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Project plex server

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I don't even use it for that. Literally just plex and kodi streaming. I bet the 4k movies I have will make it do something with plex, but that is it.

Yeah, 4k plex transcoding uses every mhz of this cpu...
 
Picked up a sweet LSI 9266-8i SAS raid card from sno.lcn that I am thinking about running a couple of SSDs on for steam games. I ended up with TWO 3.84TB Sandisk Optimus SAS SSDs for a great deal, but I'll probably sell them and pick up a couple 400GB drives. I just purchased a 1080 for the desktop and selling those 3.84TB drives would pay for that and then some.

I also set up my HGST drives in a parity MS storage pool, but since I have heard some stories about it I also setup a backup onto an 8TB my book drive.
 
Alright a final update for a while to this. I sold the 3.84TB drives and purchased 2 400GB 1.8" SSDs to mess around with in raid. So far I've only put steam games on them for the steam stream portion of this build and it has minimized load times substantially. I also have it set up as a scratch disk for plex coding.

I also spent some time with my storage spaces configuration. I like the idea of parity however MS really messed up and the writes are terribly slow on it (see atto). I could speed it up by making it a RAID 0 or something similar, but I like the idea of being able to "easily" add more drives. I finally found out if you use 2 SSDs and set them as journaling/write-back it helps. I found 2 intel 180GB 520s on ebay for a great deal and decided to set it up that way. The results are much much better (see atto). I know I shouldn't use consumer drives in this instance, but they are MLC and should have more than enough endurance for a few years of use.

My next undertaking for this guy will be to move it over to a bigger case. I love the TJ08B but for as many drives as I have it's at its limit (6 SSDs, 6 mechanicals) so I'll probably use my desktop's Fractal Design Define R5 and purchase a smaller Define C for it. I also will probably swap over my Corsair 850i from my desktop since I am out of power connectors for the CM650M. This all won't happen for a long time though since the little shelf in my office won't handle the weight of the Define, lol. A bigger case would also mean cooler components, right now the 400GB SSDs get pretty warm while benching.

Over all it's been a fun project and I've learned a lot form it, especially about SAS and raid. sno.lcn was a huge help there and I do appreciate it.

Storage Spaces Parity without SSD Journal drives
ATTO storage space parity NTFS.PNG

Storage Spaces Parity with SSD Journal drives
ATTO storage space parity SSD Journal ReFS.PNG
 
Figure I'd update this post since it's been a while. I ended up putting 3x8TB drives in place of the 4TB drives I had before. Couldn't beat the best buy price of 179 each. I also moved everything over to a Fractal Define R5 case since I literally had SSDs hanging with double sided tape in the TJ08E... It's much quieter in the bigger and much heavier case, I can't complain.
I replaced the crucial ram with 32GB of ECC memory because it was a lateral move price wise. Not sure I needed ECC memory, but it was free.
The 1060 was sold due to the crazy prices that the mining boom commanded. I used the money from that to help buy a cheap 1050 for the server and a 7800x/mb for the desktop, lol...
I think the next step for the server is a 240/280mm AIO cooler and perhaps a jump to a full sized MB. The thought is also there to purchase a dual CPU board for future proofing, but that's just a thought right now...
 
Looks like a very nice system one of these days I will update my Nas server to include running my plex server . No way my current nas would be able to transcode very much as it is a Athalon xp 64 4400+ with 2 gigs of ram =) But has ran freenas for years without a problem then I use my desktop as the plex server .
 
Looks like a very nice system one of these days I will update my Nas server to include running my plex server . No way my current nas would be able to transcode very much as it is a Athalon xp 64 4400+ with 2 gigs of ram =) But has ran freenas for years without a problem then I use my desktop as the plex server .

Yeah it's really fun. The wife is able to stream anything in our library from work if she has a break so she's happy. I get to play with some fun hardware so I'm happy.
 
Just bought 2 more 8TB drives to use as dedicated backups, doubled the ram to 64GB, added a corsair H115i, and swapped out the MATX board for an ATX Gigabyte Ultra Gaming board. I really need to calm down on this thing, lol, it's a real money pit now.
 
Another update to this. I ended up bidding and winning a E5-2696 V3 ES cpu (a ES of the E5-2699 v3) which is an 18 core xeon. It's pretty sweet because it will turbo up to 3.8ghz which is good for un-optimized things. With the turbo mod it will run at 3.4ghz with all 18 cores (36 threads) working away.

Cinebench Mod 18cores ucore39.PNG

Not too bad considering a 4ghz threadripper 1950x gets 3300 in cinebench.
 
Well less than a month after getting the server where I wanted it (well more than I ever thought about actually), I've decided to part ways with it...

Desktop is getting an upgrade of a 7920x and a 1080ti and will take over both roles. It was a really fun project, that's for sure.
 
Well it's official. The xeon e5 2696 v3 has gone to a new home as has most of the other server parts. Here is the new multimedia machine (desktop filling the role of the server as well).

Passmark 4.3ghz mem mesh.PNG
Cinebench 4.3ghz.PNG
 
Thought it would be fun to post a pic of how the desktop sits now (well this one is with the side off). Thankfully the side panel hides the wiring for those hard drives.

20180206_155659 - Copy.jpg
 
TL;DR

This is not just a Plex server anymore, right? Cuz a i9-7920X and a 1080Ti in a plex server? LOL
 
TL;DR

This is not just a Plex server anymore, right? Cuz a i9-7920X and a 1080Ti in a plex server? LOL

No it's now dubbed the "multimedia machine" which means I play games on it too, lol. In all reality the 7920x isn't overkill however since 4k transcoding takes a toll on the cpu. I could recode the files and keep both the 4k and lower version on the hard drives, but what fun is that?
 
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