Good evening
I am looking to upgrade my Plex media server and was tying with the two ideas.
I am currently running my server inside an OLD Lenovo desktop work station, which I had to modify to get two 3.5” 4TB hard drives in there. It works fine but not a lot of room for expansion should I ever need it. So I have the following ideas
Idea 1
Using a thin desktop machine as the OS and brains of the machine but would have a sata PCIE extender card installed. Would be low powered may be a ryzen 2200/2400g processor. 65w (Node 202)
I would then get a second case of a similar size that could hold 4/6 3.5 inch hdds, these would then connect to the sata card via sas/sata card not sure of the correct terminology. Sort of a DIY JBOD enclosure. I was looking at a node 202 but not sure how many 3.5” HDD a node 202 would be fit inside this case with it being modified for a DIY JBOD storage enclosure.
Reason for doing this is I find desktop case/ towers too bulky and un sightly. Has anyone done a build this way before and would it work in theory, as I believe this way would give a small less bulky plex server but modular in design. Please note that the plex server will never always be on all of the time, only when I want to watch something.
Idea 2. Using a similar set up to the above but using x2 1U short stack sever cases.
Idea 3. I like the idea of using the 1u cases but would rather use an SFX modular power supply, I know a lot of the 1u cases that offer lots of internal storage tend to be quite long in length and short in width but does anyone know if they do a 1u chassis that is long in width but short in length. I would not be looking to use server grade hardware just off the shelf stuff.