How do I start my home network?
How do I start my home network?
So I am making plans to build home servers for my NAS, Plex, and games. I want the system to use less power. My main computer will stay on Windows 10 with virtual machines for all the apps. I am still figuring out some small details but here is a big question: What hardware should I buy? I know I need a strong CPU, so which one would last me a long time? I'm thinking about putting this into an ITX box if that fits my room size. But if not, I can go with a MATX box instead.
It's hard to give one simple answer because different things need different stuff. A big storage thing like NAS or Plex needs lots of disk space, while a game server usually needs more memory and CPU power. Also, it all depends on which games you're running since they have very different rules. For example, having more cores doesn't always mean better speed. Some tasks are only fast if you use just one core at the right speed. Your electricity bill will change a lot depending on what you run. A NAS uses almost no power but some games can burn a lot of power. Usually, it's about balancing how much space your case takes versus how loud the fans get. It tends to be quieter and cooler if you have bigger fans in a larger case.
TrueNas is the right choice for what you need to do. Right now, I am using one on a slightly older AMD A8-7600 processor paired with 16GB of RAM on some ASRock mini-itx boards. The operating system sits on a Samsung SSD 850 EVO mSATA that holds 120GB, but the real power comes from four 4TB WD RED disks running in RAID-Z1 for massive storage. I'm just keeping the 120GB as a spare in case I need to run VMs later, and honestly, that's all I needed at first. The only thing really special about this setup is adding an Intel 10Gbe adapter, but that's mostly because I'm also tinkering with iSCSI and my ESXi environment (which is different stuff).
The PLEX hardware encoder shows up looking pretty bad at low speeds, especially when watching on your phone away from the house. I like using CPU transcoding for a clean stream, but you need a very powerful processor to do it. My current setup has a Ryzen 3900X running in energy saving mode, which is great for gaming and Plex. You can find older, cheaper versions of these chips on eBay now. Those are the best deals for making your home server run efficiently. Think about the Ryzen 4700GE, 4750GE, 5650GE, or 5750GE options. The newer 5750GE is rare right now because it's hard to find. But the older chips like the 5650 and 4750 have the same power rating; however, the 5650 has a better single-core processor that could help some servers if they only run one thread at a time. That said, you lose two actual cores compared to the newer model because those old ones are harder to split up for different tasks.
For local play, you don't need to change the file. If your clients are older and can't play specific codecs, just remove those files instead. You don't need a lot of power or bandwidth for this because it's mostly about storing data. Audio streams get transcoded often and use around 300 megabytes per second. If you want to set up many remote streams, make sure your computer has strong CPU or GPU speed plus fast upload lines to handle the load. An Intel graphics card can do more than a dozen 1080p videos at once. You can also keep several copies of the files. I've heard people swear by keeping their Blu-ray HDR movies in raw format, and then making another copy for streaming to others.