New NAS Builder - Mostly complete build list with a few questions

[VonAtlas]

I had some spare parts laying around, and supplemented with some new adds

- amd 3700x

- Rog Strix b550-wifi f mobo

- 16 gb ddr4 3200 ram

- 1660 Super (also have spare amd 6600 lying around)

- 1x 256 gb nvme (planned for boot)

- 1x 1TB nvme (planned for... something?)

-5x 4TB HGST NAS HDDs (renewed from Amazon)

 

My initial plan was using the server for media streaming (primarily), along with photo and document storage. Secondarily, I'd like to add other functionality (either light server hosting for video games like Minecraft, with the family, or smart home integration/security cam integration).

My first concern is the setup - Do I need to hardwire the build to the router or will wifi 6 connectivity suffice?

My second concern is the Hardware - How much RAM do I actually need for my intended purpose(s)? Which of my video cards are better suited for the purpose? Will my CPU suffice? With 4 people in the house, it's unclear how many streams we'd be running simultaneously (I'd guess 2 or 3 at most). Will my hardware suffice for 4k?

Are there any other concerns I'm missing with my proposed setup?

[Manderis]

If you want to use it as a game server I would always connect via Cable to the network. Your milage may vary depending on how stable your wifi is but personally I wouldn't bother with this potential bottle neck unless it is really not practical to run a cable. 

If you don't already have the 3700X I would consider a Ryzen with iGPU and ditch the dedicated GPU to save some power. Probably enough for 3 x 4k streams but maybe someone else can give a confirmation. Maybe 4700 G or 3400 G (big step down). 

Somewhere it was stated as a rule of thumb that zfs likes 1 GB of RAM for 1 TB of storage. 

[VonAtlas]

4 hours ago, Manderis said:

If you want to use it as a game server I would always connect via Cable to the network. Your milage may vary depending on how stable your wifi is but personally I wouldn't bother with this potential bottle neck unless it is really not practical to run a cable. 

If you don't already have the 3700X I would consider a Ryzen with iGPU and ditch the dedicated GPU to save some power. Probably enough for 3 x 4k streams but maybe someone else can give a confirmation. Maybe 4700 G or 3400 G (big step down). 

Somewhere it was stated as a rule of thumb that zfs likes 1 GB of RAM for 1 TB of storage. 

I do have the 3700x already (from my old gaming rig that got updated). Thanks for the other notes, though. I might be able to get the build near my router to wire it, but the original plan was to have it near a wifi extender further away from the router.

Edited December 10, 2024 by VonAtlas

[Zer0Log1c]

If I were in your shoes, I think I'd start by seeing how everything goes over WiFi since it may work perfectly fine. If you see packet drops or an unacceptable latency then you can look elsewhere. 

I can't say I have any direct experience with them but two out-of-the-box solutions would be ethernet over coax or ethernet over power if WiFi doesn't pass the muster. Both solutions take advantage of what's probably already in your walls, but they both have their drawbacks. 

Edited December 10, 2024 by Zer0Log1c
typo

[Qbert]

Wifi is fine but your motherboard has 2.5 Gbe Ethernet networking on it. If you plan to host something like a Minecraft server or a plex media streaming server, based on my experience with wifi 6 and ethernet, I will take and highly recommend ethernet (Cat6/ Cat6a) for anything where latency, stability and throughput matter. For the GPU, the 6600 might be nicer if you plan to do hardware compression or streaming I think it's called -  I'm not to familiar with the GPU side of Plex.  For the Minecraft server, I can speak to, Minecraft servers are very core dependent so having an 8 core over 4 is a good idea but it depends on how many people you are planning on hosting. I would also like to note that you may need more RAM if you want a higher render and simulation distance as those parts of the server get stored in the RAM and can be quite large sometimes. 

[VonAtlas]

3 hours ago, Zer0Log1c said:

If I were in your shoes, I think I'd start by seeing how everything goes over WiFi since it may work perfectly fine. If you see packet drops or an unacceptable latency then you can look elsewhere. 

I can't say I have any direct experience with them but two out-of-the-box solutions would be ethernet over coax or ethernet over power if WiFi doesn't pass the muster. Both solutions take advantage of what's probably already in your walls, but they both have their drawbacks. 

I've thought about the ehternet over power potential before, and it's something to think about, as wife-approval-factor for the server being near the router in the center of our house is likely to be low.

[VonAtlas]

2 hours ago, Qbert said:

Wifi is fine but your motherboard has 2.5 Gbe Ethernet networking on it. If you plan to host something like a Minecraft server or a plex media streaming server, based on my experience with wifi 6 and ethernet, I will take and highly recommend ethernet (Cat6/ Cat6a) for anything where latency, stability and throughput matter. For the GPU, the 6600 might be nicer if you plan to do hardware compression or streaming I think it's called -  I'm not to familiar with the GPU side of Plex.  For the Minecraft server, I can speak to, Minecraft servers are very core dependent so having an 8 core over 4 is a good idea but it depends on how many people you are planning on hosting. I would also like to note that you may need more RAM if you want a higher render and simulation distance as those parts of the server get stored in the RAM and can be quite large sometimes. 

The RAM issue for minecraft makes sense - I'll have to check back in on that minecraft with the kids to see if that's actually something they want - but for media streaming, is the 16 gigs sufficient?

Edit to add: I've also heard that the encoder provided by Nvidia is superior, even if the cards themselves would otherwise not be as proficient at gaming as their AMD counterparts. Is that something to consider between my two options?

Edited December 10, 2024 by VonAtlas

[Zer0Log1c]

9 minutes ago, VonAtlas said:

I've thought about the ehternet over power potential before, and it's something to think about, as wife-approval-factor for the server being near the router in the center of our house is likely to be low.

That's definitely an important factor to consider. Meeting my wife has put the kabash to my 'temporary' fixes of an Ethernet cable run across the room, down the stairs and past a bathroom haha.

EoP I guess can do pretty ok with 200-300 Mbps in building built since the 80s. The adapters don't seem too expensive either at $60 or so for a pair to test out and return if it doesn't work with your specific residence.

Plex's site says the 4GB should be enough RAM for most Plex based media servers (here). So my anticipation is that the game servers should be more RAM intensive than the other services you want to run.

I'm still digging into the Plex encoding side of things as I'll probably have to add a GPU for encoding in the future, but I do believe you can utilize Nvidia's NVENC encoder that's on most (if not all) of their GPUs. Intel Arc seems to have some beefy hardware encoding as well, especially for AV1. I'm personally leaning towards an Arc A310 in 6 months or so, but I don't have a spare Nvidia GPU on hand.

[Mobius]

i might be missing something but truenas/hexos does not support wifi.
a wifi extender with ethernet port can be used but its no where near an ideal scenario. I compared an extender that was 5ft from my router to hardwire and it was twice as slow to upload to the server and 5x slower to download from the server

ive seen a lot of ppl mention ideally you have at least 1gb of ram for 1tb of storage. Truenas/hexos uses the ram as a read cache so the more ram you have the snappier it'll feel

[VonAtlas]

2 hours ago, Zer0Log1c said:

That's definitely an important factor to consider. Meeting my wife has put the kabash to my 'temporary' fixes of an Ethernet cable run across the room, down the stairs and past a bathroom haha.

EoP I guess can do pretty ok with 200-300 Mbps in building built since the 80s. The adapters don't seem too expensive either at $60 or so for a pair to test out and return if it doesn't work with your specific residence.

Plex's site says the 4GB should be enough RAM for most Plex based media servers (here). So my anticipation is that the game servers should be more RAM intensive than the other services you want to run.

I'm still digging into the Plex encoding side of things as I'll probably have to add a GPU for encoding in the future, but I do believe you can utilize Nvidia's NVENC encoder that's on most (if not all) of their GPUs. Intel Arc seems to have some beefy hardware encoding as well, especially for AV1. I'm personally leaning towards an Arc A310 in 6 months or so, but I don't have a spare Nvidia GPU on hand.

I read similar things about the GPUs, and I had the spare 1660 sitting around.

[VonAtlas]

2 hours ago, Mobius said:

i might be missing something but truenas/hexos does not support wifi.
a wifi extender with ethernet port can be used but its no where near an ideal scenario. I compared an extender that was 5ft from my router to hardwire and it was twice as slow to upload to the server and 5x slower to download from the server

ive seen a lot of ppl mention ideally you have at least 1gb of ram for 1tb of storage. Truenas/hexos uses the ram as a read cache so the more ram you have the snappier it'll feel

OH... That's a problem... I do have a wifi extender with ethernet port, but still... Maybe I'll have to move the position of the router to where I plan the server, and move the extender into the house?

[Zer0Log1c]

3 hours ago, Mobius said:

i might be missing something but truenas/hexos does not support wifi.
a wifi extender with ethernet port can be used but its no where near an ideal scenario. I compared an extender that was 5ft from my router to hardwire and it was twice as slow to upload to the server and 5x slower to download from the server

Just dug through some truenas/freenas forums and saw the same thing; guess I'm pulling some Cat6 this week...

Had planned to use wifi as a crutch for a week or two just to start 😅

[Mobius]

i have a mesh router at home that is hard wired but it might be time for me to get another node that won't be wired. but rather using wireless backhaul. maybe that will work better than a cheap extender.

59 minutes ago, Zer0Log1c said:

Just dug through some truenas/freenas forums and saw the same thing; guess I'm pulling some Cat6 this week...

Had planned to use wifi as a crutch for a week or two just to start 😅

Wifi support would have been a game changer for me. leaving the server in a corner far away from everyone so it doesn't make noise that bothers anyone would have been fantastic

1 hour ago, VonAtlas said:

OH... That's a problem... I do have a wifi extender with ethernet port, but still... Maybe I'll have to move the position of the router to where I plan the server, and move the extender into the house?

that is most ideal

[Qbert]

18 hours ago, VonAtlas said:

but for media streaming, is the 16 gigs sufficient?

This.:

17 hours ago, Zer0Log1c said:

Plex's site says the 4GB should be enough RAM for most Plex based media servers (here). So my anticipation is that the game servers should be more RAM intensive than the other services you want to run.

I will add, Ive ran some pretty shitty local Minecraft servers on a Rasp Pi3B with only 2 GB of ram. Now that wasn't modded but my point is, 16 should be fine for now, If you have an issue with the gui and management side of the server I highly recommend using MC Server Soft and just running it on your Windows machine for simplicity. 

Edited December 11, 2024 by Qbert