I’d just search for the specific CPU and “plex” and “transcoding” and see what comes up. I’ve not heard many success stories of AMD CPU transcoding, despite them having good hardware support. Stand ready to be corrected.

I run EXOS drives in the under-stair cupboard. They’re noisy but they’re not that bad.

There’s definitely a chance my knowledge is no longer current but I would 100% verify that for your operating system of choice (which I presume is Linux), your AMD CPU can deliver hardware transcoding under Plex. I’ve not heard of AMD CPUs handling this under Linux at least. Ready to be corrected.

You’re not using a CPU that most distributions support for hardware transcoding. You either need to use an Intel CPU with QuickSync or stick a discrete nvidia card in the box. The Intel route is often easiest here, and I say this as a die hard AMD fan.

Are you intent on building your own box?

I’m only asking because TerraMaster does the F6-424 (or F4-424) series which has 6 bays (or 4), a decent CPU (1235U) with hardware transcoding support, space for two 4x4 NVME m.2 SSDs, which runs silently and will just work as an appliance, even though it is a full PC. You can then install unraid or truenas on it, or heck bareback Linux and do it yourself. There are decent alternatives to putting something together yourself.

Regarding disks Seagate EXOS are often cheaper than IronWolfs and have higher MTBF than even the Pro. Don’t ask me why they’re lower cost, for more bang.

It’s time the U.S. deals with big Greenland once and for Oil.

I’m not advocating for any of these, but my journey towards feeling secure in a male adult identity was probably:

• Good set of male friends in high-school that I still keep in touch with (at 48). That was pure luck, I didn’t get to choose them ending up in my class.
• Joined the army at 18. Hard work but definitely forced me into a number of situations I wouldn’t otherwise have had to deal with and raised my personal confidence that the unknown was generally something that could be handled.
• Did the Landmark Forum early twenties. I do not recommend this to anyone but it did wonders for me.
• Through doing a bunch of shitty jobs learnt to apply for good jobs.
• Raised with high expectations. Parents weren’t jerks or unreasonable but they expected me to apply myself without ever nagging at me. Good parents is a huge hidden privilege.
• Met my wife at the right time and through sheer luck she turned out to be perfect.

In short: Mostly luck, privilege and a bit of hard work. And when I say privilege I do not mean money. That we had not very much of.