Great thanks for info! Site has so much good information, still trying to figure everything out. My Core 2 Duo Plex box finally died so need to build something new. Thought first about Synology Box, them AMD box… then came across your hp 290 post and video!
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Yes,
HP290, 500g NVMe, eSATA controller & enclosure got here Wednesday night. Build is up and running with stock CPU and 4gb. I was to anxious to test it out, so i got it up and going before the CPU and ram got here.
I got 10 dockers running including plex and all of them finally talking to each other. They don’t seem to phase the box too much. I have ~12TB copied over so far, but waiting on another 14tb for my parity drive, before I bring my other drives over to the array.
This is my first time touching a NAS, Unraid, a docker container and know little to nothing about Linux, so it’s been a tiresome couple of days.
Think the ram and CPU will be here tomorrow.
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Any update @Nathan909?
Many motherboards have the option to set the amount of RAM to be used by the iGPU. How does this setting affect QSV performance?
Here it is.
With all 3 of my drives spun up it draws 33.5 watts, with them spun down about 21.5w
14tb parity drive took 24.5 hours to build.
It’s not a huge build, but somebody looking for 4 drives + parity + cache, it should suffice nicely.
If that’s a USB MediaTek box (or similar) I’ve had 2 of them die within the year that I bought them.
Watch it like a hawk.
It’s a Mediasonic eSata encloser 
Mediasonic is definitely what I meant.
I was worried about using a USB controller, but I figured an eSATA would be fine, as all the work is done with the controller and the box is just a passive connection, No?
Did you have yours set to USB or eSATA ?
Did you ever hear back if JDM was using usb or esata? I’ve got an identical build in progress.
I wouldn’t use either, TBH.
What were you using when it failed?
Both units failed, I don’t recall what I was using.
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I had a couple of those Mediasonic units a while back, one USB2/eSATA and the other USB3/eSATA. I ran both on their eSATA connectors, plugged into the Mediasonic PCI-e eSATA controller. They were nothing but trouble from the beginning for me. Drives would randomly disappear and wouldn’t show up again until I restarted the enclosure, transfer speeds slowed to a crawl when I was using more than one drive simultaneously, and I had trouble physically getting the drives into and out of the topmost bay on one unit. I definitely wouldn’t recommend them to anyone, regardless of which interface you choose.
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What is the recommended minimum for NZB unpacking? Was looking at a Pentium G4600 or similar Pentiums until I spotted your comment on needing the higher end for NZBs. Would an i3 8100 be enough? I’m planning on hardware transcoding Plex while running Sonarr, Radarr, Sabnzbd in the background. Thanks!
Also, the NZB downloading/unpacking probably wouldn’t happen at the same time as any Plex streams if that makes any difference.
Hello guys, thx for providing so much useful information for noobs like me 
i am about to build my first multi-purpose NAS/Plex Server. i know two separated devices should be used but i don´t have much space at home and electricity is expensive where i live
i was thinking about:
case: fractal node 804 (100€)
board: asock B365M pro4 or gigabyte b365m ds3h (70€)
cpu: i5-8400t (already bought for 85€))
m2 ssd: wd blue (already bought for 40€)
ram: crucial ballistix TM or g.skill aegis 16gb ddr4 kit (75€)
psu: 400w/450w… maybe bequiet! pure power 11 (50€)
TOTAL: around 400-450€.
what do u guys think about this build?
i have a few questions refarding upgradability tho:
the case supports up to 8 3,5 discs. the motherboard has only 6 sata ports… and the psu has 5 connections…
- is the 400w psu enough in case i decide to use 8 hdds?
i i know there are pcie cards to get more sata ports, but how about the psu? how can i get more connections for the sata drives?
cheers and thx again
The Node 804 actually supports 10 3.5" HDD, and 2 2.5" HDD/SSD.
That PSU is enough for 10 drives. You can get more SATA connections on the PSU by using power splitters. You can get more SATA ports by using a SATA expansion card or a SAS HBA.
Hey JDM_WAAAT,
thx a lot for your reply
Is there any inconventient in using those splitters for the PSU? Like: do the drives perform as well as connected regularly?
What is the “nominal power” on the Sata controllers? Is it better more or less nominal Power?
And one last question: is there any inconvenience in ordering sata controllers from China? Because where i live they cost between 70 and 120€, and from China it’s like 30-40€…
Thx and take care
Dear all,
I would like to hear your opinions on a “VM with Nvidia” or “dedicated i5” solution for Plex and Tvheadend.
Currenly I have a Proxmox Xeon E5-2648L v3 with a Nvidia K2200 pass trouhged to a VM. In the VM is Plex and Tvheadend and ARM (automatic ripping machine) runinng in docker container with working nvenc. We have round about 2-10 clients (RPi, iPad, PC, streaming over internet).
I live in europa and current is quite expansive, so the power consumtion matters.
I was thinking about moving the VM into a dedicated System with an I5 - 10400. Does this make senes? What would be the advantage for image quality (using nvenc from 2014 with the nividia card) and power consumption? I cannot get any valid infos about what the nvidia card is using in idle.
Thanks and best regards
Ben