I am planning to purchase new seedbox/NAS/Plex/AdGuard server. I want to maximize the potential of the Odroid H3+ for these tasks, while maintaining flexibility for any limitations encountered.

The base is to be the Odroid H3+ (with an Intel® Pentium® Silver N6005 processor).

In my view, the most demanding aspect will likely be Plex, especially when attempting to transcode 4K HDR x264 content with a maximum bitrate of 77.5 Mb/s, handling up to 4 transcodes simultaneously.

I would like Plex to use RAM as a temporary folder (which will likely increase RAM requirements).

For metadata, it would be best to use SSD.

6 TB of HDD storage space seems sufficient.

I’m not restricted by budget, but I aim to optimize the components to avoid any bottlenecking.

My configuration may seem overkill, so I’m asking for advice on optimizing components to use the full performance potential, avoiding overperformance of any component.

My priorities are x86 and low power consumption (CPU+GPU Stress: ≃18W + 2xHDD 20W). Due to transcoding, I opt for an Intel processor with Intel Quick Sync Video, and considering sizes limited to a SoC board + 2xHDD 3.5”. I don’t require data redundancy since it’ll serve as junk data storage.

Operating conditions for Odroid H3+:

  • 1 Gbps ethernet
  • 1 Gbps internet UP and DOWN
  • System: Debian GNU
  • Intended use: seedbox/NAS/Plex/AdGuard for 24/7 operation

Planned components:

  • 2x Seagate IronWolf Pro NAS HDD 24TB (RAID 0) although it seems that 6TB is enough, these 24TB drives offer the highest performance in read/write and this is only reason why I consider them as a baseline configuration… however, if this performance is already overperformance then we cut performance (or even revision, if IronWolf Pro is too much). If RAID 0 is already overperformance, we can consider a single drive, etc. and so on. It is difficult for me to accurately estimate the performance needed at full load (seedbox + 4 transmissions).
  • WD Red SN700 1TB (I don’t know whether to take the more powerful Seagate IronWolf IronWolf 525 1TB PCIe Gen3 drive on the Odroid H3+ with the PCIe Gen3 connector) this disk will a system drive and for storing metadata. -> 1TB was chosen only because it has the best read/write performance, although 256 GB could be sufficient. If the difference is negligible even with slight performance variations, we can go for a smaller capacity.
  • Corsair Vengeance 2x32G (64GiB) PC4-24300 CMSX64GX4M2A2933C19 2933 MT/s 19-19-19-47 -> I’m not sure how much memory will be needed for simultaneous transcoding of 4 materials, where the largest file is 85 GB. The Plex guide suggests that you need disk space close to the size of the transcoding source file plus 100 MB, at least for HDD/SSD - I don’t know about RAM. Despite messages about too little space when locating on SSD (85GB movie), when allocating to RAM, this message does not appear even if I currently have only 16GB. However, if 64GB is to much, I can consider reducing it.

Cost estimate for the setup:

  • ODROID-H3+ + power supply + case + SATA cabling + customs duty: 299,18 €
  • 2x HDD drives: 2325,96 €
  • 1x SSD: 205,03 €
  • RAM: 157,98 €

Total: 2988,15 €

I’d greatly appreciate advice. The primary goal is maximum performance, but I don’t want to invest in hardware that surpasses the speed of its slowest component, leading to overpayment for performance that I won’t utilize.

  • @dazchadBEnglish
    2•7 months ago

    Is there a typo on the HDD prices? Looks super expensive. With that amount you could have 48TB of NVME drives (assuming you have a controller for that many sticks, but you probably could buy one with the leftover from the sticks)

    In general you shouldn’t spend more on newer/larger capacity HDDs unless you absolutely need that much storage per slot (that is, you are space constrained), as the prices invariably go down in less than an year. Smaller drives with 12~16TB are a much better TB/$. Check diskprices.com to see current trends.

    If you care about speed, relying on HDDs for that is a bad proposition. You are better served by a SSD cache in front of the HDDs. In case of SSD failure, it’s much cheaper/faster to replace that SSD than to rebuild your strained RAID.

    As for CPU performance, pretty much any newer Intel QuickSync will handle your needs. If money isn’t an issue, I’d rather go with Intel NUC 12th gen or newer. I have one and it handles anything I throw at it, including the most demanding 4k transcoding. The NUC and a 4-disk Synology uses less than 50w with the disks being used.