May build a new server & have a question

[all4dom 89]

Im thinking of building a new server for emby & was looking to gonyhe new intel arrow lake route. Some new motherboards are being released & my question is if I use an m2 slot, does that disable the sata port? I've read in some cases yes & from reading the description it doesn't say it does disable it. Thanks

Dom

 

[RanmaCanada 447]

It all depends on how few lanes the board has. The manual will usually specify if using x causes y to not work and the tech specs page should as well (if it does not then that's false advertising). As most boards these days only come with 2-4 sata ports, you really should not run into this issue. If you do, an HBA flashed into IT mode will solve the problem easily, and is the preferred way to have your drives hooked up.

[justinrh 211]

3 hours ago, RanmaCanada said:

HBA flashed into IT mode

HBA = ?
IT mode = ?

[arrbee99 1697]

That would, I believe, be something like this -

https://www.ebay.com/itm/133060224439

Plug into you mother board and you gain 8 connectors for 8 hdd's. They'll need power as well of course.

They come in different modes, and for it to work the board needs to be in IT mode.

[Neminem 796]

@arrbee99The 1 you linked to will need a fan zip tied on to it.

These buggers run hot

[yocker 157]

1 hour ago, Neminem said:

@arrbee99The 1 you linked to will need a fan zip tied on to it.

These buggers run hot

Huge understatement! I actually burned my finger once on one.

[arrbee99 1697]

Thanks for the info. Interesting how many Reddit etc threads there are about it...

[RanmaCanada 447]

10 hours ago, yocker said:

Huge understatement! I actually burned my finger once on one.

I've done the same haha. I have one and an expander in my array, but the amount of air pushing through it keeps them cool enough. My drives alone don't even get over 40C when doing a parity check, so the cards should be fine. Wish there was a way to see the temps of the cards just to make sure ha. I picked up a set of 3 Arctic S12038-4K

[yocker 157]

4 hours ago, RanmaCanada said:

I've done the same haha. I have one and an expander in my array, but the amount of air pushing through it keeps them cool enough. My drives alone don't even get over 40C when doing a parity check, so the cards should be fine. Wish there was a way to see the temps of the cards just to make sure ha. I picked up a set of 3 Arctic S12038-4K

I used one of those small thermometer that sometimes come with motherboards. Worked a treat.
Take the heat sink off and put one next to the chip, careful not to put in it on top of the chip as the heat sink won't lie flush any more, then put heat sink back on in a way that holds the thermometer on.
Might not get a precise measurement but close enough to know if somethings wrong.
 

[all4dom 89]

Hey guys, thanks for your input. This is the board I'm thinking of getting.......ASRock B860M-X WiFi LGA 1851 Intel B860 SATA 6Gb/s Intel Core Ultra DDR5 Micro ATX Motherboard.

I don't see any mention of an m2 slot killing a sata port if in use but wanted to make sure. Thanks again. Dom

[RanmaCanada 447]

Should be sufficient. I personally do not like the lack of pci-e slots, but that's just me being me. It has 4 SATA ports, and 3 pci-e slots, 16x, 4x and 1x, which are more than enough for an HBA and an expander if you need them further down the line. The HBA that was linked would be ideal, but yes needs active cooling for best performance. As for an expander further down the road, I personally use this one. It can function in a 1x slot perfectly fine, or can be out of the slot as it only uses the slot for power, so it could be off to the side and have the molex plugged in.

I went through the whole manual and there is no mention of losing sata ports or expansion slots.

Best of luck to you on this build. Enjoy the journey.

[all4dom 89]

Thank you @RanmaCanada

[OwnWebServers 0]

Utilizing an M.2 slot on Intel Arrow Lake motherboards usually does not disable SATA ports. Most motherboards are designed to support both M.2 SSDs and SATA drives simultaneously. However, always check the specific motherboard manual to ensure compatibility and confirm the configuration for your setup.

[matsonjr 6]

On 1/15/2025 at 2:06 PM, RanmaCanada said:

Should be sufficient. I personally do not like the lack of pci-e slots, but that's just me being me. It has 4 SATA ports, and 3 pci-e slots, 16x, 4x and 1x, which are more than enough for an HBA and an expander if you need them further down the line. The HBA that was linked would be ideal, but yes needs active cooling for best performance. As for an expander further down the road, I personally use this one. It can function in a 1x slot perfectly fine, or can be out of the slot as it only uses the slot for power, so it could be off to the side and have the molex plugged in.

I went through the whole manual and there is no mention of losing sata ports or expansion slots.

Best of luck to you on this build. Enjoy the journey.

I agree with you on a lack of slots.

Throw in a 10gbe nic and an hba and you'll need two that are at least x4.

 

 

[all4dom 89]

Hey guys, what's your opinion of the intel core ultra series 5, series 2, 235? 

[all4dom 89]

Also is it safe to use a molex connection to power 1 sata drive & 1 internal blue ray drive?

[RanmaCanada 447]

On 13/03/2025 at 07:35, all4dom said:

Also is it safe to use a molex connection to power 1 sata drive & 1 internal blue ray drive?

There is an old saying, molex to sata, lose your data. Honestly it's generally fine as the molex connector can easily handle the power requirements of those 2 devices. Hard drive at most will use 12-18 watts when spinning up pending on age and speed (then 5-7 while in use), and bluray drive will use 30 max when burning. The gauge of wiring in your average PSU limits the molex adapter to a "max" of 75 watts (back in the day you would have 2 molex to 1 8 pin adapter for video cards). More than enough for what you want. In the past I powered 4 drives off 1 molex x2 (8 drives off 2 molex adapters) for years, no issues.

Just make sure they are quality cables, and not the cheap molded crap. This is what I used.

[all4dom 89]

If I am.building a pc strictly for emby, channels dvr, play on & editing media would i want to keep emby on a separate m2 drive?

[TMCsw 165]

My advice would be that you should install the OS and emby on the primary NVME and use ether a second NVME or a SSD(SATA III) for emby transcoding-temp/cashe/etc.. (so they run independently) (SSD is fine for a few streams/ NVME for many streams/transcodes)

So based on today’s market prices I would buy 2x1TB MVME(7000MB/s+) and this should be relatively `futureproof`

Let's see what others have to say...

[Q-Droid 856]

Jeez, I started out with short bullets then got carried away.

TL;DR - Whether the SSD is SATA or NVME doesn't matter. You want data, cache and metadata on your fast storage and media on your large storage. The temporary paths (transcoding/conversion) are the ones most likely to cause problems on the OS/root drive. A separate drive or a partition on the main drive can be dedicated for the temp paths so a runaway doesn't fill up the OS filesystem.

It's unclear what you mean by keeping Emby on a separate drive. It doesn't matter where the software is installed. The data, cache and metadata can grow to a good size for some people but not so big that it would cause problems for an OS/root drive. Temporary paths are the ones that can get you in trouble and those are the ones you'd want to separate. SSD of any kind (SATA/NVME) is more than adequate for the workloads Emby will throw at it. Media is done in megaBIT rates and SSD drives operate at hundreds or more of megaBYTE rates with indistinguishable latencies (real world) between SATA and NVME. Hundreds vs. thousands of MB/s make no difference for Emby workloads. When trying to decide between SATA and NVME the cost, compatibility and available ports/slots should carry more weight than the minutiae of benchmarks. Now the exception: there are junk SSDs in the market that don't come close to the expected specs. Yeah, stay away from junk.

Data, metadata and cache - This is likely the most sensitive to latency and most noticeable on the UI. Can be stored on the OS root/Emby installation SSD drive without anything to worry about unless you've bought one that's too small or created a small partition. I'm sure there are exceptions to the growth/size patterns with features that I don't use. Others can chime in with how much skip-intro and preview thumbnails add to the size.

Temporary paths - Transcoding, converting, etc. on a drive or partition big enough to handle the workload. SSD of any type is preferable and more than adequate for this task. In most cases a partition on the same boot SSD will handle the job. The idea is to prevent runaway or excessive transcodes from accidentally filling the OS/root drive/partition. For example I have a 128GB partition from my OS NVME used for the temporary paths and it's never come close to filling that.

Media - For obvious reasons store in large volumes separate from OS.

Backups - On a volume separate from the other stuff.

 

[all4dom 89]

So @Q-Droidyour saying keep emby & temp transcoding folder togetehr? What i meant by 2 drives is a m2 drive for windows & another m2 drive for emby.

[Q-Droid 856]

I'm saying you want the temp paths on fast storage on a drive or partition that can't cause problems for the system or Emby itself. Either separate from others or big enough that it won't fill up. 

Edited to add: Also worth noting this advice is to move in the direction toward optimizing your Emby setup for your needs, which only you know. I'd guess that the vast majority install Emby on their desktop or laptop PC with a single drive, attach external enclosures or NAS storage with their media and run that way indefinitely without problems. So YMMV.

 

Edited April 5 by Q-Droid

[all4dom 89]

@Q-Droidgot ya.... keep the other drive for transcoding only

[Q-Droid 856]

1 hour ago, all4dom said:

@Q-Droidgot ya.... keep the other drive for transcoding only

You don't have to dedicate a "drive". You can partition it to split between Emby config/data/metadata and temp paths or anything else. On your system it will look like another drive but it's the same device split in two or more. You've got many options to fit your needs.

 

 

Edited April 5 by Q-Droid

[justinrh 211]

23 minutes ago, all4dom said:

@Q-Droidgot ya.... keep the other drive for transcoding only

I would say a dedicated drive for transcoding depends on your needs.  If doing a lot of transcoding and multiple concurrent streams (heavy disk IO) then a dedicated drive is a good idea.  All partitions on a single drive are sharing the resources of the one drive across the partitions.