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Home server build advice

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bohrz

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Hello everyone!

I'm looking for advice on building a home server. What I need is a simple server for saving some family photos and some work related files, and I would also like to have a Plex (or equivalent) system. From what I searched, TrueNAS is a good solution, am I correct?

Hardware wise, what should I be looking for? My network is nothing fancy, only my main PC has a Gigabit port, so no 10Gb for me for the time being. I also aiming for 8TB storage for starters. What CPU, mortherboard, RAM would you suggest? Should I use an SSD for caching or running the OS?

Thank you all in advance.
 
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bohrz said:
So I'm going with a 10th generation i3 and 16gb of RAM. Based on the comments on the thread I think it will be enough.
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Nice ... and it looks like you can achieve very low idle power consumption with it. (W1zzard measured 48 watts but his test PC is pretty fat, except for the modest i3-10100 inside.)

Choose the PSU carefully, though. I could recommend my Seasonic G-360 but it's a 10 year old model at this point. Other good options may be the FSP Flexguru FSP250 or FSP300. If Cooler Master availability is good where you buy PC stuff, there's also the Elite v3 300W to look for, and v4 300W with better efficiency exists too.

You also mentioned an old notebook ... it's going to be a temporary solution only, right? While you could run a notebook 24/7, there are issues with that, like fan lifespan and dust, so it's better to avoid it altogether.
 
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Wirko said:
Nice ... and it looks like you can achieve very low idle power consumption with it. (W1zzard measured 48 watts but his test PC is pretty fat, except for the modest i3-10100 inside.)

Choose the PSU carefully, though. I could recommend my Seasonic G-360 but it's a 10 year old model at this point. Other good options may be the FSP Flexguru FSP250 or FSP300. If Cooler Master availability is good where you buy PC stuff, there's also the Elite v3 300W to look for, and v4 300W with better efficiency exists too.

You also mentioned an old notebook ... it's going to be a temporary solution only, right? While you could run a notebook 24/7, there are issues with that, like fan lifespan and dust, so it's better to avoid it altogether.
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I'll check the availability of the PSUs you suggested, I think Cooler Master is available, but only the 400W one. I'll check it out and I'll post here, mentioning you.

About the laptop, was just a thought. It's too old, too weak, simply impossible. I'll wait for the parts and then I'll start playing.

Thank you all, once more!
 
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Great thread to come across as I'm looking for something similar and this thread has given me some great ideas :D Thank you :)
 
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Jetster said:
The free version does not do hardware transcoding

Plex: Free vs Paid | Plex Support

Using Hardware-Accelerated Streaming | Plex Support
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Jester, I purchased 1 month o Plex Pass to test and use hardware transcoding. It keeps buffering and stuttering. For tests purposes I'm using a Ryzen 7 2700X and a GTX 1050TI, but that's seems not enough. I'm suspecting my network is not adequate, but even if I upgrade my devices, the TV is limited to 100mpbs wired and whatever it's rated wireless. I'm using the TV wirelessly, because it's faster than wired. Do you have any suggestions?
 
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bohrz said:
Jester, I purchased 1 month o Plex Pass to test and use hardware transcoding. It keeps buffering and stuttering. For tests purposes I'm using a Ryzen 7 2700X and a GTX 1050TI, but that's seems not enough. I'm suspecting my network is not adequate, but even if I upgrade my devices, the TV is limited to 100mpbs wired and whatever it's rated wireless. I'm using the TV wirelessly, because it's faster than wired. Do you have any suggestions?
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It's not your hardware. What's your internet speed? upload do a speed test

Can you transfer files across your network? What speed

Don't use those big HD files try a 1080 for testing

I have a 100Mb network. When I transfer a file from one PC to another it transfers at 110Mb constant

My server is hard wired to the router, my LG TV is wireless
 
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Jetster said:
It's not your hardware. What's your internet speed? upload do a speed test

Can you transfer files across your network? What speed

Don't use those big HD files try a 1080 for testing

I have a 100Mb network. When I transfer a file from one PC to another it transfers at 110Mb constant

My server is hard wired to the router, my LG TV is wireless
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I tested transfering some 720p files from my Mac Air (wireless) to the testing server (wired to my ISP modem/router). The transfer speeds were between 30 and 40MB/s, with lows of 25. In mbps, it's 240 - 320, with lows of 200.

The testing server (and the new one) is wired to the ISP modem/router and from there it's wired to a router in my living room. I configured them to act like a mesh (at least that's the way I understand). It's a single SSID, one for the 2.4GHz and another for 5GHz band.

The living room router is pretty close to the TV, less than 2m, and the TV is using the 5G band. But when I ran a speed test on speedtest.net, the TV managed only 50mbps, out of my 400mbps connection.

Maybe that's the issue with transcoding?

Thank you for your time and patience!
 
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Switch your TV to 2.4 and see what the speed is

What are your DL/UP speeds from your ISP?

I would run everything wired temp just to diagnose, see if it works. The idea is to make sure your network is correct before you try wireless.
 
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Jetster said:
Switch your TV to 2.4 and see what the speed is

What are your DL/UP speeds from your ISP?

I would run everything wired temp just to diagnose, see if it works. The idea is to make sure your network is correct before you try wireless.
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The TV is maxing out at 50mbps with 5G, 2.4G or wired. So I thing I have an issue there, as I believe the stream needs 100mbps, going by the Plex infos.

My ISP is supposed to deliver 400DL/200UL (fiber), but testing from my desktop (the Ryzen one, with Gigabit port) they're delivering 200/100. I'm gonna call them tomorrow and work it out.

Anyway, my internal LAN should be running at least 100mbps, shouldn't it?
 
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So, try playing them across your network natively without Plex. You just have Plex on a Windows PC, right?
 
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bohrz said:
Yes... How do I do that? I can try the native cast from Windows to my TV, it does not transcode, and then audio does not play.
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Try from another PC like a laptop. You will have to share the folder

Just trying to troubleshoot by eliminating things. If your network is not right Plex will not work. You PC will need to codex or VLC
 
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Jetster said:
Try from another PC like a laptop. You will have to share the folder

Just trying to troubleshoot by eliminating things. If your network is not right Plex will not work. You PC will need to codex or VLC
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Well, I opened the file from the network and it played smoothly. I also tried to stream with transcoding from VLC and it also worked, so I think the network is capable. I think the problem is the TV not achieving more than 50mbps.

I watched an HDTVTest video talking about this issue and recommending buying an USB to Rj45 dongle (Link), to alleviate the issue.

What do you think?
 
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Thats a nice TV. Hard to believe it has problems. Maybe there is an update to the firmware or just hard wire it
 
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Jetster said:
Thats a nice TV. Hard to believe it has problems. Maybe there is an update to the firmware or just hard wire it
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Yeah, I'll do some tests this week, try to figure out the low speeds. It should be capable of 100mbps locally at least.

Thanks for the help
 
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bohrz said:
I tested transfering some 720p files from my Mac Air (wireless) to the testing server (wired to my ISP modem/router). The transfer speeds were between 30 and 40MB/s, with lows of 25. In mbps, it's 240 - 320, with lows of 200.

The testing server (and the new one) is wired to the ISP modem/router and from there it's wired to a router in my living room. I configured them to act like a mesh (at least that's the way I understand). It's a single SSID, one for the 2.4GHz and another for 5GHz band.

The living room router is pretty close to the TV, less than 2m, and the TV is using the 5G band. But when I ran a speed test on speedtest.net, the TV managed only 50mbps, out of my 400mbps connection.

Maybe that's the issue with transcoding?

Thank you for your time and patience!
Click to expand...
my smart TV has wifi AC, and yet it's too slow for 4K streaming - i have to use its wired connection to get full speeds.

I wonder if they internally hooked it up to USB 2.0 or something stupid.
 
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Maybe I’m missing something but I don’t understand why you wouldn’t be able to direct play the file. Doesn’t the tv support eac-3/pcm/Dolby?
 
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claes said:
Maybe I’m missing something but I don’t understand why you wouldn’t be able to direct play the file. Doesn’t the tv support eac-3/pcm/Dolby?
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I confess I don't fully understand how the codec world works. But from what I gathered, my C1 does not support Dolby TrueHD and DTS at all (link). As soon as I have time today I'll do some more testing with my network.
 
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A google search got this answer:

AAC, AC3, aptX, MP3, WMA, AC4, EAC3, HE_AAC, MP2, PCM
video file formats/codecs are
3GPP, AVI, H.263, H.264, H.265, MKV, QuickTime, M2TS, MP4, MPEG4, RealVideo, TS, VC-1, VP8, VP9, Xvid

EAC3 is dolby digital plus, AC3 is dolby digital, A-C4 is a plastic explosive

Basically, the TV supports formats likely to be streamed on OTA channels arond the globe and a few commonly used by streaming services - but none of the proprietary dolby stuff that requires high licensing fees, since most users would run an external sound system for that

The key here is that ARC and E-ARC are designed to pass through the audio to external sources, NOT to be played direct from the TV. Therefore, theres no use having a TV that can decode super high bitrate 7.1 audio to play out it's tinny stereo speakers.


Your TV's settings may have options to allow you to pass audio out to the external speakers and disable the internal ones, and if that E-ARC receiver supports the codecs you'll get the sound that way
 
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bohrz said:
Hey guys, one last question.

I've been doing some tests with Plex and my LG C1. When I try to play an mkv file (HEVC and Tru-HD 7.1 audio) Plex needs to transcode the file because the TV does not support the audio part. The issue I'm having is that the stream keeps buffering and just couple of seconds get played at time. I can solve the issue by changing the audio track to a supported format and then the TV does all the work.

My question is, how come I can't transcode the file with a R7 2700X and a 1050Ti? Is it a hardware or network issue? I'm guessing it's the network, since my CPU should be more than able to transcode the file.

My issue is not impeditive I'm just trying to understand the system better.

Thank you once more!
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Maybe I missed it, but what NAS software are you using? If using TrueNAS CORE (based on FreeBSD), hardware acceleration (via gpu) is not supported. So, all your transcoding is happening on the cpu. I believe TrueNAS SCALE (based on Debian) has hardware acceleration working. Just adding my 2 cents.
 
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Halo3Addict said:
Maybe I missed it, but what NAS software are you using? If using TrueNAS CORE (based on FreeBSD), hardware acceleration (via gpu) is not supported. So, all your transcoding is happening on the cpu. I believe TrueNAS SCALE (based on Debian) has hardware acceleration working. Just adding my 2 cents.
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I'm just doing some Plex tests from my ordinary PC. I'm buying some of the parts next week and the hard drives in July. Once I have the parts, I'll decide what to run and how. Maybe I'll go with some Linux machine and I'll reencode (is that a word?) the files to some format my TV fully supports. Once I have the gear I'll play a little before commiting.
All that said, thank you for letting me know about this limitation.
 
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bohrz said:
I'm just doing some Plex tests from my ordinary PC. I'm buying some of the parts next week and the hard drives in July. Once I have the parts, I'll decide what to run and how. Maybe I'll go with some Linux machine and I'll reencode (is that a word?) the files to some format my TV fully supports. Once I have the gear I'll play a little before commiting.
All that said, thank you for letting me know about this limitation.
Click to expand...
handbrake lets you re-encode in any OS easily, but depending on how you're sourcing the media you may be best getting copies that's already in supported formats
 
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The most common supported format would be .mp4 container with stereo AAC audio and H264 video


Using H265 as the video codec would greatly reduce the size needed, but older devices (playstations, BD players, older TV's etc etc) may not support it.
At the cost of extra space you can add more than one audio stream, so you could keep a quality stereo audio and choose a 5.1 option that suits your setup


Where it gets annoying is say, apple has shit subtitles support and only supports stereo sound - so if you left plain old DTS 5.1 audio, they get no sound.

iPhone plays files of H.264 and MPEG-4 with AAC audio in MP4, M4V, and MOV formats, and M-JEPG with stereo audio in AVI format. In details, they are:

  1. M4V, MP4, MOV file formats encoded with: H.265/H.264 video, up to 4K/60 fps, High Profile level 4.2 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio.
  2. M4V, MP4, MOV file formats encoded with: MPEG-4 video up to 2.5 Mbps, 480p/30 fps, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio;
  3. AVI file formats encoded with: Motion JPEG (M-JPEG) up to 35 Mbps, 1280 by 720 pixels, 30 frames per second, audio in ulaw, PCM stereo audio.
Click to expand...
 
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