DonnieDarkmode

So as I look to build my first dedicated media server, I’m curious about what OS options I have which will check all the boxes. I’m interested in Unraid, and if there’s a Linux distro that works especially well I’d be willing to check that out as well. I just want to make sure that whatever I pick, I can use qbittorrent, Proton, and get the Arr suite working

So I’m looking to finally build a dedicated plex server, instead of using my personal desktop, but I’m having a hard time deciding on components (for a tower). I would say 3 simultaneous 4k remote transcodes would be the goal.

There are some 12/13600k and Arc A380 bundles on Newegg that have caught my eye; at the very least I think I’d like an A380 to ensure AV1 10-bit support for the future. Am I missing out by not hunting for the perfect deal on an old Xeon or something off of eBay? I’m not really familiar with server components, and I don’t know to what extent I would benefit from features like ECC RAM.

I also figure that a hard drive array (RAID or Unraid) would be best, because it’ll be more than enough speed for my application and give me some data protection. I’ve got around 10TB of content right now, and have a 6TB and 8TB drive (both Seagate Ironwolf). If there’s a solution that would allow me to incorporate those instead of just buying all new drives I’d be especially interested in it. Also, from what I understand I can get some decent enterprise drives for a reasonable price?

Finally, OS; I’m most familiar with Windows, but I’m willing to try something Linux if there’s enough of a benefit

I torrent (on the same PC that I run a Plex server from), but also auto connect on my devices whenever I’m on public wifi, so speed and avoiding blocks/captchas is also important. From what I understand having port forwarding will make a big difference in my torrent transfer speeds and ability to connect to peers.

I’m currently using Nord, but I’d like to make the switch to a company with a better privacy track record. I’m still really drawn to PIA because of the speeds and port forwarding, but I know their ownership is pretty sketchy, even if there’s nothing to point to there (yet). Mullvad dropped port forwarding, which seems to leave ProtonVPN. But now I’m hearing that the influx of Russian users post-invasion has increased the number of sites and services that block PVPN servers?

It seems like despite the huge amount of choices, nothing checks all the boxes except PIA. Am I missing something, or misinformed?

What set of English subtitles should I be looking at to use with the 2015 Japanese Blu Ray release? There are a lot of English releases over the years, but are there any that I could basically just drop in without needing to figure out syncing?