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Cheers and @Velocio
Machine will mainly be used as Plex server with NAS with various other stuff like radarr, sonarr, etc and a few other similar always-on stuff. Lots of drives so will be in an ATX case.
It will occasionally also be used for a bit of office and other random shit (through remote desktop). Ideally it would be two machines but I don't really have the space for that.
I don't anticipate changing much on it over the years. It won't be used for gaming/have a graphics card and, given it will likely be in a cupboard or similar, I won't be plugging much in.
The ASRock Rack ones sound interesting but I'm struggling to find much about them (or many places selling them in the UK).
aggi-
There’s also this ASUS WS-PRO model that I’ve built many workstations with:
This one is unique due to having an 8-lane PCIe 3.0 slot connected via the chipset, which itself is connected to the CPU via 4-lane Gen4, resulting in three 8-lane slots at full bandwidth.
There’s no other Ryzen board which does this, so if you need to run multiple GPUs, HBA cards, capture cards, 10/25Gb Ethernet adapters etc, this is the one.
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Machine will mainly be used as Plex server with NAS with various other stuff like radarr, sonarr, etc and a few other similar always-on stuff. Lots of drives so will be in an ATX case
Would move to a low power Intel CPU, and a fanless heatsink (or just a very very quiet large fan), and just a few big fans in the case to shift heat away from HDD.
Would also prioritise motherboards based on number of HDD connections and unless you're buying a RAID card something with an onboard RAID.
But mostly... the Intel CPU. Any recent one. I'd want to 100% know that hardware offloading of the encoding happens, and your best bet is just to buy a modern Intel CPU.
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It will occasionally also be used for a bit of office and other random shit (through remote desktop). Ideally it would be two machines but I don't really have the space for that.
It sounds like you should look at virtualisation. Your desktop OS does not need to dictate your NAS OS.
UnRAID is probably the easiest way to do this, a lot less hassle than Proxmox or ESXi.
Unless you want actual RAID?
ectoplasmosis
Velocio
chez_jay
In your case, chipset first (lower-end Ryzen chipsets don’t support PCIe Gen 4 on all slots), which will dictate cost somewhat.
Then slot configuration and spacing; will the board physically and electrically support the cards/drives you’ll want to use? This will also dictate form factor (ATX/ITX/mATX).
You mention the system will be on 24/7; will it be a server? If so, Asrock Rack make a great mini range of server boards for your CPU platform, with proper out-of-band management etc and no budget wasted on stupid flashing RGB LEDs or Darth Vader looking heatsinks.