JWD:
Hello all. I"m a NAS nubie and new to this forum. I’ve built PCs in the past but not a NAS. I’ve been wanting to build a NAS for a while and found this site. I want to build a NAS for multiple uses, 1 - PC Backup, 2 - iphone photo/backup, 3 - document/music/photo/video storage, 4 - PLEX server. I also would like to use VLC to play music/video connected to my TV via HDMI.
I’ve been using Google Drive and iCloud for the past couple of years and want to move off these platforms.
After reading the NAS Killer 4.0 build I’ve decided to pursue the prebuilt option route. Here’s what I’m looking at purchasing
HP Elite 8300 CMT w/ i7-3770 CPU. It comes w/ 16GB RAM and a 2TB HDD.
16GB RAM to increase to 32GB total
Nvidia Geforce GT 630 graphics card (for HDMI output)
3 - WD Red 10TB (setup for RAID 5)
TrueNAS or Unraid
I’m estimating this complete setup will run about $500-600. buying used off ebay. I have several questions.
HP claims I can use Intel Rapid Storage Technology to setup RAID 1. Can I do RAID 5? It doesn’t say. Will I need a RAID controller? Should I be looking at just 2 HDD in RAID 1?
Does TrueNAS or Unraid support RAID 5?
Will adding 16GB more RAM and the Nvidia card allow for HW transcoding for VLC and/or PLEX?
Is this build overkill? Can I do this build cheaper? As a newbie what am I missing? What else should I consider?
I plan to hardwire the NAS to my wifi router so my PCs and phones can connect to it for backups. I also plan to hardwire the NAS (via HDMI) to the TV so I can use PLEX and VLC to play music and videos. Right now I’m using my laptop (Lenovo Legion 5) as my PLEX server and want to free up HDD space as well as be able to do backups w/o having to attach an external HDD.
Any input and help is appreciated. Thanks
Welcome!
You should really build your own. It’s very cost effective and you’ll get a better result, especially long term as you start to expand.
Pick up some HDDs here instead, and save yourself a ton of money.
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Use code SERVERBUILDS in the offer details.
8TB Seagate SAS 12Gbps 7200RPM - $55 each after best offer
12TB HGST SAS 12Gbps 7200RPM - $90 each after best offer
14TB Seagate SAS 12Gbps 7200RPM - 105 each after best offer
Have you considered Unraid or TrueNAS? Neither utilize a hardware RAID controller, and instead will require direct drive passthrough for use of their drive pools.
That Nvidia GPU is not capable of hardware transcoding. Have you read the QuickSync guide?
Intel QuickSync
Intel’s QuickSync makes use of your Intel CPU’s onboard GPU (make sure it has one) to accelerate transcoding. Early on, QuickSync had a reputation for being relatively pointless because it was not very capable and the resulting quality was quite poor. However, Intel continues to improve QuickSync quite drastically with each generation.
Typically, the quality and performance of QuickSync has more to do with the generation of CPU than it does with the model number of the CPU. For …