could be a solution for me. Currently I do not have my NAS built yet, but I will do so in the future (right now I just have my media attached via USB to an old laptop on the network), but for the time being I’m wondering if this would be able to solve my Plex home issue by hardware transcoding.
If I build a qsv intel transcoder, and put Plex on it, and re-direct my media from my laptop + external HDD, would this be a solution and would it still be able to transcode effectively? I’m wondering what could go wrong or what variables I’m missing or should I just wait until I build my separate NAS? I was considering this or completely forgoing transcoding and throwing in the towel and maybe getting a nvidia shield pro in the mean time to by pass transcoding, but it would be unfortunate. What are your thoughts/is my line of thinking correct?
Do a 1U build please? Curse you, PCPartPicker for not having any rackmount chassis options!
PCPP is pretty garbage for the stuff we do here. You can combine information from this thread with [Guide] Spice up your rack with these stylish & sexy chassis for your pfSense build! this guide to help you find a cool chassis.
Generally, I wouldn’t recommend 1U builds however as they aren’t quiet, nor do they offer much expansion. Personally, I’d rather get one of the Mini-ITX systems listed above.