Hi all, I have kind of trapped myself with my current DS918+ setup:

Volume 1 SHR BTRFS: 12TB, 18TB and 22TB WD Golds (26.2TB usable) - running Plex, Qbit x2, Gluetun, Sonarr, Radarr, Lidarr, Tautulli, Overseer, Prowlarr and Beets all in Docker.
Volume 2 SHR EXT4: 4TB WD Purple - running Surveillance station with 2x feeds.

All runs smoothly but in order to expand I would need to buy another 22TB drive and a DX517 expansion bay which would cost around £970 for the extra 20TB of storage (47.3TB total usable) with only one slot free on the expansion bay which is a very expensive upgrade for what it is.

I am aiming for around 100TB+ to keep me going to for another 1-2 years so thinking it is time to upgrade and sell the DS918+ on while it still holds some value. Unsure if I will also part with the 3x Gold Hdds too, as I realise it is best to go for a 12+ disc enclosure and use much cheaper 10TB enterprise refurbs (sourced 10TB @ £86) to gradually expand instead.

I would also like to go down the Proxmox route and use Unraid or Xpenology in a VM for storage but the main question here is what hardware to go with, with a preference to upgrading to SAS (with SATA backwards compatibility) and plenty room for expansion further down the line.

I’ve priced up a SuperMicro CSE-826 X10DRH-C for £482.40:
- Intel Xeon E5-2686 V4 - 18-Core 36-Threads 2.30GHz (3.00GHz Boost, 45MB Cache, 145W TDP)
- SuperMicro Heatsink
- 1 x 32GB - DDR4-2933Mhz (PC4-23400, 2Rx4)
- SuperMicro On-Board SAS/SATA RAID Kit - 0/1/5/6/10/50/60
- 12 x Supermicro LFF Hot-Swap Caddy & 2 x SuperMicro SFF HS Caddy
- 1 x Supermicro (PWS-920P-SQ) Hot-Swap PSU 920W

…I like that this is pretty much an off the shelf solution, but I would lose the Intel Quick Sync Video that Plex will need, so I would need to add a graphics card and I would really not know where to start with this (would like it to easily handle 4x concurrent 4k transcodes with headroom).

HDD cost to get to est. 45TB usable would be around £513 with 6x free slots spare. So although almost the same cost as the DX517 expansion bay option it will work out better value overtime when adtional HDDs are added.

Now I am just wondering if it would be better to go for a custom case build with a QSV compatible processor without a GPU card (https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/search/featurefilter.html?productType=873&0_QuickSyncVideo=True).

The best case I have found so far is the Fractal 7 XL but this would cost £195 and I am not sure if I could budget the remaining components for under £300.

Be great to hear your opinions and if you think I should do a custom build, if so what components should I go for and any other 12+ HDD cases you can recommend (a few extra 2.5" enclosures and a motherboard with a couple of M.2 slots would be a bonus). Or GPU recommendations for the SuperMicro route (will need to be powered by the motherboard).

  • _xulion@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Supermicro 826 is not a GPU friendly chassis if that’s something you want to consider for the future. The power distribution board do not have GPU power unless you want to reuse one of the CPU power or combining a few Molex connectors. Also finding a low-profile GPU might not be easy.

    Supermicro 829U however is designed for GPU and high performance. But it only accepts non-atx board from supermicro (x10-dru, x11-dpu, h11-dsu etc.). Those motherboards will have 3-4 GPU 8pin connectors to power GPU. 829U usually are cheaper on eBay (I got one recently for $130).

    As others mentioned, they are loud though. I can live with my dl380 g9 in the same room, but I have to throw the supermicro into garage.

    • paulmcrules@alien.topOPBEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Thanks for your input. As it happens there are plenty of SuperMicro CSE-829U X10DRU-i+ 2U 12x 3.5" (LFF) to configure on that same site and they are cheaper. I have priced one up for £344.40 (without the card).

      I’ve got 4 options for the chassis, which one would be most suitable (all the same price):

      • 3x PCIe-x16 FH, 1x PCIe-x8 LP
      • 2x GPU Support Cage - 3x PCIe-x16 FH, 1x PCIe-x8 LP
      • 4 PCIe-x16 FH, 1x PCIe-x8 LP
      • 3x PCIe-x16 FH, 1x PCIe-x8 LP, 1x PCIe-x16 FH

      Then I’ve gone for:

      • 1 x Intel Xeon E5-2695 V4 - 18-Core 36-Threads 2.10GHz (3.30GHz Boost, 45MB Cache, 120W TDP)
      • 1 x SuperMicro Heatsink
      • 1 x 32GB - DDR4 2400MHz (PC4-19200, 2Rx4)
      • 1 x SuperMicro LSI-9361-8i 1GB (SAS/SATA) RAID Kit - 0/1/5/6/10/50/60
      • 12 x Supermicro LFF Hot-Swap Caddy
      • 1 x SuperMicro PWS-1K02A-1R ‘Titanium’ Hot-Swap PSU 1000W

      Any suggestions on the GPU would be welcome, I am guessing something like a Nvidia Quadro P4000 could work? (data sheet)

      • _xulion@alien.topBEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        You make me worried. I hope my suggestion won’t trigger your impulse buying.

        Before you pull the trigger think again about the noise and power consumption:

        • They are loud, both the PSU and those 4 high RPM fans.

        • The average power consumption will be around or over 200W

        • This case can only support supermicro mother board and from what I researched they ends at x12/h12 . The latest 13 gen motherboards do not have this type of formfactor. Means the newest system you can build with this case will be 3rd gen Xeon scalable or 3rd gen Epyc. None of the 4th gen so far seems to fit. I might give you another 7 years or so.

        For GPU it depends on what’s your needs. I don’t run Plex so I prefer Tesla (I plan to get one or two P40s for myself to run big data and ML). But I’m not sure if tesla is good for Plex or not.

        For the PCIe options I would choose 3FH x16. I believe with 3FH you can still have two LP.

        Also beware many of the PCI slot require 2nd CPU to be installed (you can check the manual).